Lumley & Hyde Pierce to Team Up in LA BETE for West End & Bway Run

The Daily Mail is reporting that actor David Hyde Pierce will team up with British actress and comic Joanna Lumley for a revival of David Hirson's comedy drama 'La Bete'. Joining the duo will be Mark Rylance, currently starring in Jerusalem at the Apollo.

The play is slated to begin its run in the Spring for a limited eight-to-ten week engagement London prior to transferring to New York in the fall.

'La Bete' is set in 17th century France and revolves around clownish conflict within a theatre troupe. 

David Hyde Pierce made his professional and Broadway debut in 1982 as the waiter in Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy, and his other Broadway credits include The Heidi Chronicles, Monty Python's Spamalot, Accent on Youth, and the Kander and Ebb/Rupert Holmes musical Curtains, for which he won the 2007 Tony Award. He created roles in the Off-Broadway and regional productions of Mark O'Donnell's That's it Folks!, Richard Greenberg's The Author's Voice and The Maderati, Harry Kondoleon's Zero Positive, Jules Feiffer's Elliot Loves, and Richard Alfieri's Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (with the great Uta Hagen).

In addition to his work in new plays, Mr. Pierce also appeared in Hamlet and Much Ado at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Holiday and Camille at the Long Wharf Theatre, The Seagull, Tartuffe, Cyrano, and Midsummer's Night's Dream at the Guthrie Theatre, and Peter Brook's production of The Cherry Orchard in New York, Moscow, Leningrad, and Tokyo. His film credits include Bright Lights, Big City; Crossing Delancey; Little Man Tate; Sleepless in Seattle; Wolf; Nixon; Isn't She Great; Wet, Hot, American Summer; Full Frontal; Down With Love, the recently completed The Perfect Host, and the animated films A Bug's Life, Osmosis Jones and Treasure Planet. His television credits include a short but happy stint on Norman Lear's political satire The Powers that Be, and a long but happy stint on Frasier, for which he received multiple Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards. He recently teamed with Victoria Clark and Rob Fisher in Night and Day: A Cole Porter Evening, which they performed for the Lincoln Center American Songbook Series and at the Ravinia Festival.

Joanna Lumley is best known to American audiences for playing the role of Patsy Stone in the hit comedy series 'Absolutely Fabulous'. She has appeared in various television series including 'The New Avengers', 'Sapphire and Steel' and 'Sensitive Skin'. 'La Bete' will mark Lumley's Broadway debut.