Martha Plimpton, who earned solid reviews in last season's Atlantic Theatre Company production of Hobson's Choice, and "Sex and the City"'s Kim Cattrall will star in the Public Theater's New York premiere of David Mamet's new play, Boston Marriage.
The two actresses were featured in a recent ad for the production.
American producers Anita Waxman and Elizabeth Williams will team with the Public on Boston Marriage in November. Karen Kohlhaas will direct.
Kattrall plays the promiscuous Samantha Jones on the hugely popular cable series "Sex and the City." Last season, her "Sex" co-stars, Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon, acted on New York stages.
Much of Plimpton's stage work has been seen in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where she is an ensemble member. At the theatre, she acted in Playboy of the Western World and Hedda Gabler, the latter performance favorably compared to Kate Burton's recent Broadway turn. Waxman and Williams grabbed the U.S. rights to the play after seeing Marriage debut at the Donmar Warehouse last year. The London cast featured Zoe Wanamaker, Anna Chancellor and Lyndsey Marshal.
Boston Marriage, which had its 1999 U.S. debut in Boston (appropriately), is an odd departure for man's man Mamet. The play is about the prickly and arch relationship between two Victorian era women, Clare and Anna, who live together. Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, starred in the Boston staging.
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As previously reported, the 2002-03 Public Theater season is taking on a more definite shape. The delayed new play by Suzan-Lori Parks, Fucking A, now has a director: Michael Greif. Performances begin in February 2003, jut after the late January bow of Radiant Baby, the new musical inspired by the life of artist Keith Haring.
The season will kick off Aug. 23 with the first preview of Richard Greenberg's highly anticipated play about a famous baseball player holding a press conference and telling the world he's gay, Take Me Out. Previews began Aug. 23. The staging is a co-production with the Donmar Warehouse.
According to the Donmar Warehouse website, the following dialogue may sum up the new work: "If I'm gonna have sex — and I am because I'm young and rich and famous and talented and handsome so it's a law — I'd rather do it with a guy, but, when all is said and done, Kippy? I'd rather just play ball."
In the play, "Darren Leeming is a young iconic baseball star, living life large, male as can be, envied by everyone. He calls a press conference and, without telling anyone what he is about to do, he comes out to the waiting media." The play, about sports, race, and sexual politics, "chronicles the fall-out as the ripples of his actions spread through the team, the media and across the nation."
Official opening at The Public's Anspacher Theater, following the summer run in London, which played June 20-Aug. 3, is Sept. 5.
Joe Mantello directs a cast that includes Kevin Carroll (45 Seconds From Broadway, Angels in America), Dominic Fumusa (Tape and [sic]), Gene Gabriel, Neal Huff (The Public's Tempest and Troilus and Cressida), Robert M. Jimenez (The Public's Richard II, Marisol, Othello), Stephen Mendillo (Broadway's Wild Honey, Orpheus Descending, A View from the Bridge), Denis O'Hare (Cabaret, Ten Unknowns), Kohl Sudduth, Daniel Sunjata (a Lincoln Center Twelfth Night and Williamstown Theatre vet, playing the ballplayer who outs himself), Frederick Weller (The Shape of Things) and James Yaegashi (an Alabama Shakespeare Festival vet).
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Radiant Baby, which takes its name from one of Haring's most famous drawings, is composed by Jonathan Larson Award winner Debra Barsha with book by Stuart Ross (Forever Plaid) and lyrics by Ira Gasner (The Life), Barsha and Ross.
Based on the 1993 John Gruen bio of the artist — who rose out of the subway and into fame before dying of AIDS in 1990 — the musical follows the final years of the artist's evolution to acclaim and his death at the age of 31. No cast has been announced. George C. Wolfe will direct.
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Suzan-Lori Parks gave the Public one of its hits of last season in Broadway's Topdog/Underdog. The success of that project and Parks' busy schedule was one of the reasons Fucking A, once set for the 2001-02 season, was bumped to 2003.
The play is yet another of Parks' dramatic variations of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." No cast has been announced. Greif's recent directing credits include Dogeaters at the Public and Once in a Lifetime at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
The Public is also considering productions of King Lear, Henry IV, Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward II.
—By Robert Simonson
