After 263 performances, Edward Albee's Off-Broadway hit, The Play About the Baby, will ends its run at the Century Center Sept. 1, but expect Albee in the future. His new play, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, about a man who falls in love with a goat, is on Elizabeth McCann's books for the spring, 2002 season. David Esbjornson, who had great success with Albee's The Play About the Baby, will direct The Goat.

The Play About the Baby, a treatise on the loss of innocence set in a clean white playroom and invaded by two older, cynical strangers, opened Feb. 1 to mostly positive reviews, especially for the play's stars Marian Seldes and Brian Murray, who play Woman and Man. David Burtka, who is Boy, won a Clarence Derwent acting award for his role. Murray and Seldes won OBIE Awards.

Albee also recently enjoyed the triumphant revival of his Tiny Alice at Second Stage. The remounting of the drama — which was reviled in its 1963 premiere — was embraced by critics and, as a result, extended its run.

The Play About the Baby made its world premiere in September 1998 in London and has subsequently changed, both in the writing, and in the set design (the original concept of a Victorian apartment altered to a sterile no-man's-land with a sterile play space decorated with children's toys). Albee is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women, as well as the short works The Zoo Story and The American Dream.

Tickets to The Play About the Baby are $60-$25. The Century Center for the Performing Arts is lcoated at 111 East 15th Street. For reservations, call (212) 239-6200. — By Christine Ehren
and Robert Simonson