Five lower-priced previews are scheduled January 4 through 9. A.C.T.'s production is made possible in part by support from Executive Producers Jean and James E. Douglas, Jr. and Frannie and Mort Fleishhacker; Producers Jack and Susan Cortis, Jonathan Kitchen and Nina Hatvany, and Sally and Toby Rosenblatt; Company Sponsors Priscilla and Keith Geeslin, Burt and Deedee McMurtry, Jeff and Laurie Ubben, and ValueAct Capital; and Corporate Sponsor
Mellon.

One of the most successful writers of the 20th century, Maugham earned early fame with a series of wildly popular plays that focused on strong, articulate female characters whose actions expose the double standards that exist between the sexes. Maugham has been dubbed "the bridge between Wilde and Wilder," due to his work's scintillating combination of dazzling word play and wickedly keen social observations. The Circle is A.C.T.'s first Maugham work since The Constant Wife in the 2002-03 season, one of the most critically acclaimed and best-selling productions in the company's history.

At A.C.T., The Circle will be staged by Tony Award nominee Mark Lamos, whose last production with A.C.T. was the stirring and erotic reimagining of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. "I am thrilled to return to A.C.T. and take a crack at one of the great comedic masterpieces of 20th-century theater," says Lamos. "The observations made about the sexes and the nature of relationships in The Circle are as fresh and as funny today as they were when Maugham was alive. Our challenge as a company is to find the fire and passion within these wonderfully amusing characters and to let Maugham's trademark wit work its own wonders."

First produced in 1921 and in 1998 named among the 100 most significant plays of the 20th century in a National Theatre poll, The Circle captures the poise of high society in the 1920s. Thirty years before, the fresh-faced and vivacious Lady Kitty abandoned both her politician husband and her young son Arnold for a scandalous life with her husband's best friend, Lord Porteous. Three decades later, the still vivacious though not as fresh-faced Kitty returns to confront the family she long-ago abandoned, and a new scandal when a charming houseguest threatens to take Arnold's own wife, Elizabeth, from him. Will the new couple be influenced by Kitty's wicked example? Or will practicality trump passion once and for all?

Heading the cast of The Circle as Lady Kitty is Broadway veteran Kathleen Widdoes. Last seen at A.C.T. alongside Marco Barricelli in Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo, Widdoes's Broadway credits include After the Ball, Hamlet, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Much Ado about Nothing (Tony Award nomination for best actress), among others. This year Widdoes has appeared as Emma Snyder in the soap opera "As the World Turns." Bay Area favorite Ken Ruta portrays Kitty's insufferable second husband, Lord Porteous. A 40-year veteran of Bay Area stages, Ruta has recently been seen at A.C.T. in The Voysey Inheritance and A Christmas Carol.

James Waterston makes his A.C.T. debut as Kitty's son, Arnold. Best know to audiences as Pitts in the film Dead Poets Society, Waterston has regularly been seen regionally in productions at The Old Globe, the Huntington Theatre Company, and Pittsburg Public Theater and has had recurring roles on the television shows "E.R." and "Diagnosis Murder." A.C.T. core company actor Allison Jean White portrays Arnold's fiancée Elizabeth. White recently appeared in A.C.T.'s production of Travesties and will be seen later this season in A.C.T.'s production of The Imaginary Invalid. Having appeared at A.C.T. in revivals of Bill Ball's Tiny Alice and The Three Sisters, Phillip Kerr portrays Kitty's estranged former husband Clive. Kerr's Broadway credits include Macbeth, Otherwise Engaged (directed by Harold Pinter), A Flea in Her Ear, and Hamlet opposite Dame Judith Anderson.

Craig W. Marker joins Waterston in making his A.C.T. debut. Portraying Elizabeth's lover, Teddie, in The Circle, Marker has recently been seen in the Theatreworks production of Brooklyn Boy and in Iphigenia in Aulis and The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow at San Jose Repertory Theatre. Regularly seen in productions from the Shotgun Players, Trish Mulholland portrays houseguest Mrs. Anna Shenstone. A veteran character featured in many A.C.T. productions, including Maugham's The Constant Wife, Tom Blair plays the butler.

The design team for The Circle includes Tony Award-winning set designer John Arnone, costume designer Candice Donnelly, lighting designer York Kennedy, and sound designer Jeff Mockus.

Artistic director of Hartford Stage from 1980 to 1997, Mark Lamos includes among his Broadway directing credits Our Country's Good (for which he was nominated for a Tony Award), The Deep Blue Sea, and The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm. Off Broadway, his credits include Jon Robin Baitz's The End of the Day, Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, Love's Fire, Lee Blessing's Thief River, and Lincoln Center Theater's Measure for Measure. Lamos has directed new plays and adaptations by Simon Gray, Tony Kushner, Lanford Wilson, Constance Congdon, Tom Stoppard, and many others. Regionally, his work has been seen at McCarter Theatre Center, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, the Guthrie Theater, Arizona Theatre Company, California Shakespearean Theater, The Acting Company, American Conservatory Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Lamos recently directed Alfred Uhry's Edgardo Mine at the Guthrie
Theatre.

Trained as a surgeon, and best known today as a novelist (Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge, and The Moon and Sixpence), W. Somerset Maugham, in fact, realized his earliest success as the author of a string of exceedingly entertaining and well-crafted plays, which include The Letter, Our Betters, Lady Frederick, The Constant Wife, and his most often-revived comedy, The Circle. In the 1908-09 theater season, Maugham had four first-run plays on the boards simultaneously in London (setting a West End record), while another two revivals played in New York, and by the 1930s he had become the highest paid author in the world. In his most popular works, Maugham set his satirical sights on the marital mores and mishaps of the upper classes, exploring with an unblinking eye just how far the reality of marriage often strays from the conventional ideal of conjugal bliss.

By www.act-sf.org