Elaine Stritch to Join Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell for One Night Only

By Adam Hetrick
and Andrew Gans
18 Jun 2007

Elaine Stritch
Elaine Stritch
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Legendary actress Elaine Stritch will join the company of Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell for one night only, on June 26.

Stritch will join cast members Kathleen Chalfant, Hazelle Goodman, Tony winner Frank Wood and soap opera veteran Darnell Williams for the single performance.

Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell, a collection of Gray's well-known and unpublished work was conceived by Gray's widow Kathleen Russo with direction by Lucy Sexton. According to press notes Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell: "unfolds chronologically, from recollections of childhood swimming trips with his mother (who also committed suicide) and tales of awkward adolescent sexual encounters, to the joy Gray took in being a father himself." The production includes diary extracts as well as excerpts from Sex and Death to Age 14; Terrors of Pleasure; Swimming to Cambodia; Impossible Vacation; Gray's Anatomy; Monster in a Box; It's a Slippery Slope; Morning, Noon and Night; and Life Interrupted.

The Naked Angels Production is being presented by Eric Falkenstein and Michael Alden. The production, which was originally scheduled to close May 13, is now open-ended.

Spalding Gray won an Obie Award for Swimming to Cambodia and filmed the monologue with director Jonathan Demme. Other works include Morning, Noon and Night; Monster in a Box; Gray's Anatomy; and It's a Slippery Slope. He performed on Broadway in Our Town and Gore Vidal's The Best Man. After a series of bouts with depression, Gray took his own life in 2004 by jumping from the Staten Island Ferry into the waters of New York Harbor.

Stritch dazzled audiences in her Tony and Drama Desk Award-winning autobiographical tour de force Elaine Stritch at Liberty, which also garnered her an Emmy Award for the filmed production. Her illustrious career also includes her creation of Joanne in Company, as well as roles in The Little Foxes, Bus Stop, A Delicate Balance, Sail Away and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 PM, Sundays at 7 PM with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 3 PM. The Minetta Lane Theatre is located in Manhattan at 18 Minetta Lane, just off Sixth Avenue.

Tickets, priced $35-$65, are available by calling (212) 307-7171 or by visiting www.ticketmaster.com. Tickets are also available by visiting or calling the Minetta Lane box office at (212) 420-8000.