Madonna, the pop star who last appeared on a legitimate stage in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow on Broadway in 1988 and has since relocated to London with her British filmmaker husband, will make her West End debut this spring.

The play is a comedy called Up for Grabs by David Williamson, who is known for such screenplays as "The Year of Living Dangerously." Laurence Boswell directs.

Madonna will take the role of an art dealer who connives to artificially inflate the price of a Jackson Pollock painting that goes on the auction market. Up for Grabs will bow at London's Wyndham's Theatre on May 23 and will play a ten-week run.

Aside from Speed-the-Plow—in which she starred aside Ron Silver and Joe Montegna, and earned respectful, if tepid, reviews—Madonna has reserved her attempts at acting for the big screen. Among her films are "Desperately Seeking Susan," "Who's That Girl," "Dick Tracy" and the movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita."

Back in 1998, Madonna toyed with the idea of playing Maggie the Cat in a West End production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Sir Peter Hall. Over the course of a few weeks, the singer was assured for the role, then turned it down, then reconsidered. The project never happened. —By Robert Simonson