It sounded too good to be true. Night Must Fall, the Broadway chiller starring Matthew Broderick, was to move from the Lyceum Theatre to the Helen Hayes Theatre in just two days, ending at the former April 11 and reopening at the latter April 13. Like the psycho lead character who cons an old lady into thinking he's a sweetheart, the news was too good to be true. According to the Springer/Chicoine press office, Night Must Fall will take another week to load in its scenery and do some "tweaking," pushing the reopening night to Tuesday, April 20.

The move of Night Must Fall came as something of a surprise to the theatre community, for -- though the revival of the Emlyn Williams thriller garnered a positive notice from the Times -- it was always understood that the show would end on schedule, due to Broderick's commitment to appear in The Death of Papa, Horton Foote's play at CT's Hartford Stage, May 27. A spokesperson for the National Actors Theatre said Broderick had given up that play to stay with Night Must Fall.

Emlyn Williams' potboiler tells of a psychopathic bellboy and the spell he casts on several women in an English country house. The show began previews on Feb. 2 and opened March 8 at the Lyceum, with a cast of Broderick, J. Smith-Cameron (who replaced Pamela J. Gray in previews), Judy Parfitt, Michael Countryman, Seana Kofoed, Patricia Kilgarriff and Peter McRobbie. John Tillinger (The Exact Center of the Universe) directs.