Producer Jeffrey Richards confirmed that the cast of his private March 5 reading of a revised version of Gore Vidal's Visit to a Small Planet will have Christine Baranski, Philip Bosco, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Tony Randall, Lily Tomlin, Josh Alexander, Raul Aranas, Steven Michael Harper, Shawn Elliott and Wesley Ramsey.

"Gore has revised the script, updating it, adding a scene, and he's done some trimming," Richards told Playbill On-Line March 5, prior to the Manhattan reading. Richards and Raymond J. Greenwald and Michael B. Rothfeld are "doing the reading to hear the play with an eye to its future."

John Tillinger directs the industry reading, at an Off-Broadway theatre. The venue is expected to be full to capacity. Richards' interest in the 1957 play was first reported in December 2000, around the time of the Broadway closing of The Best Man, Vidal's political drama.

Tillinger is currently directing Abby Mann's Judgment at Nuremberg for Randall's National Actors Theatre.

Visit to a Small Planet originally opened Feb. 7, 1957 at the Booth Theatre. Eddie Mayehoff, Conrad Janis and Cyril Ritchard were among the cast-members of Vidal's three-act, satirical comedy, which ran nearly 400 performances. The play is set in the living room of a well-to-do television commentator (originally played by Philip Coolidge) and concerns a visitor from a more civilized planet paying a call on Earth.