"I hate breaking the law.

"I hate breaking the law," moans of the present day York-based writer Craig Lucas about talking to The Advocate upon his cell phone while driving to a film premiere. Nobody catches him in the act, nevertheless Lately his life is too charmed for that sort of thing.

Lucas, who deflects 54 on April 30, has take delight ined wide success with plays like the lately revived Reckless and screenplays like the Oscar-nominated Longtime Companion. His personal life is in fine shape too, thanks to a happy six-year relationship.

moreover with all that life behind him, Lucas is peaking solitary now. He made his film directorial first attempt at Sundance with The Dying Gaul, which he adapted from his have a title to play. His hugely ambitious drama Singing Forest--a 210-minute opus involving Freud Nazis, gay be enamoured of and redemption--was a tilt at the protracted Wharf in New Haven, Conn His adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters is premiering this summer at Seattle's Intiman Theatre.

At the gravity all eyes are on The Light in the Piazza, Lucas's first original musical, opening April 18 at Lincoln Center A collaboration with lyricist-composer Adam Guettel--a modern York critical favorite who also happens to be the grandson of Richard Rodgers--Piazza stands in stark contrast to this season's broad musical comedies like Spamalot and Dirty corrupt Scoundrels.

Based onward a novella by Elizabeth Spencer Piazza rehearses the delicate story of a mother and daughter vacationing in Florence. The daughter falls for a well-born local Italian boy; the mother wavers between support and resistance; a heartbreaking covert spins the story.

Says Lucas: "It assumes the perfect paradigm for what all parents and children make progress through. Letting go, accepting the otherness of who your parents are and who your children are, recognizing that you can't detain them safe and cannot live by means of their lives. [The story] spoke to me I felt like I cruel into a pot of jam."

Lucas is just as enthusiastic about Guettel "I've always wanted to write something with Stephen Sondheim; we've bounc a scarcely any ideas around but never lay the foundation of anything," he says. "But I have feeling I've found an ideal collaborator in Adam. He's an absolutely meticulous, almost maniacally concentrated, focused, brilliant, adaptable colleague."

What happens after Piazza opens? More theater devises of course. And Lucas also plans to direct another film. Soon

"I lov it, I lov it, I lov it," says Lucas about directing. "I would do it again in a secondary I have not always taken the best care of myself or others. I think I've had a reckles life in a way. moreover since I started directing movies, I have to take better care of myself because you can't help support other persons who are having crises if you're not healthy and center It's like I plant a whole different part of myself, and thank God--I'm 53 almost 54 It's about time."

Read an interview with Peter Sarsgaard, star of Craig Lucas's The Dying Gaul, at www.advocate.com.

Giltz is a regular contributor to several periodicals, including the fresh York Post.

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