Mason, Dreyfuss ink for 'Prisoner'

Thesps to star in Simon-penned West End legiter

By CLAUDE BRODESSER

NEW YORK -- Twenty-one years after Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason co-starred in the Neil Simon-penned pic "The Goodbye Girl," they've inked deals to topline a West End stage production of the same author's "The Prisoner of Second Avenue."

"Prisoner," the 1971 play about what happens to a marriage when the white-collar husband loses his job, will be produced by Emanuel Azenberg and Duncan Weldon. No helmer is attached.

Mason and Dreyfuss reunited onstage last summer in Jon Robin Baitz and Terrence McNally's play "House," which ran at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. The new production arose from a reading of "Prisoner" that Dreyfuss and Mason gave for a select group of Roundabout Theater Co. subscribers, which Azenberg attended.

The play will tour the U.K. for five weeks and then settle into London's Haymarket Theater for 20 weeks following a mid-March opening. Rehearsals begin in January.

The deal for the production was brokered by Johnnie Planco, senior veepee at the William Morris Agency, who reps Mason and Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss is managed by Keith Addis at Industry Entertainment. Mason is managed by Michael Black of Michael Black Management.