Christopher Evan Welch will play gentile screenwriter to Ron Leibman's Jewish movie mogul in Adam Baum and the Jew Movie, the second offering in the Blue Light Theatre Company's 1999-2000 season. Daniel Goldfarb's Baum will begin performances at the McGinn/Cazale Theater above the Promenade, at 76th and Broadway, on Dec. 3, for a Dec. 12 opening and run through Jan. 2, 2000.

Adam Baum concerns movie titan Sam Baum (Leibman), who decides to make a film about anti-Semitism in American and hires a gentile writer, Garfield Hampson, Jr. (Welch), to do it. The two then engage in a series of revealing meetings about the project. Also in the cast is Adam Lamberg as the eponymous Adam Baum, Sam's son.

Joe Mantello was originally slated to direct, but has backed out for unexplained reasons. Brian Kulick is now at the helm.

Welch has appeared Off-Broadway in Scapin at the Roundabout Theatre Company, and on Broadway in London Assurance, also at the Roundabout. His recent credits include the avant-garde A Streetcar Named Desire at New York Theatre Workshop.

Theatre veteran Leibman's best known recent role was that of Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, for which he won a Tony Award. Since then, he has appeared in The Merchant of Venice and The Dybbuk, both at the Public Theater. * The Blue Light season continues with The Hologram Theory, (beginning previews Feb. 8, 2000 and opening Feb 17) Jessica Goldberg's thriller about a woman who travels from her home in Trinidad to New York City to find and bury her brother. Pulled into a world of rich folk, club kids and the media in Manhattan, she uncovers the mysteries of her brother's world.

Blue Light's fourth presentation is expected to be a large-cast classic in the tradition of the troupe's revivals of The Seagull, Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy.

For tickets or information, call (212) 279-4200.

--By Robert Simonson
and Ken Jones