Valerie Harper, best known as TV's "Rhoda," will recreate her one-woman show, The Dragon and the Pearl, in an open run at NY's Lamb's Theatre beginning in mid-October. She recently performed the solo at Hartford, CT's TheatreWorks, July 25-Aug. 31.

Harper impersonates The Good Earth author Pearl S. Buck in Marty Martin's one-woman show, a role originated by Harper in a July 1996 workshop production at American Stage Festival in Milford, NH. The show was initially commissioned by Harper's husband, producer Tony Cacciotti, and developed at Chicago's Organic Theatre.

Harper has received four Emmy Awards for her work in television, has appeared on Broadway and in films, and most recently replaced Linda Lavin in Off-Broadway's Death Defying Acts. Like Buck, Harper devotes much of her time to charity. She is closely involved with The Hunger Project, an organization with the mission of ending world hunger by the turn of the century.

Martin's other plays include Off-Broadway's Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein.

Buck was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature and the author of more than 70 books, including The Good Earth, which won a Pulitzer Prize. According to an AP report, Buck died in 1973 at age 80. Characters in Buck's life represented onstage include a Chinese governess, a Chinese empress and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Said Harper of Buck, "She's such a wonderful and practical visionary. She totally knows the human heart."

John, His Story, the current show at the Lamb's Theatre, an import from Houston, TX's A.D. Players, ends Oct. 5.

--By Blair Glaser and David Lefkowitz