The Manhattan Class Company has announced the following three plays to its subscribers for the coming season: A Place at the Table by Simon Block will run Sept. 26 -Oct. 24; Dead Eye Boy by Angus MacLachlan will run Jan. 18 - Feb. 20; and SKIPwith by Anto Howard with Brian Murray (also starring Brian Murray) will run Mar. 20 -Apr. 15. Details on casting, directors, production teams and specifics on the individual productions are forthcoming.

MCC traditionally stages new works but has made an exception with MacLachlan's Dead Eye Boy, which ran in March and April at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. MacLachlan's play was developed after winning the 1999 Lois and Richard Rosenthal New Play Prize. The Dead Eye Boy is a hard-edged drama about an ex-Marine, a single mother, and her 14-year-old son and their "struggle toward light," as MacLachlan described it to Playbill On-Line then. "You have to face the darkness within yourself and the world," MacLachlan said, "otherwise it will destroy you and everyone else around you." The play contains strong language and adult situations deemed inappropriate for children.

MacLachlan is North Carolina-based. His eight other plays include Marginal Living, Buena Vista, Ariadne Duvall and Divertiment O. The latter two were produced in New York by Circle Repertory Theatre and The Wonderhouse Theatre, respectively. MacLachlan's, short film, Tater Tomater, aired on "American Playhouse" and was viewed at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.

The co-author and star of SKIPwith, Brian Murray is familiar to audiences on either side of the pond. His credits include Entertaining Mr. Sloan, Racing Demon, Travels With My Aunt (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards) and a Tony nomination for playing Rosencranz in Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead. His other Broadway credits include A Small Family Business, Noises Off (Drama Desk Award), Black Comedy, Da Sleuth, All In Good Time, and Peter Brook's Royal Shakespeare Company production of King Lear. He was most recently seen on Broadway in Uncle Vanya.

Now in its 14th season, MCC has played a pivotal role in numerous artistic careers and has staged such shows as Wit, Good As New, The Grey Zone, Nixon's Nixon, Girl Gone, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, Fun and Beirut. Last season MCC staged Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman's Trudy Blue and Jose Rivera's Sueno. -- By Murdoch McBride