Issue #77: November 15, 2001

• Billy Crudup (Almost Famous) will return to the stage, where he received his training, early next year when a revival of The Elephant Man hits the boards. Date and theatre have not yet been confirmed.

• The Rocky Horror Show is losing its narrator, Dick Cavett, and gaining some of the entertainment world’s most colourful characters. Over the next few months you will see the Jerry Springer, Sally Jessy Raphael, Penn & Teller, Gilbert Gottfried and Robin Leach take on verbal sparring with audience members, bouts of which most have had some experience.

• The Broadway bound production of The Graduate kicks off in Baltimore before making its way to The Canon Theatre in Toronto for a January 23 opening. Kathleen Turner will reprise her seductive Mrs. Robinson role that had audience eyes popping when she shed her clothes in her London debut last season. The other stars of the production are Alicia Silverstone (Clueless) and Jason Biggs (American Pie). The Broadway engagement previews on March 15 with an opening night date of April 4.

• A Broadway-bound revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical Into the Woods opens at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre on February 10. In the role that Bernadette Peters originated will be Vanessa L. Williams. Ms. Williams was last on Broadway seven years ago when she took over the lead in Kiss of the Spider Woman from Chita Rivera.

• Speaking of The Graduate, the show is still going strong with Linda Evans (Sue Ellen Ewing of Dallas fame) in the coveted part of Mrs. Robinson. Ms. Evans sheds her laundry nightly until early February.

• It looks as though Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal) is being wooed back to the stage, this time in London, during the television show’s hiatus next summer. The production planned is a revival of the 1939 classic, The Philadelphia Story. No confirmation on this yet.

• The acclaimed revival of Private Lives currently at the Albery Theatre will likely extend into January. Plans are in the works to bring the production to Broadway in late spring or early fall with leads Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan.

• The 2002 theatre season down under is looking star filled with their own local talent. Model Elle Macpherson will step into the role made famous by fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman when David Hare’s production of The Blue Room opens February 6 at Sydney’s Theatre Royal. Geoffrey Rush and wife Jane Menelaus will star in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of Yasmina Reza’s Life x 3. Also part of the Melbourne Theatre Company season will be Guy Pearce in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, and Rachel Griffiths stars in David Auburn’s Proof.

• Reports indicate that business is picking up on Broadway, which is good news for theatres everywhere. If you have a chance to see a play or musical either in your city or on a trip, do it. Let’s help the industry survive and prosper—we all need a little theatre in our lives.