Nathan Lane to Star on Bway in David Mamet's November

According to The New York Times, Tony Award-winner Nathan Lane will take on the role of President Charles Smith in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet's previously announced November, a new play about a presidential election. 

Variety previously reported that the play will open in mid-January of 2008 in a Shubert-owned theatre to be determined. November will be helmed by Joe Mantello (Blackbird, Wicked, Assassins), who also directed the revival of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross in 2005.  It will be produced by Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel (Spring Awakening), who also brought Glengarry Glen Ross to the stage, with set design by Tony Award-winner Scott Pask (The Pillowman, The Coast of Utopia).  No casting has been announced.

A new Mamet play has not been seen on Broadway since 1997's The Old Neighborhood.  November is "set a few days before the election.  The five-character play follows the misadventures of a day in the life of U.S. president Charles Smith."

Lane, most recently on Broadway in Butley, is a two-time Tony winner--for The Producers in 2001, and for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1996. Other Broadway credits include The Odd Couple, The Frogs, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Guys and Dolls, Wind in the Willows, Merlin and Present Laughter. He has been seen on screen in Nicholas Nickelby, the Stuart Little films, Love's Labour's Lost, The Birdcage, Jeffrey and more; he also leant his voice to The Lion King.

Mamet, known for his staccato dialogue and morally flawed characters, is a Pulitzer Prize-winner for Glengarry Glen Ross.  His other plays include Boston Marriage, Romance, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Oleanna, The Woods and The Crytogram.  His adaptation of Harley Granville-Barker's The Voysey Inheritance was recently a hit for the Atlantic Theater Company.  He has also written screenplays for many films, including Edmond, Spartan, Heist, State and Main and The Winslow Boy, as well as screen adaptations for some of his plays.

Photo of Nathan Lane by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.