Theater News

Bogart, Keenan-Bolger, Mason, Added to Playwrights Horizons Season

Marsha Mason
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)
Marsha Mason
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)

Anne Bogart, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Marsha Mason will all be part of Playwrights Horizons’ 2007-2008 season.

Bogart, a two-time Obie Award winner, will direct the New York premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone in early 2008. The play concerns Jean, an empathetic museum worker who gets involved in a dead man’s life after she answers his cell phone. The play will have its premiere next month at Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

Keenan-Bolger, whose Broadway credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the current revival of Les Misérables, will star in the world premiere musical Saved in Spring 2008. Based on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture, the show will feature a score by Michael Friedman and book by Obie Award winner Rinne Groff. It will be directed by Gary Griffin (The Color Purple).

Saved focuses on Mary and her domineering best friend Hilary Faye, who are starting their senior year at the top of the social food chain at American Eagle Christian High School until Mary’s boyfriend tells her he thinks he’s gay. When Jesus appears in a vision and Mary heeds his message “to do everything she can to help him,” her good deeds are met with dire consequences and Mary is forced to question everything she’s ever believed.

Mason will headline Sarah Treem’s A Feminine Ending, which will be directed by Blair Brown and is scheduled to begin performances at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre in October. The play concerns Amanda Blue, an aspiring composer whose plans begin to unravel when her mother (to be played by Mason) calls about a marital crisis.

A four-time Academy Award nominee, Mason has starred in such films as Cinderella Liberty, The Goodbye Girl, and Only When I Laugh. Her New York stage credits include the Broadway revivals of Steel Magnolias and The Night of the Iguana, and the Off-Broadway production of Wintertime. She will host the second annual Golden Apple Awards, honoring women in radio and television, on May 17 at the Sheraton New York.

For more information on Playwrights Horizons’ 2007-2008 season, visit www.playwrightshorizons.org.