Lois Smith, Sam Rockwell, Becky Ann Baker and Sara Gilbert will be among the lodgers at the Williamstown Theatre Festival's Hot l Baltimore. The fest's production of the Lanford Wilson play will begin July 5 and run through July 16.
A big hit when first produced in New York in the '70s, Wilson play concerned a once-grand hotel and the seedy misfits which now inhabit it. Also in the cast are Mandy Seigfried, Helen Hanft, George Hall, Justin Long, David Wohl, Cindy Coyne, Tom Sadoski, Carol Woods.
Gilbert played comic Roseanne's daughter for many years on the sitcom "Roseanne." She recent resurfaced in the film, "High Fidelity." Rockwell was an Off-Broadway actor, performing with such troupes as The New Group, before becoming a presence in such indy films as "Basquiat," "Box of Moonlight" and "Jerry & Tom." He is slated to appear in the new "Charlie's Angels" movie.
Two-time Tony nominee Smith (Buried Child, The Grapes of Wrath) was most recently seen Off-Broadway in Give Me Your Answer, Do!. Becky Ann Baker has acted in everything from Broadway's Titanic to Off-Broadway's June Moon and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. Siegfried appeared in The Mineola Twins and Stupid Kids.
Joe Mantello (Love! Valour! Compassion!) directs the production. *
Orson's Shadow, the latest drama from Austin Pendleton (Booth, Uncle Bob), now having its East Coast premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, ended its run there on June 25 and is now playing the Westport Country Playhouse.
Orson's Shadow boasted the same creative team, headed by director David Cromer, featured in its premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company earlier this year. A New York engagement is expected to follow, and Shadow is also slated for San Diego's Old Globe Theatre in September.
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The entire Fest's summer line-up of new and classic plays runs June 14 through August 27.
Kate Burton and Harris Yulin will star in Jon Robin Baitz's new adaptation of Ibsen's classic, Hedda Gabler, July 19-30. Burton appeared at WTF in The Factory Girls last summer. Yulin was recently seen on Broadway in The Price, a production which originated at Williamstown. The Ibsen will travel from the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, Long Island.
Moss Hart's Light Up the Sky, Aug. 16-27, will be directed by Christopher Ashley and star Eric Stoltz, known from films like "Mask" and "Killing Zoe," and NYC theatre productions as Three Sisters and The Importance of Being Earnest. Stoltz recently was seen at WTF in 1998's The Glass Menagerie.
On the smaller Nikos Stage, David Lee will direct Joel Fields’s romantic comedy How I Fell In Love, June 28–July 9. Lee is the creator and executive producer of "Frasier."
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Other productions on the WTF roster include Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, directed by Darko Tresnjak, which will play Aug. 2-13 on the Main Stage; the U.S. premiere of Simon Gray's The Late Middle Classes, directed by Roger Rees, July 16-Aug. 6; Pugliese's The Talk, directed by Scott Ellis, July 12-23.
-- By Robert Simonson
