Woody Harrelson is busy playing a cab driver in San Francisco's Sam Shepard world premiere, The Late Henry Moss, so he won't join his fellow Broadway cohorts in the week-long performance readings of The Rainmaker at Los Angeles' Skirball Cultural Center Nov. 28-Dec. 3. Jayne Atkinson, Tony nominated in 2000 for the role of lonely spinster Lizzie Curry, leads most the recent revival's cast in the L.A. Theatre Works' "The Play's the Thing" production.

All "The Play's the Thing" performances are recorded for future radio broadcast and are sold on the L.A. Theatre Works homepage at http://www.latw.org.

Atkinson's other New York credits include Ivanov, All My Sons, How I Learned to Drive and The Striker, for which she was Drama Desk Award-nominated. Joining her in the L.A. reading will be the Broadway company's David Aaron Baker, Jerry Hardin, John Bedford Lloyd and Bernie McInerney. Jenny Sullivan (The Rainmaker and AdWars with Stephanie Zimbalist) directs.

In The Rainmaker, conman Starbuck arrives on the H.C. Curry farm, promising that for $100 he can bring rain to the drought-stricken Midwest land. With his spiel, he captures the heart of Curry's daughter Lizzie, who learns to see her own beauty in the eyes of the rainmaker. The Rainmaker was made into a 1956 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster and a musical, 110 in the Shade, written by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones (The Fantasticks).

All TheatreWorks theatre productions are recorded for future broadcast on Santa Monica College's KCRW 89.9FM. In the past 11 years, productions have won several awards including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Gold and Silver Awards, three Sony Awards, the Writer's Guild of America's Best Comedy Award and the 1999 Audie Award for Best Dramatic Production from the Audio Publishers Association.