Patti LuPone and Laurie Metcalf to Face Off on Broadway in David Mamet's The Anarchist

Powerhouse theater stars Patti LuPone and Laurie Metcalf will go head to head in the Broadway debut of The Anarchist, a new play written and directed by David Mamet. The production will be mounted by Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel at an as-yet unnamed theater in the fall of 2012.

A press announcement of the The Anarchist describes it only as a “new play about politics, money, religion and sex.” An item in The New York Times adds that the script “centers on a female inmate with a radical past (LuPone), pleading for parole with the prison’s female warden (Metcalf); a battle of words and wits ensues.”

LuPone, who is a close friend of the playwright in real life, has starred on the New York stage in Mamet’s The Water Engine, Edmond, The Woods and The Old Neighborhood. A Tony winner for Gypsy and Evita, she has received Tony nominations for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Sweeney Todd, Anything Goes and The Robber Bridegroom. LuPone is set to begin previews on November 16 in An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Metcalf received a Tony nomination for Mamet’s November and will star in a London revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night later this season. Recent NYC theater credits include The Other Place, A Lie of the Mind and Brighton Beach Memoirs. An original member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Metcalf is known to TV audiences for her Emmy-nominated role on Roseanne.

A London production of The Anarchist was announced in April, with Rupert Goold attached to direct the play in fall 2012. Richards told the Times that the London production might proceed in spring 2012, but no casting or other details are set.