Toby Ziegler, meet Nancy Weston. "West Wing" star Richard Schiff and former "thirtysomething" Patricia Wettig come together in the American premiere of Honour playwright Joanna Murray-Smith's latest, Nightfall, playing Vassar's Powerhouse Theatre June 27-July 7.
Schiff won an Emmy as the President's sardonic communications director in the popular "West Wing"; Wettig won hers for playing Weston in the long-running baby boomer drama "thirtysomething." She's making a return visit to the Powerhouse where she starred in 1990's My Mother Said I Never Should with Estelle Parsons. Wettig's play Headlong was a featured reading at Vassar's Readings Festival in 2001.
In Nightfall, a mysterious stranger takes two distraught suburban parents through a reexamination of their daughter's disappearance. Murray-Smith is best known for Honour, which had a brief Broadway run in 1998 after being read at the Powerhouse by Meryl Streep and produced in the author's native Australia.
Max Mayer directs. Mayer is producing director and co-founder of New York Stage and Film. His directing credits include Chesapeake, Dark Rapture, Tough! and George F. Walker's Nothing Sacred.
Tickets are $25. For reservations, call (845) 437-7235/5599. The Powerhouse Theatre is on the web at http://www.vassar.edu/powerhouse. — By Christine Ehren