Plays by Aguirre-Sacasa, Ayckbourn, Cruz, Dorfman, Lindsay-Abaire, and Marber Set for Production by MTC

Manhattan Theater Club has finalized the play selections for its 2005-2006 Broadway season at the Biltmore Theater and has named three of the four shows that will be presented in its Off-Broadway venue at City Center.

The Biltmore season will begin with a revival of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy Absurd Person Singular, to be directed by John Tillinger. It will be followed in the winter of 2006 by the world premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire’s comedy Rabbit Hole, about a young couple whose world comes apart after a life-changing accident. Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan will direct. Closing out the Biltmore season will be Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie, in which the 19th-century Strindberg drama is transported to 1945 London. Marber is the author of Closer and Dealer’s Choice; no director has yet been named.

On Stage I at City Center, MTC will present The Other Side, a new drama by Ariel Dorfman (Death and the Maiden) that is set in a war-torn country. Blanka Zizka, artistic director of Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, will direct the play in its American premiere. A second Stage I production will be announced at a later date.

On City Center’s Stage II, MTC will offer the New York premiere of Beauty of the Father by Pulitzer-Prize winner Nilo Cruz (Anna and the Tropics), about a young woman who travels to Spain to visit her estranged father and the Moroccan suitor who may upset her plans. Tony Award winner Michael Greif (Rent) will direct the production. It will be followed by the world premiere of Based on a Totally True Story by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Golden Age). Directed by Michael Bush, MTC’s director of artistic production, the play concerns a young comic book author and playwright whose work gets snapped up by a Hollywood producer, causing him to reexamine his relationships with his boyfriend and his father.

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