The bumpy Off-Broadway ride of Kenneth Lonergan's play This Is Our Youth may be at a happy end. For weeks, the question has been: Where will the hit Second Stage production transfer? A Second Stage box office spokesperson told Playbill On-Line (Jan. 4) the play will close at that theatre Jan. 10, 1999 and likely reopen at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre on Theatre Row. A spokesman for Eric Krebs, who manages the Fairbanks, cautioned, however, that the deal had not been completed.

Producers Barry and Fran Weissler were not available for comment.

This is Our Youth was to have made a commercial transfer from Second Stage to the Minetta Lane Theatre, but negotiations fell through in December, and the show was instead extended at Second Stage until Feb. 28, 1999. The production was expected to move to the Minetta Lane right after Israel Horovitz's Primary English Class had closed, and the cast had even renegotiated their contracts for a commercial run. But producer Barry Weissler told the NY Times (Dec. 18) the production would not move to the Minetta saying, "It's alive and kicking...It will find its eventual home, but I can't move without my director." The show's director, Mark Brokaw, was then busy at the helm of Steppenwolf's Glass Menagerie in Chicago.

Kenneth Lonergan's tale of three dysfunctional youths received a brief but acclaimed New Group staging in October 1996, also by Brokaw. The Second Stage staging has kept two of the original leads, Mark Ruffalo and Missy Yager. Josh Hamilton's role is now filled by Mark Rosenthal.

For tickets and information on This Is Our Youth at the Second Stage call (212) 787-3392. -- By Sean McGrath and Robert Simonson