Peter Michael Goetz and Roma Downey to Star in A Picasso at Geffen

Peter Michael Goetz will play Pablo Picasso and Roma Downey will play Miss Fischer in the upcoming Geffen Playhouse production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s A Picasso, to be directed by Gilbert Cates. The show will run February 4-March 25 and will open officially on February 11 at the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, the Geffen’s new, 117-seat second stage venue.

The play is set in 1941 in an underground vault, where the great cubist artist Picasso encounters a beautiful art critic-turned Gestapo interrogator during the German occupation of Paris. Miss Fischer attempts to have Picasso authenticate three of his paintings amidst the vault full of artwork confiscated by the Nazis.

Goetz’s Broadway credits include Macbeth, Sex and Longing, The Queen and the Rebels, Beyond Therapy, Ned and Jack, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Government Inspector, and The Last Night of Ballyhoo (which he also performed in Los Angeles). He has been seen in such films as Father of the Bride, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, The World According to Garp, and Prince of the City, and he has been a regular on the TV series The Cavenaughs, Aftermash, Room for Two, and The Faculty.

Downey is best known for her starring role in TV’s Touched By an Angel. She appeared on Broadway in The Circle (opposite Rex Harrison), Off-Broadway in Ghosts, Love’s Labours Lost, Tamara and Arms and the Man, and in a national tour of the Abbey Theater production of The Playboy of the Western World.

Cates is producing director of the Geffen Playhouse. Among his film and television credits are I Never Sang for My Father, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams To All My Friends on Shore, The Affair, After the Fall, and A Death in the Family, and he has received 17 Emmy Awards and 84 nominations for his work as producer of the annual Academy Awards show telecasts.

Hatcher is the author of such plays as Three Viewings, Scotland Road, Neddy, Korczak’s Children, Mercy of a Storm, Work Song, and Lucky Duck. Additionally, he wrote the screenplays for Casanova, Secretary, Boys Don’t Cry, and Stage Beauty (adapted from his play Compleat Female Stage Beauty).