Full Casting and Creative Team Announced for Starry L.A. Cherry Orchard

Full casting is now complete for the star-packed L.A. production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.  A Center Theatre Group production, it will at run at the Mark Taper Forum (135 North Grand Ave.) from February 2nd through March 29th, 2006.

Previously-announced stars Alfred Molina (Fiddler on the Roof, Art, films such as Spider Man 2), Annette Bening (Coastal Disturbances, films such as Being Julia), Sarah Paulson (Colder Than Here, The Glass Menagerie) and Jason Butler Harner (The Ruby Sunrise) will be Lothaire Bluteau, Peter Cambor, Jennifer Dundas, Lyle Kanouse, Alan Mandell, Rebecca Mozo, Raphael Sbarge and Frances Fisher, who has appeared in numerous plays (such as Arthur Miller's Finishing the Picture at The Goodman Theatre) as well as in films such as Titanic, Unforgiven, L.A. Story and House of Sand and Fog.

Directed by Sean Mathias (The Elephant Man), the staging will feature Bening as Madame Ranevskaya, "the head of a once wealthy and honored Russian family about to lose their ancestral estate, including a vast and beautiful cherry orchard. As spring gives way to summer and sentiment threatens reason, the family must find their footing in a Russia turned upside down. On the brink of losing the beloved orchard, time is a luxury they no longer can afford," according to press notes. The play will also star Molina as Lopakhin, Paulson as Varya and Butler Harner as Trofimov.

The show's creative team is now set as well; it will comprise set designer Alexander Dodge, Tony Award-winning costume-designer Catherine Zuber (The Light in the Piazza), lighting designer James F. Ingalls and sound designer Jon Gottlieb.

The Mark Taper Forum is currently hosting a production of Robert Schenkkan's Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates; the show runs through January 22nd, 2006.