The latest project being worked on by director Andre Gregory and playwright Wallace Shawn (the My Dinner With Andre pair) is the latter's translation/adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder.

Among the performers involved in an early workshop of the piece are Julie Haggerty, George Gaynes and Larry Pine, who told Playbill On-Line (Aug. 6) there was "no time frame" for production, since director Gregory tends to work in unorthodox ways developing a piece.

Audiences got a hint of those methods in Gregory's dressed-down but extremely intimate version of Uncle Vanya, preserved on film by Louis Malle as Vanya on 42nd Street, starring Pine, Gaynes and Shawn. Shawn and Gregory first came to mass attention in the Malle film, My Dinner With Andre.

Author Shawn is best known for penning the controversial plays Aunt Dan & Lemon and The Designated Mourner. Ibsen's dramas include Ghosts, Peer Gynt, Little Eyolf and A Doll's House. The Master Builder concerns a passive, burned-out architect spurred on to one last great project by a young woman who sees only his greatness.

-- By David Lefkowitz