Classics by Shakespeare and Moliere and plays of more recent vintage by Richard Nelson and Edward Albee make up the 2001-02 schedule at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ.

Emily Mann will step up to the director's chair twice in the season, for the opener, a new mounting of Romeo and Juliet, and in early 2000 to pilot a new staging of Albee's obscure drama All Over. The original 1971 staging of All Over started Jessica Tandy and Colleen Dewhurst under John Gielgud's direction. A recent Off-Broadway revival played in October 2000. In the past year, the popular Albee has seen major mountings of his Tiny Alice and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as well as the New York City debut of the new The Play About the Baby.

Romeo and Juliet is, of course, the Bard's classic story of the doomed teenage lovers of Verona. Though one of Shakespeare's best loved plays, it is infrequently staged in the U.S. No casting has been announced for the production.

Also on the roster is Vienna Notes, a 1979, pre-Reagan, pre-Clinton play by Richard Nelson about "an American senator who turns out to be as much of an actor as a politician"; and a new look at Moliere's Don Juan.

The recently announced 2001-02 McCarter season includes: • Romeo and Juliet directed by Emily Mann, Sept. 11-30
• Vienna Notes by Richard Nelson, directed by Daniel Fish, Oct. 16 Nov. 4
• A Christmas Carol, Dec. 6-30
• All Over by Edward Albee, directed by Emily Mann, Feb. 12-March 3, 2002
• Don Juan by Moliere, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, March 26 April 14, 2002
• A fifth play to be announced, April 30-May 19. Possibilities include Frank McGuinness' Dolly West's Kitchen and a new play by Eric Bogosian

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In other McCarter news, Tony Award winners Blair Brown, L. Scott Caldwell and John Glover star in Athol Fugard's new drama, Sorrows and Rejoicing, which will begin previews on April 23 at Princeton, New Jersey's McCarter Theatre. Fugard also directs. The play will open on May 4 and run through May 20.

After the Princeton run, Sorrows will travel to Cape Town, South Africa, said a spokesman for the McCarter. Fugard will still direct, but a different cast will be featured. The play will then traverse the Atlantic once more for its New York City premiere at Second Stage. The Second Stage mounting will be a separate venture from the McCarter presentation and it is not clear whether any of the current cast members will be used.

Fugard is the South African author of such noted plays as Master Harold...and the Boys, Mecca, Valley Song and Blood Knot. The new work takes place in the Karoo region, a semi-desert area of southern Africa. There two women, one white and one black, find that they love the same exiled poet.

Brown won a Tony Award last year for her performance in Copenhagen. The Michael Frayn play concluded a streak of Broadway credits by Brown, including Cabaret and James Joyce's The Dead. Glover, who plays the poet, won his Tony for Terrence McNally's Love! Valor! Compassion!, in which he essayed a dual role. Most recently, he headlined Brian Friel's Give Me Your Answer, Do! Off Broadway. Caldwell won a 1988 Tony Award for her work in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

Also in the cast is Marcy Harriell.

—By Robert Simonson