Elizabeth Marvel to Star in Michael Weller's Fifty Words at MCC

Top Girls star Elizabeth Marvel has signed on to star in MCC's world premiere production of Michael Weller's Fifty Words at the Lucille Lortel Theatre beginning September 10. The two-person show, which opens September 28 and is set to run through October 25, will be directed by Austin Pendleton. Casting for the second role will be announced at a later date.

In Fifty Words, something has gone very wrong behind the idyllic façade of Jan Marvel and Adam's brownstone. At 9:10PM they're reveling in the freedom of having waved off their young son, Greg, to a neighborhood sleepover. By 9:15 they're both in tears. By 9:25, things are way past tears. Alternately funny and frightening, Fifty Words is an expansive look at modern marriage as seen through the looking glass of one couple's long night's journey into day.

Obie Award winner Marvel's Broadway credits include Top Girls, Seascape, An American Daughter, Taking Sides and The Seagull. Off-Broadway credits include Almost an Evening, Dark Matters, Hedda Gabler, A Streetcar Named Desire, Shopping and Fucking, Therese Raquin, Misalliance and King Lear. Her numerous regional appearances include McCarter, Guthrie, and the American Repertory Theatres and the Stratford Theatre Festival. Film and television credits count Pretty Bird, Burn After Reading, A Dog Year, The District, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Homicide.

Fifty Words opens the season at MCC, and will be followed by Neil LaBute's The Break of Noon January 14 to February 28, 2009 and Stephin Merritt and David Greenspan's new musical Coraline May 6 to June 20, 2009.