Lauren Ambrose and Oscar Isaac Cast in Central Park Romeo and Juliet

Lauren Ambrose and Oscar Isaac have been cast in the Public Theater's forthcoming summer mounting of Romeo and Juliet at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. This first production of the 2007 Shakespeare in the Park season, running June 5-July 8, will be directed by Michael Greif Grey Gardens, Rent. Following will beA Midsummer Night's Dream, running August 7-September 9, to be directed by Daniel Sullivan Prelude to a Kiss, Rabbit Hole. No casting for that production has been announced.

Ambrose starred in the 2006 Broadway revival of Awake and Sing! and appeared in Buried Child at London's National Theatre. She is best known for playing Claire Fisher in the HBO series Six Feet Under. The 29-year-old actress and her photographer husband became the parents of a son named Orson on January 17.

Isaac played Proteus in the 2005 Central Park revival of John Guare and Galt Mac Dermot's musical Two Gentlemen of Verona and appeared in Manhattan Theatre Club's off-Broadway production of Nilo Cruz's Beauty of the Father, directed by Greif. Born in Guatemala in 1980, Isaac is a graduate of Juilliard. He played Joseph in the recent film The Nativity Story and will appear alongside Benicio del Toro in Stephen Soderbergh's upcoming film Guerrilla.

In a statement quoted in the Times, Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis said that 2007 "is the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, and we hope to revisit the utopian and joyous impulses of that era through the medium of two of the greatest of Shakespeare's plays."

Although the Public had announced last June that Brian Dennehy would star in Henry IV, Part I in the park, that choice of play and casting has now been scratched. Dennehy is co-starring with Christopher Plummer in the Broadway revival of Inherit the Wind, which begins performances at the Lyceum Theatre on March 19 and is scheduled to run through July 8.