The late Harry Kondoleon's final play, Saved and Destroyed, will have to wait a little longer for its premiere. The work was to have received its first staging sometime this month at the hands of Off- Broadway's Rattlestick Productions and director Craig Lucas (better known as the author of Prelude to a Kiss and The Dying Gaul). But a spokesman for the show said Lucas' schedule has forced the company to push the play back until May.

Replacing Saved in Rattlestick's winter slot will be The Messenger, by David Van Asselt. It will begin previews March 8. Since the theatre is still in the midst of piecing together the last-minute production, no information on the director or cast was available at press time.

Another play announced for the 1999-2000 season, Sex and Violence by Travis Baker, directed by Brian Adams, has been canceled. Rattlestick is looking into several other projects.

Rattlestick's season began last fall with Ben Bettenbender, Vick's Boy, directed by Bob Balaban.

* Kondoleon, author of such plays as Christmas on Mars and Love Diatribe, died of AIDS several years ago.

In Saved and Destroyed, Kondoleon wrote about what he knew: the theatre. The multi-layered story deals with a group of "bitter, recriminatory" actors performing a play about a similar group of "bitter, recriminatory" actors. The drama the thesps are enacting, meanwhile, also sports a play within a play, this one about two "a-functional" families lost in a shared dream along the coast of Maine.

Lucas' other plays include Reckless, Blue Window and Marry Me a Little.

Saved and Destroyed varies somewhat from Rattlestick's usual offerings. Typically, the company presents new works by emerging playwrights, presented under the tutelage of established scribes such as Terrence McNally and Edward Albee.

--By Robert Simonson