The Chalk Garden, With Brookes, Returns to Off-Broadway Oct. 19-31

By Robert Simonson
19 Oct 2004

Broadway and Off-Broadway veteran Jacqueline Brookes stars in an Off-Broadway mounting of Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden, beginning performances Oct. 19 at Center Stage Theater in Manhattan.

The production is a revival of one that ran at Center Stage in September 2003. It will last until Oct. 31.

The Chalk Garden, about the tortured relationship between a woman and her granddaughter, opened on Broadway in 1955, the same year Brookes starred in Jean Giradoux's Tiger at the Gates on Broadway, and won a Theatre World Award for her work in The Cretan Woman. Brookes went on to star in such Broadway productions as More Stately Mansions (1967), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1973), in which she stood by for Colleen Dewhurst, and The Cherry Orchard (1977), where she was standby for Irene Worth.

The original Broadway production starred Gladys Cooper, Siobhan McKenna, and a young Fritz Weaver and Marian Seldes. All, saving Seldes, were nominated for Tony Awards. The production ran 182 performances. A London production starred Peggy Ashcroft, George Rose and Edith Evans.

Center Stage is located at 48 W. 21st Street. Call (212) 989-2228.