Glenn Close will star in
Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance this fall
Theater awards for 2013-14 are pouring in and so are announcements of new shows for 2014-15. In addition to This Is Our Youth with Michael Cera and Kieran Culken, there are several revivals of plays of which I have strong memories. It's Only a Play is Terrence McNally's inside-baseball comedy set on the opening night of a huge flop. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will reunite as a bitter actor and nervous playwright. I saw an earlier version of it called Broadway, Broadway during its out-of-town try-out in Philadelphia just before I went away to college in 1977. It starred James Coco and Geraldine Page, and closed out of town. I do remember one joke about Beatrice Straight doing a cabaret act. It resurfaced as It's Only a Play Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1986, again with Coco and Christine Baranski, Joanna Gleason and Mark Blum.
Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance is also coming back, this time with Glenn Close, John Lithgow, Lindsay Duncan and Martha Plimpton, directed by Pam McKinnon who staged Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for Steppenwolf and on Broadway. When I was in college in Pittsburgh, there were two simultaneous productions by different groups. I must be getting old because the 1996 revival seems like only a few months ago to me.
