Can the New York theatre sustain three star-studded productions of Edward Albee plays in one season? Princeton's McCarter Theatre hopes so. As its new production of Albee's All Over readies for a Feb. 12 beginning, the theatre is hopeful that the show will transfer to a Manhattan theatre.

Certainly, the staging has the names to gain at least initial interest. Previously announced to star are Rosemary Harris, Michael Learned, Myra Carter, John Christopher Jones and John Carter. The cast has now been completed by William Biff McGuire and Pamela Nyberg.

Albee will have to be in perpetual motion in order to attend rehearsals for all his plays currently being staged. The Occupant, now in rehearsal at the Signature Theatre Company, begins previews on Feb. 5. And The Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia?, starring Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl, is also in rehearsal, and begins performances on Broadway on Feb. 16.

All Over was given a fairly well-received Off-Broadway staging roughly a year ago, at Theatre 22 in Chelsea, starring Jacqueline Brooks and directed by Teresa Hayden. The run ended on Oct. 22, 2000.

The original 1971 staging of All Over starred Jessica Tandy and Colleen Dewhurst under John Gielgud's direction. The current cast is steeped in the playwright's work. Harris, who last starred in Waiting in the Wings on Broadway, acted, alongside John Carter, in Albee's A Delicate Balance on Broadway in the 1996. Additionally, Carter was in Finding the Sun and Fragments at the Signature Theatre Company. Myra Carter gave the performance of a lifetime in Albee's Three Tall Women.

Learned, meanwhile, was seen in The Best Man on Broadway last season. McGuire won a Tony nomination for Horton Foote's The Young Man from Atlanta and Nyberg was in the McCarter's own Electra.

—By Robert Simonson