Kushner play due at the Taper?

Both the New York Times and the Hartford Courant have reported within the last few weeks that playwright Tony Kushner’s next play will be for actor Stephen Spinella, who leaped to stardom and won two Tony Awards for his performances in the two parts of Kushner’s stage drama “Angels in America” (“Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” and “Angels in America: Perestroika”).

Both papers also reported that the new play -- bearing the marquee-busting title “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures” -- would be done in spring 2005 at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum, where “Angels” premiered in its entirety in 1992 with Spinella in the cast.

A 2005 production would be part of artistic director Gordon Davidson’s farewell season with the Taper. It would also represent another step in a long association involving Kushner, Davidson and the Taper, which presented Kushner’s “Homebody/Kabul” last fall.

But a Taper spokesman said last week that the theater’s 2004-05 season had not yet been set. Kushner was vacationing and could not be reached for comment, but his assistant, Antonia Lasky, seemed surprised by questions about the collaboration, saying: “I don’t know anything about it. That’s all I can say.” The may-be star of the may-be show, Spinella, did not return a call for comment.

-- Diane Haithman