Angela Lansbury and Patti LuPone Set for Acting Company Benefits

Four-time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury will return to the Broadway stage in a one-night-only performance of This Is On Me: An Evening of Dorothy Parker to benefit The Acting Company at 7pm on Sunday, November 5 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

Billed as “an evening of plays, poems, essays, stories, songs and patter by the wittiest woman in America and the First Lady of the Algonquin Roundtable,” the show, which was previously performed in Los Angeles, was created by Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide, St. Elsewhere) and will be directed by Warner Shook. Completing the cast are two more Tony Award winners, Boyd Gaines and Harriet Harris, along with Lisa Banes and Lynn Collins.

In related news, the Acting Company will hold its annual Masquerade Gala at 6:30pm on Monday, October 23 at Cipriani Wall Street. This year’s event will honor Patti LuPone, a founding member and board director of The Acting Company, and former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean. Bob Martin, the Tony-winning star and co-author of The Drowsy Chaperone, will emcee the gala, which will include an all-star tribute to LuPone. Among the performers will be four-time Tony winner Audra McDonald, who has appeared opposite LuPone in productions of Passion and Anyone Can Whistle. Lansbury will be on hand to present the award to LuPone.

Lansbury made her Broadway debut in Hotel Paradiso in 1957, and won Tony Awards for her subsequent performances in Mame, Dear World, Gypsy, and Sweeney Todd. She is also known for her work on the long-running CBS series Murder, She Wrote and for her appearances in such classic films as National Velvet, The Harvey Girls, and The Manchurian Candidate.

LuPone was most recently acclaimed for her work as Mrs. Lovett in John Doyle’s Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd and as Rose in the Ravinia Festival production of Gypsy. She won a 1980 Tony Award for her performance in Evita; her other Broadway credits include The Robber Bridegroom, Anything Goes, Master Class, The Old Neighborhood, and Noises Off.

The Acting Company was founded in 1972 by John Houseman and current producing artistic director Margot Harley. The company has received a Tony Honor for Excellence in Theater, as well as Obie, Audelco and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards. It has toured 125 productions across America and to nine foreign countries. Its education programs — master classes, student matinees and weeklong Literacy Through Theater artistic residencies — reach 25,000 students a year, most in schools where little or no other arts education is available.

Tickets for the Masquerade Gala ($550 and $1,000) and benefit tickets for the Dorothy Parker program ($750 and $1,000) may be purchased by phoning 212-258-3111. General admission tickets for the Dorothy Parker event are priced at $85, $100, and $250; they may be purchased by calling 212-239-6200.