Kevin Bacon will begin his Broadway run in the Roundabout Theatre Company staging of Heather McDonald's An Almost Holy Picture on Jan. 22. Official opening of the Michael Mayer-directed piece is Feb. 7.

Bacon will perform the role of Samuel Gentle, the former priest, now church groundskeeper, whose faith is shaped by: a voice he heard as a child; a horrible schoolbus accident that leads to his renunciation of the ministry; and his daughter's rare endocrine disease.

Other works by McDonald include Faulkner's Bicycle, Dream of a Common Language, The Rivers and Ravines and Available Light.

Though Bacon's wife, actress, Kyra Sedgwick, has divided her time between the big screen and the stage — appearing on Broadway in Twelfth Night and Off-Broadway in Craig Lucas' Stranger — Bacon is known nearly exclusively for his film work. Among his many credits are "JFK," "The River Wild," "The Big Picture," "A Few Good Men," "Apollo 13," "Sleepers" and "Picture Perfect." He has appeared in so many films, with so many different actors, that he inspired a game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" (after John Guare's play, Six Degrees of Separation) in which players try to connect a performer with Bacon in less that six steps.

* Taking a cue from the Broadway schedules of Nathan Lane in The Producers and Elaine Stritch in At Liberty, Bacon will not perform an eight-show week. John Dossett will take his place at specified matinees.

Dossett has been seen on Broadway in such shows as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Ragtime, Kiss of the Spider Woman and,Prelude to a Kiss, and Off-Broadway in Dinner With Friends, Trudy Blue and How I Learned to Drive. He was to have played McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz in the Roundabout's postponed production of Assassins.

His performance schedule (subject to change) is as follows:

Sunday, January 27
Sunday, February 3
Wednesday, February 6 at 2 PM
Wednesday, February 13 at 2 PM
Wednesday, February 20 at 2 PM
Sunday, March 3
Sunday, March 10
Sunday, March 17
Sunday, March 24
Sunday, March 31

The design team for An Almost Holy Picture includes Mark Wendland (sets), Michael Krass (costumes) and Kevin Adams (lighting).

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Back in the fall of 1999, an Off-Broadway production of An Almost Holy Picture, was announced, with How I Learned to Drive's David Morse as star and direction by Mayer. It was eventually postponed due to the lack of a theatre and wasn't heard from again until earlier this year, when the Roundabout added the play to its schedule. The drama was originally set for the Roundabout's Off-Broadway berth, the Gramercy Theatre, but was promoted to the American Airlines Theatre (taking a slot once reserved for a now scotched revival of Tartuffe).