Fresh from its debut at Chicago's Steppenwolf, Austin Pendleton's new play, Orson Shadow, will make its west coast premiere, Sept. 10 Oct. 21, on the Old Globe's Cassius Carter Stage, the final production for the San Diego venue's Festival 2000.

The play, Pendleton's third, concerns the 1960 London premiere of Ionesco's Rhinoceros, which starred Olivier and was directed by Welles. At the time, Olivier was going through a nasty divorce from his second wife, actress Leigh, who named actress (and, from 1961, Olivier's third wife) Plowright as co-respondent in her divorce filing. Tynan was London's leading dramatic critic and all-around enfant terrible, a friend of both Welles and Olivier (he would co- found the Royal National Theatre with Oliver in 1963), and a frequent sparring partner of Ionesco's.

Pendleton, best known as an actor (The Diary of Anne Frank, Finian's Rainbow) and director (The Runner Stumbles, The Little Foxes), is the author of two play, Booth, a bio-drama which starred Frank Langella as legendary actor Junius Booth, and Uncle Bob.

Kyle Donnelly directs. Currently with University of California, San Diego, she has served as associate artistic director at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC and directed for the Steppenwolf, Goodman, Lincoln Center and Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Shadow joins the previously announced Roger Rees helmed Love's Labour Lost, Marianne McDonald's new translation and adaptation of Euripides' The Trojan Women, Alan Ayckbourn's Things We Do for Love and God's Man in Texas. The Old Globe Theatre is located in San Diego's Balboa Park next to the Museum of Man. Tickets are available by calling (619) 239-2255. The Old Globe is on the web at http://www.oldglobe.org.

-- By Christine Ehren
and Robert Simonson