Me, Myself & I: Edward Albee NY premiere

Playwrights Horizons present the New York premiere of Edward Albbe's comedy, Me, Myself & I, a new play by the three-time Pulitzer Prize and three-time Tony Award winner. The production opens the theater company's 40th Anniversary Season, in which Albee will be making his Playwrights Horizons debut. The comedy is Albee's 30th play.

Directed by Tony Award nominee, Obie Award winner and McCarter Theatre Center Artistic Director Emily Mann, the production opens at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage on 12 Sep 2010, following previews from 24 Aug, for a limited run through to 10 Oct 2010.

In Edward Albee's Me, Myself & I, Mother can't tell her identical twins apart. But when Otto announces his brother doesn't exist, the household descends into chaos.

"We are proud to be celebrating our 40th Anniversary," said Artistic Director Tim Sanford. "As a writers' theater, it feels unspeakably lucky and fitting to launch this milestone season with this giddily entertaining and challenging play by arguably our pre-eminent living playwright."

The cast of the New York premiere will feature Tony Award winner Elizabeth Ashley (Mother), Brian Murray (Dr), Zachary Booth (OTTO), Natalia Payne (Maureen), Stephen Payne (The Charioteer) and Preston Sadleir (otto). Murray will reprise his acclaimed performance from the McCarter production, as will Payne.

The production will feature scenic design by Thomas Lynch, costume design by Jennifer von Mayrhauser, lighting design by Kenneth Posner and sound design by Darron L West.

Edward Albee's Me, Myself & I was commissioned by and had its World Premiere at McCarter Theatre Center, opening on 18 Jan 2008 and playing a limited engagement through to 17 Feb 2008.

Ben Brantley in The New York Times hailed the play as, "A laugh-out-loud farce in which the meanings of everyday words split and multiply like amoebas on steroids. Directed by Emily Mann and engagingly acted by a cast that includes the invaluable Albee veteran Brian Murray, it's in the tradition of Mr. Albee's mid- and late- career works like 'The Marriage Play' and 'The Play About the Baby': fragmented philosophical vaudevilles that turn the most fundamental questions of identity into verbal soft-shoes. It also harks back to his early exercises in absurdism (including the one-acters 'The Sandbox' and 'The American Dream),' coal-black comedies from a time when brash young writers reveled in toppling theatrical traditions."

Albee makes his Playwrights Horizons debut with this production. Mann previously worked with Playwrights Horizons directing 'Miss Witherspoon' (2005). Both Ashley and Murray are also returning to the theater company, where she appeared in 'When She Danced' (1990) and he appeared in both 'The Butterfly Collection' (2000) and 'Mud, River, Stone' (1997).