By Robert Simonson
15 Jun 2004

Christine Ebersole and Tony Roberts

Christine Ebersole, Dylan Baker, Edward Hibbert, Richard Kind and Tony Roberts will star in the Bay Street Theatre of Sag Harbor, Long Island's summer presentation of Rough Crossing by Tom Stoppard.

Bay Street favorite, actor-director Daniel Gerroll (Accomplice, Blithe Spirit) will stage Rough Crossing. Dates are June 15 through July 4.

Set in the 1930s aboard an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic, the work is adapted from Ferenc Molnar's Play at the Castle. The author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, and The Invention of Love delves into this story in which a musical comedy writing team and their speech-impaired composer race to complete their new work before they port.

Ebersole won a Tony Award for 42nd Street. She also starred in Dinner at Eight at Lincoln Center. Baker was this season seen at the Atlantic Theatre Company in Howard Korder's Sea of Tranquility. Hibbert acted in the recent Broadway revival of Noises Off. Kind starred in the Chicago and D.C. productions of Stephen Sondheim's Bounce.

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Charles Busch's turn in the title role of Auntie Mame will fill the number three spot in the season, July 13-August 1. Richard Sabellico directs Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's play. Also in the cast are Tolan Aman, Kerrie Blaisdell, Jennifer Harmon, Michael McCormick, Gordana Rashovich, Victor Slezak, Patrick Ryan Sullivan, Max Von Essen

The fateful match of play and actor will first take place this summer at Maine's storied summer stock landmark, the Ogunquit Playhouse, as previously reported by Playbill On-Line. Dates are June 28-July 10. The set and costume design will be handled by Busch's longtime designers Michael Bottari and Ronald Case.

Busch will play the larger than life madcap Mame, who famously lives her life as a banquet and charges his impressionable orphaned nephew to "Live!" The show was a hit in 1956 for playwrights Lawrence and Lee, who adapted the work from the novel by Patrick Dennis, and has since become a camp classic with a passionately worshipful following. It inspired both a movie, with Rosalind Russell, and the Jerry Herman musical Mame.

Rounding out the season is Marcia Milgrom Dodge's treatment of Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty early success, Once on this Island, Aug. 10-Sept. 5.

Single tickets will go on sale March 2, and are available by calling the Bay Street box office at (631) 725-9500 or www.baystreet.org.