The Off-Off-Broadway company, Target Margin Theatre, will stage a rare production of Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan drama, Dido, Queen of Carthage, Jan. 17-Feb. 24, 2001. The show will take place at the Ohio Theatre in Soho and star Nicole Halmos as Dido. Artistic director David Herskovitz will, as usual, take the helm.

Dido is the least known and produced work of Marlowe, the short lived contemporary and rival of Shakespeare. Written in collaboration with Thomas Nashe in 1587, it is, perhaps, the first play by the man who would earn greater fame for Tamburlane the Great, Edward II and Doctor Faustus. The story is drawn from Book Four of Virgil's "Aeneid" and is a classic Roman epic set in North Africa. Marlowe died in a tavern brawl in 1593 at age 29.

Also featured in the cast are Charles Parnell as Aeneas, as well as Greig Sargeant, Tonya Canada, Rinne Groff, William Badgett, Mary Neufeld, Yuri Skujins, Abigail Savage and Rizwan Manji -- most of them veterans of past Target Margin outings.

The Ohio Theatre is located at 66 Wooster Street in Manhattan. For more information, call (212) 358-3657.

--By Robert Simonson