Matthew Broderick headed to Old Globe

The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego on Monday announced its 2006-07 season, which will include the pre-Broadway staging of a new play by Kenneth Lonergan, starring Matthew Broderick.

The regional theater has, according to executive director Louis Spisto, “sent 18 productions to Broadway” -- that is, if you include “The Times They Are A-Changin,’ ” Twyla Tharp’s dance-concert staging of Bob Dylan’s songs, which is Broadway-bound after opening to mixed reviews in February.

The Globe hopes to raise the total to 19 with the world premiere of Lonergan’s “The Starry Messenger.” The play, which opens Jan. 13, will also be directed by the playwright.

Spisto said the production became the season’s centerpiece due to a long-standing working relationship between the Old Globe’s resident artistic director Jerry Patch and Lonergan, whose other works include “Lobby Hero” and “This Is Our Youth” as well as the film “You Can Count on Me.”

“We’re thrilled about it -- obviously it’s not every day you get to have Matthew Broderick on your stage,” Spisto said Monday. “It’s equally exciting to have the chance to work with Lonergan and have him here as both a director and a playwright.”

The Globe is presenting two other world premieres: Greg Kotis’ “Pig Farm” (Sept. 28 to Oct. 29), in collaboration with New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company, and Itamar Moses’ “The Four of Us” (Feb. 8 to March 11). Rounding out the season are Amy Freed’s “Restoration Comedy” (March 22 to April 22); Annie Weisman’s “Hold Please” (April 6 to May 6) and August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running (May 10 to June 10, 2007).

The season will also include the one-man show “George Gershwin Alone,” starring pianist Hershey Felder as the composer (Sept. 9 to Oct. 22).

In the upcoming season, the theater will introduce its new “Classics Up Close” series with a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (May 19 to June 24, 2007), the first of five annual stagings of American plays to be mounted in the 225-seat Cassius Carter Centre Stage.

“This is a way to do some of the work that was originally intended for smaller spaces,” Spisto said. “Certainly with ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ it will be a very intense experience of being in the same room with George and Martha.”