Laura Linney will play the prudish wife of Liam Neeson's John Proctor in the Broadway-bound production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, director Richard Eyre told Playbill On-Line July 30. Rehearsals begin on Jan. 7 for the David Richenthal-produced venture. Performances begin in February. No specific dates or theatre have been announced.

Linney has been a common fixture on the New York stage since first attracting attention as an aggressive German journalist in Donald Margulies' Sight Unseen. But her currency as an actress increased manyfold last year due to her many-faceted, Oscar-nominated performance as a single mom dealing with a wastrel brother in Kenneth Lonergan's film "You Can Count on Me." Linney's most recent stage turn was as Yelena in the Roundabout Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya on Broadway. She has also appeared on Broadway in Holiday and The Seagull (as Nina).

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News that David Richenthal, the producer who brought Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and The Price to Broadway in the past two years, was hoping to revive Miller's 1953 parable, The Crucible, for Broadway, first broke last October. The drama will play a 15-week limited run on Broadway in February 2002. Liam Neeson, last seen on Broadway in David Hare's Judas Kiss, will play John Proctor. British director Richard Eyre will direct.

Richenthal has become a one-man Miller industry in the past few years, backing Broadway revivals of Death of a Salesman (directed by Robert Falls) and The Price (directed by James Naughton). He is also behind a projected revival of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, which will bow at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in early 2001, with Robert Falls directing Brian Dennehy, and then move to Broadway.