Martin staged the Broadway revival of Present Laughter in 2009. The Circle will run June 7-25, 2011. Casting for the production has not been announced.

"I'm so pleased that Nicky Martin will be joining us next season," said Westport artistic director Mark Lamos in a statement. "I've been a fan of his for years, and a great admirer of his work at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He's a gifted artist who excels at so many varied styles of theatre, but with his particular genius for staging this sort of sophisticated English drawing room comedy, I can't imagine a better match of director with material."

According to Westport, "The Circle is about Lord Champion-Cheney, who, many years ago, was abandoned by his wife, a legendary beauty. Now his son Arnold, a politician and rising star, is having marital problems of his own. Is history destined to repeat itself? Considered by many as Maugham's wittiest play, The Circle is a seamless blend of romance and repartee."

Martin will depart his position as artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival following the current summer season. He has staged the New York productions of Why Torture Is Wrong and the People Who Love Them, Match, Hedda Gabler, The Rehearsal, Observe the Sons of Ulster…, The Time of the Cuckoo, Chaucer in Rome, Fully Committed, Betty’s Summer Vacation, Bosoms and Neglect, Sophistry, You Can Never Tell and Full Gallop. At Williamstown he directed Where's Charley?, Camino Real, The Royal Family, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dreading Thekla, Mother of Invention and others. He was the former artistic director of the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston.

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