Marisa Tomei will play mom to the middle-aged Marlyouise Burke's Kimberly in David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly Akimbo in 2003, when Manhattan Theatre Club stages the New York premiere of the comedy.

In the play, the teen-age title character has a rare condition that causes her body to age at an increased rate. Burke is currently Jack's Mother in Into the Woods on Broadway. Kimberly Akimbo begins Jan. 4, 2003, with an opening of Feb 4, 2003, on MTC's Stage I.

Tomei won the Academy Award for "My Cousin Vinnie," and recently appeared in the feature, "In the Bedroom." Her most recent Broadway turn was in Wait Until Dark.

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Ana Gasteyer, the comic actress whose Martha Stewart impersonation kept "Saturday Night Live" viewers laughing, will also join Kimberly Akimbo, playing Kimberly's "scam-artist aunt." Gasteyer left "SNL" in the spring to pursue other projects, and appeared in Broadway's The Rocky Horror Show.

In the play, Kimberly must "re-evaluate her life while contending with a hypochondriac mother, a rarely sober father, a scam-artist aunt, her own mortality and, most terrifying of all, the possibility of first love." David Petrarca directs.

Lindsay-Abaire (Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World) won the 2002 L.A. Drama Critics Award for Best Playwright for Kimberly Akimbo, seen at South Coast Rep (with Burke).

— By Kenneth Jones