Mercedes Ruehl to Play Peggy Guggenheim in Woman Before a Glass Off-B'way

Lanie Robertson's Woman Before a Glass, a one-woman play starring Mercedes Ruehl as Peggy Guggenheim, will be the next tenant at the Promenade Theatre. The piece, directed by Casey Childs, is scheduled to begin previews on February 17 in preparation for a March 10 opening, according to a production spokesperson.

Born in 1898 in Manhattan to a wealthy family, Guggenheim will go down in history as one of the best known art dealers of her time. She opened her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, in London in 1938 with an exhibition of works by Cocteau. Over the years, at different locations throughout the world, she displayed the work of a wide variety or artists. She took many artists under her wing, giving Jackson Pollock his first solo exhibition. In the late 1940s, she bought Palazzo Venier dei Leoni and installed her vast collection inside the palace. She lived there for decades but eventually donated the venue and the art inside it to her uncle's foundation, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. She died in 1979.

Ruehl won a 1991 Best Actress Tony Award for Lost in Yonkers and was nominated for a 1995 Featured Actress Tony Award for The Shadow Box and a 2002 Best Actress Tony Award for The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?. She additionally appeared on Broadway in I'm Not Rappaport and The Rose Tattoo. Ruehl is also an Academy Award winner, having won for her performance in The Fisher King.

Woman Before a Glass will feature sets by Thomas Lynch, costumes by Willa Kim, lighting by Phil Monat and sound by David Van Tieghem.

The last tenant at the Promenade, the two-hander Trying, closed January 2.