Philadelphia Theatre Company serves playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's latest work, A Picasso, in a reading directed by John Tillinger, Nov. 11 in the City of Brotherly Love.

One half of the two-actor cast is Laila Robbins, with the other actor yet to be cast. The new work that "takes place at the height of the German occupation of France when Pablo Picasso is brought into Gestapo headquarters in Paris for an interrogation by a mysterious woman named Miss Fischer." She "wants Picasso to authenticate three paintings, each assumed to be a Picasso." The work is billed as "a cat-and-mouse mystery about art, sex, death and the lure of power."

The reading is part of PTC's STAGES Festival of new play readings, which began Oct. 21. The plays are read with an eye toward offering a forum for the development of new works, but also for possible future production at Philadelphia Theatre Company, now in its 27th season.

Admission to the reading is free, although reservations are recommended. For information, call (215) 985-1400, ext. 110.

— By Kenneth Jones