Angela Lansbury to Channel Dorothy Parker in Broadway Benefit

Stage legend Angela Lansbury will make a one-night return to Broadway on November 5, heading the cast of This Is On Me, An Evening of Dorothy Parker. The staged reading, adapted by Tom Fontana TV's Oz, Homicide and St. Elsewhere will be held at the Gerald Shoenfeld Theatre to benefit The Acting Company. Joining Lansbury onstage will be Boyd Gaines, Harriet Harris, Lisa Banes and Lynn Collins.

"I've been Mame Dennis, Mama Rose and Mrs. Lovett—why not Dorothy Parker?" Lansbury said in a statement. The four-time Tony winner chairs the Actors Advisory Board of The Acting Company, founded in 1972 by her longtime friend John Houseman and current Producing Artistic Director Margot Harley.

Boyd Gaines Tony winner for Contact, She Loves Me and The Heidi Chronicles has long been a staple of The Acting Company's staged readings. Harriet Harris Tony winner for Thoroughly Modern Millie, Mame at The Kennedy Center and recurring on Desperate Housewives and Lisa Banes Arcadia, Desperate Housewives began their careers on tour with The Acting Company, as did fellow alums Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, Jeffrey Wright, Jesse L. Martin, Hamish Linklater, Stephen DeRosa, Henry Stram, David Ogden Stiers, Tom Hewitt and Rainn Wilson. Lynn Collins made her Broadway debut The Women and recently appeared in the Central Park production of Macbeth.

For more information about the benefit, go to the Acting Company's website, www.theactingcompany.org.