"24" Star Ray Wise Returns to The Tooth of Crime Off-Broadway, Oct. 3-22

By Robert Simonson
August 14, 2006

Ray Wise, recently seen on TV in "24" and on screen in "Good Night and Good Luck," will return to his theatre roots Oct. 3-24 in a La MaMa revival of Sam Shepard's The Tooth of Crime.

Wise starred in a praised 1983 revival of Tooth of Crime at La MaMa, winning an Obie Award for his work. Wise will play the same role he played then—the old-school rocker Hoss—in a new production at the same theatre. His original co-star Raul Aranas (as Doc) and original director George Ferencz will join him.

The play, one of Shepard's oddest and most challenging, is written in a sort of half-western, half-rock-and-roll jive talk and concerns the epochal duel between aging rocker and a young and brash newcomer. It had its New York debut in 1972, but won acclaim with Ferencz's 1983 revival.

A revised version of the play, subtitled "Second Dance," was presented in 1996 as part of the Signature Theatre Company's season-long examination of Shepard's work. It starred Vincent D'Onofrio as Hoss and was not well received.

According to press materials, La MaMa head Ellen Stewart has convinced Shepard to allow the theatre use of the original version of the play. Currently, only the revisal is being made available for production.

Wise is also known from his turn as Leland Palmer in the David Lynch TV series "Twin Peaks." He appeared on Broadway in Tartuffe and Romeo and Juliet.