Diana Rigg to Return to B'way in The Importance of Being Earnest

Diana Rigg will return to Broadway in the spring of 2006 in a revival of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. She will portray Lady Bracknell in the play, according to Variety.

Set in the 1890s in England, The Importance of Being Earnest centers on two men who have taken to bending the truth in order to generate excitement in their lives. John Worthing invents a brother, Earnest, whom he uses as an excuse to leave his dull, country life behind to visit Gwendolyn daughter of Lady Bracknell in the city. The second man, Algernon Montcrieff, coincidently decides to take on the name Earnest when visiting Worthing's young ward in the country. Things start to go awry when they all end up in the country together.

Rigg was born in Yorkshire, England. As a teenager she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Later Rigg then signed a five-year contract with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she acting in productions that included A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear. In 1965 Rigg captured the hearts of many television fans with The Avengers. Her role in the show as the daring Emma Peel earned her a loyal following and two Emmy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series. Rigg proceeded to make a splash on Broadway in the 1970s. She received 1971 and 1975 Tony Award nominations for her roles in Abelard and Heloise and The Misanthrope, respectively. She starred in the 1981 musical Collette and a 1987 London revival of Follies but concentrated mostly on films and family during the 1980s. The 1990s marked Rigg's return to the stage. She stared in London productions of All for Love, Medea, Mother Courage for which she earned an Olivier Award nomination and the London Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Actress, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for which she won another London Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Actress, Humble Boy and Suddenly Last Summer. Rigg also starred in Medea on Broadway and earned her first Tony Award for her performance in the 1994 revival of the play.

The last Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest played at the Circle in the Square Theatre in 1977 and featured Elizabeth Wilson as Lady Bracknell.