Kathleen Chalfant Joins MCC's 'Family Week'

Variety is reporting that Tony-nominated actress Kathleen Chalfant has joined the MCC's upcoming production of "Family Week" by Beth Henley, which will run frmo Apr 7-May 23, 2010 and will be directed by Jonathan Demme.

A year after the death of her son, Claire checks into a recovery center in the desert, searching for a way to cope. When her mother, daughter and sister arrive to participate in "family week," long-dormant traumas collide with recent tragedies in surprisingly comical, shocking and deeply moving ways. United in this family struggle, the women rage and reach out in an effort to reconcile their love with the way things are. Making his theatrical debut, Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) collaborates with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) on a new version of this bitterly funny play. Rosemarie Dewitt (Rachel Getting Married) will join the cast of four, TBA.

Kathleen Chalfant is a Tony Award-nominated and Obie and Drama Desk Award-winning American actress who came to prominence for her role in Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. As Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson's play Wit for she received the Outer Critics, Drama Desk, Obie and Lucille Lortel awards. During her work with Wit, she incorporated her experiences dealing with the concurrent terminal cancer of her brother Alan Palmer. In addition, she shaved her head for the role. For her 2003 performance in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, Chalfant won a second Obie award. This year she was in Tony Gilroy's Duplicity, had a recurring role on the FX series Rescue Me and can be seen in the new NBC series Mercy this fall.

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski