News

Marian Seldes, the Tony Award-winning star of A Delicate Balance who was a teacher of Kevin Kline and Robin Williams, a muse to playwright Edward Albee and a Guinness Book of World Records holder for most consecutive performances, died Monday at age 86. She died peacefully at her home after an extended illness, her brother Timothy Seldes said. "It is with deep sadness that I share the news that my dear sister Marian Seldes has died," he said in a statement. "She was an extraordinary woman whose great love of the theater, teaching and acting was surpassed only by her deep love for her family.

Mercedes Ruehl is returning to Broadway after a seven-year absence, starring in Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Richard Greenberg's The American Plan, a 1990 play set in a 1960s Catskills resort. Ruehl plays Eva Adler, a highly intelligent German woman who's obsessively involved with her emotionally unstable daughter (Lily Rabe). Eva isn't easy to play, and that's why Ruehl likes her. The character is a far cry from Stevie, the stunned, enraged, belittled wife in Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, Ruehl's last show on Broadway. She's even further removed from the sweet, mentally limited Bella in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers, for which Ruehl won a Tony Award. In playing Eva, Ruehl finds herself influenced by Irene Worth, who portrayed Bella's mother -- a figure not unlike Eva. "There are certain inflections, and the way I hold my mouth," she says in describing the similarities.