Morey, artistic director of PTC, announced casting for the production that Geoffrey Sherman will direct, running Jan. 9-24, 2009, at Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre, 300 South 1400 East, Salt Lake City. Sherman is artistic director of Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

The cast includes Bjorn Thorstad as Lord Byron, Christopher Kelly as Percy Shelley, Giorgio Litt as John William Polidori, Lena Hurt as Claire Clairmont and Ellen Adair as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

Here's how PTC bills the play: "Hopelessly entangled love affairs, savage wit and jousting egos combine to create a fascinating, funny, and haunting evening of theatre in this world premiere based upon historical fact. In the fateful summer of 1816, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft and their companions flee England escaping scandal. Shuttered in Byron's villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, they turn to the supernatural as Byron challenges them to each write a ghost story — a competition that will not only spawn Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but that also shapes the destinies of these extraordinary individuals whose lives defined an age."

For more information, call (801) 581-6961 or visit www.pioneertheatre.org.

* Pioneer Theatre Company operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and Actors' Equity Association, the Union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States. Pioneer Theatre Company, Utah's only fully professional theatre, performs at Roy W. and Elizabeth E. Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre, located on the University of Utah campus.