Al Pacino to return to Broadway in a Mamet play

NEW YORK (AP) — Al Pacino will return to Broadway next year in a new play by David Mamet written with the Oscar-winner expressly in mind.

Producers said Thursday that Pacino will star in “China Doll” directed by Pam MacKinnon starting in October 2015. Additional casting is to be announced later. Pacino will play a wealthy man about to retire and marry a younger woman when his plans are shaken by a phone call.

“I wrote it for Al,” the playwright said in a statement.

Pacino was last seen on Broadway in 2012 in the role of Shelly Levene in a revival of Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Mamet’s last new play on Broadway was the disappointing “The Anarchist” co-starring Debra Winger and Patti LuPone.

Pacino, who starred as mob leader Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” movies, won a best-actor Oscar for 1992’s “Scent of a Woman.” He has two Tonys, as featured actor in “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?” in 1969 and for lead actor in “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel” in 1977.

The new play marks the fourth time Pacino and Mamet have worked together. They also paired up on a Phil Spector biopic for HBO. Pacino played the famed music producer who was jailed after the slaying of a model. It was written and directed by Mamet.

Pacino, who played Shylock in a 2011 revival of “The Merchant of Venice,” earning a Tony nomination, said in a statement: “The opportunity to create a new character in the David Mamet canon was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

The producers of the new work are Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel and Steve Traxler. “China Doll” marks the eighth Mamet show they’ve produced.