Elizabeth Ashley will return to the New York stage this summer in a new Off-Broadway comedy, If Memory Serves. Producer Charles Duggan hopes to have the play begin previews at an unspecified theater by July and open in August, said a company spokesperson. Leonard Foglia will direct.

If Memory Serves is written by Jonathan Tolins, the author of Twilight of the Golds. If concerns Diane Barrow, a wholesome, Mary-Tyler-Moore-Florence-Henderson-type television star (played by Ashley) desperate to revive her flagging career. All is scuttled, however, when her son begins making public his terrible childhood.

The play premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse in early fall. Ashley is best known for several Broadway turns in the plays of Tennessee Williams, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer. She recently appeared at Washington, D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre in Sweet Bird of Youth.

Marilyn Sokol will also star in the production, playing both a gossip columnist and an agent.

Director Foglia is best known for staging the Broadway production of Terrence McNally's Master Class. He also directed the Pasadena mounting of If Memory Serves, which starred Brooke Adams and David Groh. -- By Robert Simonson