The free reading for Roundabout Theatre Company members will play the American Airlines Theatre. Seating is general admission. Ellis was scheduled to direct the work for Boston's Huntington Theatre Company last season (for a May-June run), but the dates had to be rescheduled due to the director's duties on the new musical Curtains. The work will now play a Nov. 9-Dec. 9 run for the Massachusetts company at the Boston University Theatre.

"In a U.S. Army barrack in 1965, four young soldiers await the orders that will most likely send them to Vietnam," reads a show description. "As they wait, they nurture a friendship of necessity – desperately seeking connection in a world that seems frighteningly devoid of inspirational leadership.

"With palpable tension mounting, their very different backgrounds are revealed and the men are forced to confront racism, homophobia, and their own convictions of what it means to be a man."

A Roundabout spokesperson could not confirm any casting.

Ellis, who serves as an associate artistic director at Roundabout, has directed Broadway stagings of Curtains, The Little Dog Laughed, Twelve Angry Men, The Boys From Syracuse, The Man Who Had All the Luck, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Rainmaker, 1776, She Loves Me, Picnic and A Month in the Country. Other credits include Entertaining Mr. Sloane, The Waverly Gallery, The Dog Problem, That Championship Season and the NYC Opera staging of A Little Night Music.

Playwright Rabe's Hurlyburly enjoyed an Off-Broadway revival in 2005. He has also penned The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, In the Boom Boom Room, Burning, Goose and Tomtom, Corners, Sticks and Bones, A Question of Mercy, The Oprhan and Those The River Keeps. Ellis directed Rabe's last effort, The Dog Problem, Off-Broadway in 2001. His screenplays include "Hurlyburly, Casualties of War" and "The Firm."