Primary Stages New Season Offers Works by Gurney, Clark, Durang & McNally

Primary Stages has announced its 2006-2007 season at 59E59 Theaters. The company will present the world premiere of A. R. Gurney's Indian Blood, Kathleen Clark's Southern Comforts starring real life husband-and-wife Hal Holbrook and Dixie Carter, the Christopher Durang musical Adrift in Macao and the world premiere of Terrence McNally's Deuce with Marian Seldes.

In Indian Blood, young Eddie uses his Indian ancestry as a cause and an excuse for his adolescent attacks on the genteel world around him. Was it his Seneca tribe or his talent as a budding artist that caused his privileged world to turn upside down? The show, directed by Mark Lamos, is scheduled to run from July 25 through September 3.

In Southern Comforts, longtime widow Amanda Cross Carter visits a small northern New Jersey town where she meets Gus Klingman Holbrook, a cantankerous widower. Eventually Amanda peels away the rough layers of Gus' unhappy heart to reveal the silenced passions of a man and a lover. The show just finished a world premiere run, with Carter and Holbrook, at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Leonard Foglia, who directed the show in Florida, will repeat his duties off-Broadway, where the play is scheduled to run from October 3 through November 19.

Adrift in Macao, which will run from January 23, 2007 through March 4, 2007, features book and lyrics by Durang and music by Peter Melnick. The show centers on five quirky characters stranded in a Casablanca-like locale in the Far East. The musical premiered at the Philadelphia Theatre Company last fall. Sheryl Kaller directs and Christopher Gattelli choreographs.

Deuce will run from April 3, 2007 through May 6, 2007. No description of the show's plot has been released, but it will feature Seldes, who earned rave reviews for her performance in the Primary Stages production of McNally's Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams earlier this season.

Primary Stages is still in the midst of its 2005-2006 season. The company is currently presenting Charles Grodin's The Right Kind of People through March 5. It will conclude this season with the one-woman show Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop, which stars Amy Irving and will run from March 21 through April 30.