Sometime next season, New York may get a taste of one of New Zealand's most popular theatre writers, Roger Hall. Producers Bill Haber and Kathleen Raitt have taken an option (U.S. and U.K.) on Hall's one-person play, The Book Club, in the hopes of bringing it to Broadway in the months ahead.

"We optioned it eight months ago," producer Raitt told Playbill On-Line (March 6). "We'd like to make it an `event' on Broadway, but for that we need the right actress. We would do it immediately pending the right star and the right theatre, but we don't want to rush it."

Hall's plays, which include Middle-Age Spread, Conjugal Rites and Glide Time, generally look at ordinary middle-class life. His 1998 autobiography, "Bums On Seats," covers his schoolyears and difficult relationship with his gambling father, as well as his backstage travails in theatre and on television.

Co-producers Haber and Raitt are currently developing two musicals for Broadway, Storyville and Nothing in Common.

--By David Lefkowitz