Actress MaryLouise Burke will repeat the role she created in the West Coast premiere of the David Lindsay-Abaire comedy, Kimberly Akimbo, when it debuts at Manhattan Theatre Club in early 2003. Burke confirmed her involvement at a recent press preview of the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods, in which she plays Jack's Mother. Burke has signed on to spend a year with the musical. She said the commitment would not interfere with her doing Kimberly, however.

In Kimberly, Burke plays a 16-year-old stricken with a rare disease which prematurely ages her and adds further chaos to her screwed-up family. The show will mark Burke's third Lindsay-Abaire show at MTC, after Fuddy Meers, for which she won a Drama Desk Award, and Wonder of the World, which just closed. Burke and Lindsay-Abaire first hooked up when the actress was cast in one of the writer's plays at Off-Broadway's Soho Rep, Burke told Playbill On-Line.

Lindsay-Abaire won the 2001 Kesselring Prize for Kimberly Akimbo. The play was nominated by California's South Coast Repertory, where it debuted in spring 2001. The SCR cast also included Joanna P. Adler, Anne Dowd, Steven Flynn and John Gallagher Jr.