Photo Coverage: LA BETE Opening Night Curtain Call!

The first major revival of David Hirson's Olivier Award-winning comedy LA BÊTE starring Tony and Olivier Award winner Mark Rylance, Tony and Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce, and BAFTA Award winner (and star of "Absolutely Fabulous") Joanna Lumley began previews at Broadway's Music Box Theatre (239 West 45th Street) on September 23, 2010. This new production, helmed by acclaimed director Matthew Warchus (God of Carnage, Boeing-Boeing, The Norman Conquests), opened last night, October 14. This immediately follows a limited summer engagement at the Comedy Theatre in London's West End from June 26-September 4, 2010 with opening night of July 7. 

Joining Rylance, Pierce, and Lumley in both London and New York are Stephen Ouimette, Lisa Joyce, Greta Lee, Robert Lonsdale, Michael Milligan, Liza Sadovy, and Sally Wingert.

American playwright David Hirson's rollicking 1991 play, LA BÊTE, is a comic tour de force about Elomire (Pierce), a high-minded classical dramatist who loves only the theater, and Valere (Rylance), a low-brow street clown who loves only himself. When the fickle princess (Lumley) decides she's grown weary of Elomire's royal theatre troupe, he and Valere are left fighting for survival as art squares off with ego in a literary showdown for the ages.

For more information, visit www.labetetheplay.com.

Photos by Walter McBride / Retna Ltd.