A married couple in real life, and then a married couple on TV's "L.A. Law," Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry have been playing a married couple in Kristine Thatcher's drama, Emma's Child, in venues across the country. In January, they brought the show to CA's Marin Theatre. Now they'll be doing a one-night-only benefit of the piece for Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, April 11.

Thatcher's drama concerns adoptive parents-to-be, Henry and Jean, who must decide whether to keep a baby b orn with a severe defect.

Tucker and Eikenberry now work together so often, they've been officially nicknamed "The Tuckerberrys." They appeared in a San Jose production of A.R. Gurney's epistolary comedy/drama, Love Letters, and according to Marin Theatre publicist Carla Befera, the couple then saw Emma's Child at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where the piece was first developed, and brought the project to the Marin Theatre Company because they live in Marin's hometown of Mill Valley.

Also appearing in the reading will be members of the original Victory Gardens production of Emma's Child, including Gary Houston, Julie Pearl, Mary Poole and Rochelle Richelieu.

Proceeds from the staged reading of Emma's Child will benefit not only Victory Gardens but KIDSHELP [sic], a Chicago-based human rights organization designed to help children caught in the legal and child welfare system. Author Thatcher is the newest member of the Victory Gardens Playwright's Ensemble. Her other works include Under Glass, Niedecker and Waiting For Tina Meyer. Emma's Child won the 1995 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and has been published by both Dramatists Play Service and Smith & Kraus.

For tickets ($150 includes post-show reception) to the April 11 Victory Gardens staged reading of Emma's Child, call (773) 871-3000.

-- By David Lefkowitz