Adam Bock's The Receptionist, directed by Joe Mantello and starring Jayne Houdyshell, will have its world premiere Off-Broadway in one of MTC's City Center spaces, as will the American premiere of the Irish playwright Abbie Spallen's Pumpgirl.
Dates, further casting, and the remaining three productions of the seven-play MTC season are to be announced later.
Rebeck, the writer of The Scene and Bad Dates and the co-writer of Omnium Gatherum , will be making her Broadway debut. Mauritius is a co-production with the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, where the play had its world premiere last year. The play, about two half sisters whose mother's death leaves them in possession of a rare stamp collection, won the Independent Reviewers of New England's (IRNE) Award for Best New Play (large production).
Churchill, despite her status as a legendary British playwright, has only had one play on Broadway — Serious Money in 1988. Top Girls, which was seen at the Public Theater in 1982, is set at the Top Girls Employment Agency in London in the early 1980s and tells the story of Marlene, the ambitious new head of the firm. The director is James Macdonald, who previously staged Churchill's A Number at New York Theatre Workshop and this season staged Dying City at Lincoln Center Theater.
The Receptionist will mark the most high-profile production to date for Bock, the up-and-coming writer of The Thugs and Swimming in the Shallows. Mantello, who directed MTC's current show Blackbird, is a Tony winner for Assassins and Take Me Out and also directed Wicked, among other shows. Houdyshell has most recently been known for her comic turns in Well and The Pain and the Itch. She is currently part of the Broadway cast of Wicked. Spallen's Pumpgirl, which was seen at Edinburgh and at London's Bush Theatre, is the "tale of three lives colliding in rural Ireland" and "unfolds with the story of a homely, tomboyish pump girl at a rundown gas station," according to press notes.
MTC's announced plays, at a glance:
By Theresa Rebeck
Director TBA
Biltmore Theatre (Broadway)
New York premiere
By Caryl Churchill
Directed by James MacDonald
Biltmore Theatre (Broadway)
Broadway premiere
By Adam Bock
Directed by Joe Mantello
Starring Jayne Houdyshell
City Center (Off-Broadway)
World premiere
Director TBA
City Center (Off-Broadway)
American premiere MTC is currently running LoveMusik at the Biltmore, and Blackbird and Our Leading Lady in its City Center spaces Off-Broadway.
Daniel Sullivan will be MTC's acting artistic director 2007-2008 season, taking over for Lynne Meadow.
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