Julia Murney has joined the cast of the Second Stage revival of Beth Henley's Pulitzer-winning Crimes of the Heart. Murney will play Chick Boyle, the cousin to Amy Ryan, Missy Yager and Enid Graham's trio of sisters. In the past year, Murney has performed in three high-profile Off Broadway musicals at Manhattan Theatre Club: The Wild Party, A Class Act and Time and Again.
Previews for Crimes of the Heart begin April 3, with an opening on April 16.
Garry Hynes, Tony-winning director of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, has long been slated as director. Enid Graham (Honour, Look Back in Anger) will play Lenny, Amy Ryan (currently in Saved) is Meg, and Missy Yager is Babe.
Henley's 1981 play about kooky Southern sisters has remained a staple of regional and community playhouses. More recent plays have included the poorly-received Family Week this season and Impossible Marriage, starring Holly Hunter and Lois Smith, at the Roundabout Theater Company. Other Henley works include The Wake of Jamey Foster (on Broadway in 1982) and The Miss Firecracker Contest.
* The final show of the Second Stage season will be Once Around the City, a new musical by Willie and Robert Reale. The production — to be directed by Mark Linn-Baker (who will be acting artistic director of the theatre for six months beginning in January 2001) and choreographed by Jennifer Muller — will begin previews June 12.
City, set in the 1980's, is described as an antidote to the "greed decade." The central story pits a yuppie real estate agent against an advocate of the homeless. Romance, comedy, Reaganomics and a jazzy score are mixed into the show.
The brothers Reale have written six musicals together, including Quark Victory, which played at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1999. That quirky tuner centered around a teenage girl named Samantha who takes an amazing journey into the nucleus of an atom. Karen Ziemba and Wilson Jermaine Heredia starred in the production.
For ticket and subscription information call Second Stage Theatre at (212) 787-5600.
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In other Second Stage news, actor Mark Linn-Baker, best known for his years on TV's "Perfect Strangers" and work in filmdom's "My Favorite Year," has been tapped by artistic director Carole Rothman to oversee the company while she takes a half-year vacation, that started Jan. 1 (she’s expected back in the fall to run the 2001-02 season).
—By Robert Simonson
