Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Nicholas Martin has indicated his plans to bring Betty's Summer Vacation and last season's broadway musical The Dead to Boston for the 2001-02 season.

In a New York Times interview, Martin referred to the above plans as well as his idea of re-staging Tennessee Williams' Camino Real with Ethan Hawke.

Betty's Summer Vacation represented playwright Christopher Durang's biggest critical success in years when it premiered at Playwright Horizons, under Martin's direction, a couple seasons back. Though several attempts were made to transfer the comedy to a commercial run, the show closed after an extended run at PH and never re opened. The original cast featured Kelly Overbey and Kristine Nielsen.

James Joyce's The Dead also began life at Playwrights Horizons. The Richard Nelson musical adaptation of James Joyce's famous short story transferred to Broadway and earned a few Tony nominations.

As reported earlier, Huntington and the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) will work together to construct a 350-seat legitimate theatre—Boston’s first in 70 years—as well as a 200-seat black box meant to provide performance space to smaller theatre organizations. Huntington also plans to expand its “commitment to developing and producing new work” by launching a new play-reading program, Breaking Ground. Comprising informal readings of new plays under consideration or in development at Huntington, the program starts in January 2001.

Additional details are forthcoming, although a call to Huntington was not returned by press time.

—By Murdoch McBride