Grant and Johnston to Star in Baltimore Waltz

David Marshall Grant, Kristen Johnston and Jeremy Webb will star in The Baltimore Waltz at the Signature Theatre Company. The off-Broadway revival, part of the Signature's season dedicated to the works of Paula Vogel, will play from November 16 through January 9, with an official opening set for December 5.

Grant is best known for originating the role of conflicted gay Mormon Joe Pitt in the original Broadway productions of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika, the latter earning him a 1994 Tony Award nomination. Other Broadway credits include Bent, The Survivor and the 1997 Roundabout mounting of Three Sisters. Grant is also an acclaimed playwright; his 1999 play Snakebit ran for 191 performances at the Century Center for the Performing Arts off-Broadway.

Johnston made her professional stage debut with the Atlantic Theater Company and has worked with the Naked Angels Theatre Company and Playwrights Horizons. Johnston's role in the Lincoln Center production of The Lights earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and brought her to the attention of a Carsey-Werner executive. Carsey-Werner later cast her as Sally Solomon in NBC's 3rd Rock From the Sun, a role which earned her two Emmy Awards. As the series was winding down, Johnston made her Broadway debut in the Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Clare Boothe Luce's The Women and has also recently been seen on the stage in Aunt Dan and Lemon off-Broadway and in two Shakespeare in the Park productions: Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing.

Webb is a newcomer whose most notable credit to date was appearing in the well-received off-Broadway production of Rob Ackerman's ad industry spoof Tabletop, which played at the American Place Theatre in 2000.

The Baltimore Waltz is Vogel's 1992 Obie Award-winning play, a tribute to her brother, who died of AIDS in 1988. When elementary school teacher Anna acquires a mysterious illness, her brother Carl whisks her away to Europe in search of a secret cure. While Carl conducts cloak and dagger routines to procure black market medication, Anna indulges in all sensual pleasures as if each day is her last.

Mark Brokaw, who helmed mountings of Vogel's How I Learned to Drive and The Long Christmas Ride Home off-Broadway, will direct this mounting.