Meryl Streep for Marie Curie role in new play

Meryl Streep is to play scientist Marie Curie in a special reading of Alan Alda's new stage production, it has been announced.

Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie is to premiere on June 1 at Lincoln Centre's Alice Tully Hall in New York City as part of the kick-off to the World Science Festival.

Aside from starring Streep as the pioneer of radioactive study, Alda's play also features Amy Adams, Allison Janney, David Morse and Liev Schreiber in supporting roles.

Directing Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie will be Bob Balaban, the noted actor who has appeared in numerous Broadway productions including Speed-the-Plow and Some of My Best Friends.

An official press statements touts that the play "soars with flights of intellectual adventure grounded in the tumultuous and all too human story of a brilliant woman's determination to experience the passion she has both for knowledge and for love".

Streep began her acting career on the stage and earned a Tony Award nomination in 1976 for her performance in A Memory of Two Mondays / 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.

She will next star with Jim Broadbent and Richard E. Grant in the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, which is scheduled to be released next year.

> Jim Broadbent praises Streep as Thatcher