News that David Richenthal, the producer who brought Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and The Price to Broadway in the past two years, was hoping to revive Miller's 1953 parable, The Crucible, for Broadway, first broke last October. Now, the plan appears to be a go. Both the New York Times and the New York Post reported that the drama would play a 15-week limited run on Broadway in February 2002. Liam Neeson, last seen on Broadway in David Hare's Judas Kiss, will play John Proctor. British director Richard Eyre will direct. Richenthal has become a one-man Miller industry in the past few years, backing Broadway revivals of Death of a Salesman (directed by Robert Falls) and The Price (directed by James Naughton). He is also behind a projected revival of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, which, is all worked out, will bow at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in early 2001, with Robert Falls directing Jessica Lange and Brian Dennehy, and then move to Broadway.

Richenthal, who is quite the newsmaker these days, declined to confirm to the Times the rampant reports circulating that he may take control of the Helen Hayes Theatre. Other accounts have him producing a season of plays at the jewel box house, which is owned by Martin Markinson.