Off-Broadway follows Broadway's lead this fall with the late Horton Foote's The Orphans' Home Cycle. The nine-play marathon is currently on view at Hartford Stage under the direction of Michael Wilson. It will transfer to New York's Signature Theatre Company—which has done very well by Mr. Foote over the years—beginning Nov. 5.

Foote was a prolific man, and the nine plays have been around for some time. The long story begins with a father's death in Foote's fictional, small, Texas town of Harrison at the turn of the century, an event that causes his son Horace Robedaux to take "an odyssey through the darkest corners of the heart as he learns to become a husband, father, and patriarch." The tale is based partly on the childhood of Foote's father and the courtship and marriage of his parents. Some of the plays, such as Lily Dale and The Widow Claire, have previously been seen in New York.

Keeping watch over her father's work is actress Hallie Foote, as well as her husband, Devon Abner, who both appear in the series, as well as other old Foote hands like Maggie Lacey and James DeMarse.

	Kenneth Lonergan
	photo by Aubrey Reuben

Another play that's a long time coming to New York is Kenneth Lonergan's The Starry Messenger, his first new work to be seen in New York since 2001's The Lobby Hero. Lonergan is a man who takes his time. (Witness the ten-year run-up to the still-unreleased, lawsuit-plagued "Margaret," the film follow-up to the writer's 2000 hit "You Can Count on Me.") The play, starring Lonergan pal Matthew Broderick, was first announced by Variety in March 2006 as a Broadway prospect for April 2007. That production, however, never happened. The play was then named as part of the 2006-2007 season at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, but it was later scratched from the line-up due to "unforeseen scheduling delays with playwright/director Kenneth Lonergan's current film." (That would be "Margaret.") It was then scheduled for Manhattan Theatre Club's 2007-08 season, but was canceled in November 2007 due to "scheduling conflicts." When it was finally rescheduled, it was with a different company, The New Group, which had produced Lonergan's This Is Our Youth many years back. Performances begin in October.

	Theresa Rebeck and Julie White
	photo by Aubrey Reuben

Just as Lonergan and Broderick have worked together successfully before, so have playwright Theresa Rebeck and actress Julie White, perhaps most notably on the solo play Bad Dates. They reteam on Oct. 9 at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre in The Understudy. As one might guess, it's a backstage drama about what takes place during the Broadway run of "a long-lost Kafka play." Kafka on Broadway? Well, it is a comedy.

David Mamet doesn't believe in letting his laptop cool down. While two his plays are running on Broadway this fall, he'll be ferrying two others—both one-acts, both new—to premiere at the Atlantic Theatre Company. Keep Your Pantheon is a "rousing farce that follows the fortunes and misfortunes of an acting troupe in ancient Rome." School is described as a "brief comic discourse on recycling, poster design and the transmission of information." Neil Pepe directs both. Performances began Sept. 9.

Some lavishly produced plays appear to be more about what the actors are wearing than what they are saying. Love, Loss, and What I Wore actually is a play about garments, based on Ilene Beckerman's book of the same name. Adapted by film scribes Nora and Delia Ephron, the work is advertised as "a play about clothes and the memory they trigger, featuring a rotating cast of stage and screen actors." Part of the first rotation, beginning Sept. 21 at the Westside Theater, are Samantha Bee, Tyne Daly, Katie Finneran, Natasha Lyonne and Rosie O'Donnell. Continued...