Long rumored and now confirmed, Swoosie Kurtz will play a set of twins when she stars in Paula Vogel's latest, The Mineola Twins, slated to begin performances at The Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre Jan. 19, 1999.

Kurtz has received the Tony Award twice, for Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July and the Lincoln Center revival of John Guare's House of Blue Leaves. Her career, in recent times, has been geared more toward television, with a lead role in "Sisters" and a recurring role in the NBC sitcom, "Suddenly Susan."

Vogel won last season's Pulitzer Prize for her Off Broadway hit, How I Learned to Drive. Other plays include The Baltimore Waltz and Desdemona.

Twins, dubbed "a politically incorrect comedy of the sexes," made its premiere at Alaska's Perseverance Theatre in November of 1996. Mineola starts during the Eisenhower administration, spanning three decades in the lives of two twins: Myrna and Myra (one good, one evil). Kurtz will play both of them.

Joe Mantello (Corpus Christi, Love! Valour! Compassion! ) will direct. Currently at the Roundabout are Little Me on the mainstage and Impossible Marriage at the Laura Pels.

-- By Sean McGrath