Issue #173: June 15, 2006

• Broadway’s favourite funny man, Nathan Lane, returns to the stage in Butley which is scheduled to open at the Booth Theater on October 25.

• That long drink of water, Sigourney Weaver, returns to the stage for the world premiere of A.R. Gurney’s Crazy Mary in May at Playwrights Horizons.

• The new musical High Fidelity starring Will Chase will do its out of town try-out in Boston in September before it heads to Broadway for a fall opening.

• Phantom – The Las Vegas Spectacular opens on June 24 and hopes to go where many other Broadway musicals have failed to go….to boffo box office.  Vegas has seen Hairspray, Avenue Q and We Shall Rock You all leave town before putting in 12 months.  The production moves into the Venetian where a $40 million Phantom Theater has just been completed.   To ensure the 95 minute spectacle will deliver audiences the producers brought the creator Andrew Lloyd Webber and original director Hal Prince in to stage the Vegas version.

• Sir Ian McKellen has been busy on the big screen lately with film roles in the recent X Men incarnation and the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code.  Look for him to return to the stage in March when he leads the ensemble casts of King Lear and Chekhov’s The Seagull for the Royal Shakespeare Company, under the direction of Trevor Nunn.

• Hugh Jackman returns to his native Australia and to the stage when he reprises his role in a new and improved version of Boy From Oz.  The musical based on the life of Peter Allen will premiere in August at the Sydney Entertainment Center and tour for two months to arenas around the country.

• The Tony Awards on June 11 proved to be a jam-packed three hours.  The annual celebration of the best of Broadway saw that “little musical that could” The Drowsy Chaperone pick up five of the statues but it was the tribute to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons The Jersey Boys that picked up the coveted Best Musical as well as Best Actor and Best Featured Actor.  There was plenty of star power both on stage and in the audience with the queen of TV Oprah Winfrey introducing her production, The Color Purple’s segment.  Also seen and heard from Julia Roberts, Anna Paquin, Julie Andrews, Cynthia Nixon, just to name a few.