Issue #138: October 1, 2004

• 42nd Street will be closing in January after more than four years.  You can catch this Tony winning revival between now and then at the Ford Center.

• Brian O'Byrne and Cherry Jones will star in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt when it opens at the Manhattan Theater Club on November 22.

• You'll have a chance to see Tracey Ullman's new Broadway show on HBO before it hits the boards.  Tracey's Best Bits will be filmed late February at Los Angeles' Henry Fonda Theater.  HBO plans to air in the summer of 2005 then Ms. Ullman will open on Broadway at the end of that year.

• Director Des McAnuff leads Billy Crystal through his Broadway debut when he opens his play 700 Sundays at the Broadhurst Theater.  Previews begin November 12 with opening night scheduled for December 5.

• Based on the works of John Lennon, you can catch Lennon, before it hits the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway next summer, when it opens on the west coast at San Francisco's Orpheum Theater April 5 to May 7 then crosses the country to Boston's Colonial Theater from May 24 to June 18.

• Tovah Feldshuh takes her one-woman Broadway play Golda's Balcony to the Wadsworth Theater in Los Angeles in early February.

• Les Miserables reached another landmark in August when it wrapped the longest run for a musical in Mexico.  The production began in November 2002 and played more than 700 performances to more than 800,000 people.  The musical that just keeps on giving.

• Fred Ebb, half of the legendary duo Kander and Ebb, died of a heart attack on September 11 at the age of 76.  For more than forty years this team wrote some of the most memorable Broadway musicals including Cabaret, Chicago, Woman of the Year, Zorba and Kiss of the Spider Woman.  Many of the musicals were written with specific leading ladies in mind including Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Liza Minnelli and Lauren Bacall.  It was for Minnelli the team wrote the song "New York, New York" for the 1977 Martin Scorsese film of the same name.  I remember in late 1997 working with Broadway legend Chita Rivera on her one-woman show Chita, And All That Jazz and having Mr. Ebb in rehearsals with us.  It was humbling to be in the presence of such a gifted writer and all in the room knew how lucky we were to share the time we had with him.  His "razzle dazzle" will live on although all will miss him.