Frasier Team Hits Barbican for Dinner

British-born Frasier star John Mahoney will make his London stage debut next month in the Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of The Man Who Came To Dinner. Mahoney is joined by Frasier producer and director James Burrows and actress Harriet Harris who plays Frasier's agent in the popular TV series. The production will run at the Barbican Theatre for 12 performances only from 16 to 25 July 1998.

Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came To Dinner is a classic 1939 American comedy of errors which tells the tale of a dinner guest who wouldn't leave. When the irascible Sheridan Whiteside (played by Mahoney), a famous radio star and critic, slips and injures his hip outside the Stanley home, the family has to put him up - and put up with him - over Christmas. Whiteside completely takes over the house for his broadcasts, encourages the Stanley kids to defy their parents, attracts assorted eccentric friends and receives tons of fan mail and strange gifts.

Mahoney is an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, which last performed on the London stage nine years ago with Frank Galati s adaptation of John Steinbeck s The Grapes of Wrath.

Mahoney was born in Blackpool into an Irish family and raised in Manchester. At the age of 19, he emigrated to the States, joined the Army and consciously tried to lose his British accent. After a variety of careers, at 37, he decided to become an actor. He enrolled in classes at Chicago's St Nicholas Theatre where he played opposite John Malkovich who invited him to join Steppenwolf. He has since appeared in over 20 Steppenwolf productions including Orphans (for which he received both the Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk nomination), Of Mice and Men, Born Yesterday, Death and the Maiden and most recently, 1996's Supply in Combat. Mahoney's numerous films include The American President, Barton Fink, Reality Bites, In the Line of Fire and The Hudsucker Proxy. He is now best known for his portrayal of father Martin Crane in Frasier.

James Burrows, son of writer/director Abe Burrows, is best known in US television as a producer and director of such long-running successes as Frasier, Cheers and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He has won nine Emmy s, including five for directing.

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company was founded in 1976 under the leadership of Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney and Jeff Parry. It has become a performing arts institution internationally renowned for its ensemble approach.

This production of The Man Who Came To Dinner is part of the Barbican Centre s 22-week international theatre event, Bite:98, running from May to October. It also forms part of Inventing America, the Barbican's year-long celebration of American culture.

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