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By Ernio Hernandez
15 Aug 2006

Liev Schreiber.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

Liev Schreiber will return to Broadway early next year starring in a Broadway staging of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, producer Jeffrey Richards confirmed to Playbill.com.

"I'm just very lucky to be working with him again," Richards responded when jokingly asked if he was Schreiber's personal producer — he helped the stage and screen thespian earn his 2005 Tony Award for his turn in Glengarry Glen Ross. Also reteaming with Richards are his producing partners Jerry Frankel and Jam Theatricals for the new run.

Robert Falls (Long Day's Journey Into Night, Shining City) stages the work which will begin rehearsals in January 2007 and open for a limited engagement in February at the Longacre Theatre. Exact dates and further casting are yet to be announced.

Talk Radio follows an acid-tongued, late-night talk show host whose program is about to be picked up for national syndication. The work first played in New York in 1987 at Off-Broadway's Public Theatre with Bogosian starring in his own work opposite a cast that included Linda Atkinson, John C. McGinley and Mark Metcalf. It was adapted by Bogosian and director Oliver Stone for the 1988 film.

Schreiber just appeared in Macbeth for The Public Theatre's "Shakespeare in the Park" this summer, following up his Henry V turn in 2003. Other credits include Harold Pinter's Betrayal, Neil LaBute's The Mercy Seat and Othello. A co-star in the"Lackawanna Blues" HBO film, he has also appeared on film in the "Scream" trilogy, "The Manchurian Candidate" remake and on television in "RKO 281" and "Spinning Boris." He made his directorial debut last year with "Everything Is Illuminated" — which he also adapted.

Another well-known Bogosian work, subUrbia, will also see a new staging next season at Off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre, Sept. 6-Oct. 29. As a performer, he was last seen as The Devil in Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. He has also appeared in his one-man works Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead, Drinking in America and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. The scribe can also be seen in the films "Wonderland," Heights," "Igby Goes Down" and "Deconstructing Harry."

Producers Richards also noted the climate for producing a non-musical work on Broadway. "I'm glad to be doing a straight play when it's getting harder and harder to produce a straight play on Broadway." (Currently planned for this season are only a handful of dramas including Heartbreak House, Losing Louie, Butley, The Little Dog Laughed, Translations and Tom Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia.)

The design team for Talk Radio will include Mark Wendland (set), Christopher Akerlind (lights), Laura Bauer (costumes) and Richard Woodbury (sound).

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