Invisible rabbit lodges at Laguna Playhouse

Laguna Playhouse will open its 2003-04 season by launching a tour of “Harvey,” Mary Chase’s comedy about a man and an invisible rabbit.

The leading role, associated with the film’s James Stewart, has not been cast, but Charles Durning will play the proprietor of an asylum in the staging by Charles Nelson Reilly. Although the only tour stop set so far is in Boston, the goal of the playhouse-produced tour is a transfer to Broadway by producer Don Gregory, who says he has raised $1.1 million out of $1.5 million for the move. The Laguna dates are July 12 to Aug. 31.

“The Laramie Project” (Sept. 13 to Oct. 12), about the Matthew Shepard murder in Wyoming, will be directed by Nick DeGruccio, who also staged it last year at Burbank’s Colony Theatre.

Set in California during the Depression, Lonnie Carter’s “The Romance of Magno Rubio” (Nov. 8 to Dec. 7) will be staged by Loy Arcenas, who also directed the play’s premiere last fall at Ma-Yi Theatre Company in New York. The romantic comedy is about a Filipino farmer.

Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years” (Jan. 3, 2004 to Feb. 1) relates a young couple’s story through song, with the man starting at the beginning of their relationship while the woman works backward from the end. This will be the California premiere of a show that ran off-Broadway a year ago.

Playhouse artistic director Andrew Barnicle will stage a revival of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1926 comedy “The Constant Wife” (Feb. 14 to March 14).

The U.S. premiere of Michael Weller’s “What the Night Is For” (April 3 to May 2, 2004), about a meeting between former lovers, will be directed by playhouse executive director Richard Stein. It premiered last fall in London.

A seventh play will be announced later.