After completely selling out its five-week run, producers are mulling an extension of the Off-Broadway hit, Neil LaBute's bash, currently starring Calista Flockhart ("Ally McBeal"). Problem is, after the scheduled closing on July 25, Flockhart must return to Los Angeles to film "Ally McBeal." Flockhart isn't the only one with a scheduling conflict, with co star Ron Eldard entering Death of a Salesman as Biff on July 28.

A production spokesperson told PBOL (July 2) that, "We're discussing an extension, nothing has been made firm yet".

No official word on who would be in the replacement cast, but The New York Times reported (July 2) that negotiations are in progress with Sarah Jessica Parker (Once Upon a Mattress) and Aaron Eckhart (LaBute's films "In the Company of Men" & "Your Friends and Neighbors").

Originally titled A Gaggle of Saints (the name of one of the three plays), the evening is now renamed "bash." It concerns LaBute's usual theme which, he told the Times, "is basically beautiful people doing awful things."

The show co-stars Paul Rudd and Ron Eldard (On The Waterfront). Joe Mantello (Love! Valour! Compassion!, The Mineola Twins) will direct. Flockhart appears in the first monologue, entitled Medea Redux, about a teenage girl who gets romantically involved with her teacher. Eldard anchors the second play, Iphigenia in Orem, playing a Mormon salesman whose unconscious misogyny leads him to a tragic decision. Flockhart and Rudd appear in the final play, A Gaggle of Saints, as a pair of college sweethearts whose dream night in Manhattan goes violently wrong.

Flockhart's stage credits include the Roundabout's Three Sisters and The Glass Menagerie, as well as Mad Forest Off-Broadway and Off Off-Broadway's Bovver Boys.

For tickets to bash at The Douglas Fairbanks Theatre, call (212) 239 6200.

-- By Sean McGrath