Keir Dullea to Star Off-Broadway in New Play Strings

Keir Dullea, perhaps best known for his work in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, will star in Carole Bugge's new play Strings, wihch will begin previews on December 13th, open on December 16th and run through January 6th at the 78th Street Theatre Lab (236 W. 78th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam).

Presented by The Open Book, Strings is "a new play of elegant, cutting-edge physics thoroughly entangled with deeply familiar-and unruly-human pain, passion, and desire."  Marvin Kaye will direct the production, which will also feature Tony-nominee Mia Dillon (Crimes of the Heart, The Miser, Our Town) and Warren Kelley, as well as Drew Dix, Kurt Elftmann and Andrea Gallo.

"On a train en route to London to attend the play Copenhagen, two English physicists, upper-class cosmologist George and brilliant working-class String theorist Rory, along with George's American cosmologist wife June, pursue their complex ideas about physics-a conversation that barely masks just-below-the-surface deceit and lies. Old Cambridge University classmates George and Rory dig at one another, with June caught in the middle. In the process they also unwittingly excavate their scars of jealousy, loss and grief, finally exposing their deepest longings for meaning in a questionably trustworthy universe.  This train ride firmly intertwines cool science with the heat of emotional desire and longing.  Strings is loosely based on the real-life train ride event in which American physicists Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt and English physicist Neil Turok tweaked the Big Bang theory-and changed it forever," state press materials.

Dullea played Commander Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick's epic 2001: A Spacy Odyssey. He has starred in twenty-four motion pictures, winning a Golden Globe Award for his role as the emotionally disturbed young protagonist in Frank Perry's David & Lisa.  Other credits include Madame X, The Hoodlum Priest, Bunny Lake is Missing and The Fox.  He made his Broadway debut in Ira Levin's Dr. Cook's Garden, and also appeared in Butterlies are Free, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, P.S., Your Cat is Dead and Doubles, as well as Bus Stop in London opposite Lee Remick.  

Tickets are $18.00; $10 for students and seniors.  TDF accepted.  For reservations, please call  212-362-0329.