At the beginning of their season, the Geffen Playhouse was hyping its trio of well known female stars who would be appearing in upcoming plays.

So Christine Lahti just opened in Wendy Wasserstein's "Third."

Laurie Metcalf is gearing up for Jane Anderson's "Quality of Life" set to open June 10

Annette Bening? Gone!

Ms Bening (AKA Mrs Warren Beatty) has announced that due to personal reasons, she will be unable to appear in Joanna Murray-Smith's play "Female of the Species." which was supposed to go up in February.

Now stars dropping out of plays is not unusual in this town, and it's often for the same reason that movie stars don't often act in plays in the first place: aka ka-ching! My guess -- based on nothing other than intuition -- is that Bening's "personal reasons" involve a larger paycheck for a film role.

No word yet as to whether the entire production will be scrapped as well. Which is what happened over at the Falcon Theatre where the departure of Carol Burnett from Charles Grodin's play "How Have You Been Feeling Lately" has caused Grodin's play to be canceled right along with it.