Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand is coming to Off-Broadway in a new adaptation of the Oedipus myth. The play, adapted and directed by Dare Clubb, will open the 1998-99 season of the Blue Light Theater Company in early fall, possibly September.

Clubb and McDormand met at Yale University, where both attended school. Clubb decided the Blue Light was the right troupe to stage his version of Oedipus after seeing its production of Howard Barker's "Scenes from an Execution" in 1996. McDormand will play Oedipus' queen, who here goes by the name of Merope. The actress has also joined the Blue Light's advisory board.

McDormand won an Oscar in 1997 for her performance as a pregnant, Midwestern sheriff in Fargo. Her other films include Mississippi Burning and Short Cuts. Among her stage roles are Masha in Three Sisters at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J.

The company is still looking for an appropriate theatre for the production. The Blue Light's production of The Seagull is currently playing Off Broadway at Theatre Four.

-- By Robert Simonson