Lincoln Center Theatre's 1997-98 season is shaping up. Andre Bishop, artistic director, and Bernard Gersten, executive producer, for LCT, have announced a new musical for their Off-Broadway 299-seat theatre.
* The New Brain, by William Finn and James Lapine of Falsettos fame, will be directed by Graciela Daniele. No cast has been set. Performances will begin in early April at the Mitzi Newhouse.
Lapine is also known for his close collaborations with Stephen Sondheim on such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion.
* Performance dates are in place for the previously-announced adaption by David Hare of Chekhov's Ivanov starring Kevin Kline, of Pirates of Penzance and On the 20th Century, in his return to Broadway. It will be staged by Gerald Gutierrez, who won Tonys for Best Director in 1995 for LCT's The Heiress and 1996 for LCT's A Delicate Balance. He directed this season's Broadway revival of Once Upon A Mattress starring Sarah Jessica Parker, which closed May 31. Ivanov performances begin Oct. 23 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, with an opening set for Nov. 20. The play will run 10 and a half weeks, through Jan. 4.
Gutierrez has postponed his plans to revive Noel Coward's Tonight At 8:30. A press spokesman for LTC said the revival "is still being planned but not this season." * Jack O'Brien, who directed this season's LTC revival of The Little Foxes, returns to direct his acclaimed production of Tina Howe's new play, Pride's Crossing. Cherry Jones, who won the 1995 Best Actress Tony for her performance in LCT long-run revival of The Heiress, will recreate the role that brought her raves in the Old Globe Theatre premiere in San Diego. The play begins performances in the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre Nov. 6 with a scheduled opening in early December. It will run through Feb. 1.
Howe is the author of Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, and Approaching Zanzibar. Pride's Crossing chronicles a journey through a long and challenging life.
Jones, who was also nominated for a 1991 Best Actress Tony for Our Country's Good, will portray 91-year-old Mabel Tidings Bigelow, whose life, told in flashbacks, was profoundly changed when she broke the world's record for swimming the English channel in 1928, a time when women were expected to allow men to break the records.
When he directed the play in January at the Old Globe, where he is artistic director, O'Brien said, "This play is funny and wise, an allegory of American women during the early 20th century, women who were not given -- particularly by their families -- the awareness that they could be great."
-- By Ellis Nassour
