Architect Frank Gehry is going to make his mark in the New York theatre world if it kills him — or the city. Signature Theatre Company, Off-Broadway's not-for-profit known for its mandate of exploring the work of one playwright per season, announced it has raised $16 million toward its $60 million new three-venue home on West 42nd Street. The City of New York is kicking in $25 million to the Signature Center. Gehry — known for his burnished, bent constructions of undulating metal — will design the theatre center, to be part of the $800 million LEED-Silver Complex that will also include 800 housing units and a hotel. The rest of the residential/hotel complex is being designed by Arquitectonica (didn't he fight Optimus Prime in "Transformers 2"?) and Ismael Leyva.

This isn't the first time Gehry has signed on for a New York theatre project. In 2005, Theatre for a New Audience unveiled that architects Gehry and Hugh Hardy would work in collaboration to design a permanent home in the BAM Cultural District in Brooklyn for the theatre company that would include a 299-seat flexible theatre, a 50-seat rehearsal/performance space, a café, offices, and a rooftop garden. By 2008, Gehry had exited the project. At the time, Theatre for a New Audience founder and artistic director Jeffrey Horowitz informed the Times that "Frank told me he was too busy and was unable to continue with the project and that he had to withdraw. We respected his wishes."

Gehry has an even longer history with the Signature building. Back in 2004, it was announced the architect would design a performing arts complex on the World Trade Center site, which would include the Signature. The City yanked the theatre company from that project in 2007; no progress has been made on the WTC site since.

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Sheen had an early-career success playing the son in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frank D. Gilroy work The Subject Was Roses. This week, it was announced that he will now play the father in a 2010 revival of the play at Mark Taper Forum. Brian Geraghty will play Sheen's old role of the son (for which Sheen was Tony-nominated). Frances Conroy will play the mother.

The drama will open the Taper's 2010 season, Feb. 10-March 21, 2010 (opening Feb. 21), replacing the previously announced Speed-the-Plow. Neil Pepe (artistic director of the Atlantic Theater Company) will direct.

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	Megan Mullally

Roundabout Theatre Company's new Broadway production of Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart will star Megan Mullally as Chloe and Patton Oswalt as Sam, under the direction of old McNally hand Joe Mantello. It will start April 9, 2010, at the American Airlines Theatre.

Lips Together, Teeth Apart, which concerns two couples' anxieties as they try to celebrate the July 4th weekend at a beach house on Fire Island, was an Off-Broadway hit at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1991, and remains one of McNally's better-regarded scripts. The original production featured three actors then at their theatrical peak — Christine Baranski, Anthony Heald and Swoosie Kurtz — and one, Nathan Lane, who was just about to break out.

In other McNally news, Marc Kudisch, Jeffrey Carlson and Hoon Lee will star in McNally's operatic backstage drama Golden Age at the Kennedy Center in March 2010. The Philadelphia Theatre Company world premiere production of Golden Age, which will run Jan. 22-Feb. 14, 2010, will transfer to the Kennedy Center in March as part of Nights at the Opera, a five-week celebration of McNally's plays that also includes The Lisbon Traviata and Master Class.

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What? Still reading this? Not eating cookies and cueing up Vince Guaraldi on the iPod? OK, one last item.

Irish Repertory Theatre's acclaimed fall production of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones opened Dec. 22 in a seven-week winter run that started Dec. 15 at Off-Broadway's SoHo Playhouse. John Douglas Thompson returned as the title character of the 1920 expressionistic drama.

Now go check on that turkey. "It's a Wonderful Life" will be staring in five minutes.