Matthew Wilkas. Photo by Rick Day.

Name: Matthew Wilkas

Hometown: Camden, Maine

Current Show/Role: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark/ “Flash Thompson” (Also understudy for “Peter Parker/Spidey”). [Matthew is also starring in the film festival hit Gayby (watch the preview below), coming to a theater near you this year.]

The best part of the show I’m in now is: The people. I’m pretty much in love with everyone involved in this production. It’s a tight family and I feel really lucky to be a part of it.

The most challenging job in show business I ever had was: I have to say—by far—learning the Peter Parker/Spider-Man track has been unbelievably challenging in all respects—vocally, acting-wise, and especially FLYING! It’s pushed me so far beyond my limits and I’m so grateful for that. I’m loving every second of it.

If I wasn’t an actor, I would be: A playwright. I love writing plays. If I can manage it, I will do BOTH.

Places, Intermission or Curtain Call? Curtain Call. Time to relaaaax.

The best post-show cocktail in town is at: I’m not much of a drinker, so I’m gonna say Grom Gelato. They’re all over Manhattan. There’s one in Columbus Circle. I get the hot chocolate affogato once in a while after a show. It’s very decadent.

Matthew Wilkas. Photo by Rick Day.

After you’ve hit all the traditional sites of New York City, you should totally go to: Brooklyn. I live in the West Village, but I end up spending a lot of my free time in Brooklyn. I love the vibe there. I think it’s becoming more and more the heartbeat of the city. It’s where the artists are! All the hip new restaurants and vendors are in Brooklyn. Specifically in Williamsburg, Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook. But Bushwick and Bed-Stuy are getting cooler and cooler.

If I could live anywhere else in the world it would be: I used to think I could never live anywhere else. But that’s changed for me now that I’ve been here in NYC a little over ten(!) years. I love San Francisco. Los Angeles. Most of California is pretty fantastic actually. And I certainly wouldn’t kick Paris or London out of bed!

Board shorts, speedo or skinny dip? Board shorts. I’m pretty modest (in spite of what these pictures might suggest…).

My workout “secret” is: I’m always mixing it up. Yoga, running, spinning, weight-lifting—I think constantly surprising my body and muscles has benefited me most.

When I’m looking for a date, nothing attracts me more than: Someone who has a real passion for SOMETHING—I don’t care if it’s their job or a hobby. I just think having something that you love to do is a huge plus.

Matthew Wilkas. Photo by Kevin McDermott.

The best website you’ve probably never heard of is: My friend Jenn introduced me to the always-hilarious regretsy.com. It’s a site devoted entirely to crafting failures that have either been sold or are being sold on Etsy. I just clicked onto it now and the most recent item they’ve posted is “Fetus Soap”—It’s a lavender scented bar of clear glycerin soap with a plastic fetus embedded in its center. It’s on sale for $15 on Etsy. Wow.

Other than Gayby, my favorite “Baby” movie is Bringing Up Baby, Adventures in Babysitting or Million Dollar Baby? Am I allowed to say Babe? I know it’s not one of the options you gave me and I know it’s not actually a “Baby” movie, but…damn that’s a cute movie.

People would be surprised to learn that I: Have a completely irrational hatred for mayonnaise. Like, I really, REALLY hate it.

When I was 10, I wanted to be just like: Peter Sellers. I was really obsessed with his performances in all the Pink Panther movies and Dr. Strangelove. I just couldn’t believe it was the same actor doing all those crazy characters. He was a real magician—a chameleon—and I still idolize him today.

Ten years from now, I’d like to be: On my own TV show. Something like Modern Family or Six Feet Under or Parks and Recreation or The Comeback or Party Down.

Mask, tights or cape? I thought Sleep No More was totally sexy, so I’m gonna go with “Mask”.

"Dreamgirls". Image via Google.

Everybody back in the time machine! I hope you had a great time discovering all the free-love, light ‘em up joys of 1972 but now we’re skipping ahead a decade and just saying no in 1982.

Oh, but say yes to the 1982 Tony Awards because it features THAT performance. Yep, this was the year that Jennifer Holliday Godzilla-stomped, took a heaving breath and set fire to a theater (and the imaginations of thousand of little show queens in training at their TV sets) when she sang “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls.

But before we get to that video, what else do we see on this fair night from the Reagan years? Why there’s Roger Rees, a Tony nominee in 2012 for his co-direction of Peter and the Starcatcher, winning Best Leading Actor in a Play for the similarly story-theater styled The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. And there’s Amanda Plummer pulling a double by getting nominated for Best Leading Actress in a Play (A Taste of Honey) and winning for Best Featured Actress in a Play (Agnes of God)…all under the watchful eye of her father Christopher Plummer, nominated in ’82 for Othello.

Nine and Dreamgirls duked it out in the musical categories with Nine taking the top honor…but Dreamgirls, I’d say, having the more influential run in the popular imagination.  Which is the perfect segue to watch…

…a bunch of TV stars doing show choir like it’s Glee: The GED Years!  I know, I’m cruel. You thought you’d be clicking to see JeHo tear it up and you get interchangeable poodle-haired fembots Pam Dawber (Mork and Mindy), Michele Lee (Knot’s Landing) and Beth Howland (Alice!). Seriously, I know my 80′s TV and even I got them mixed up watching this number. (And wait there’s another one holding hands with Hal Linden? Is that Cher? Lena Horne? I can’t tell under all that hair.) And could that be Benson’s maid, Inga Swenson (go Wildcats!), getting all Jeanette McDonald on us? And did anyone bother to learn the choreography for “They’re Playing Our Song”? Thank God Ann Miller shows up at the end because only she can top the madness.

All right, you’ve paid your dues. Get ready to bust out of that Members Only jacket and watch the most popular Tony performance of all time. Seriously.

And that, my friends, is how it is done.

Brian d'Arcy James, Debra Messing & Emory Cohen on "Smash". Photo by Will Hart/NBC.

Tonight marks the season finale of the Broadway-themed TV show Smash. I’ll admit it; I’m a few episodes behind at the moment so I can’t comment on what will or won’t happen when Bombshell, the Marilyn Monroe show within the show, opens. However, my overall opinion hasn’t changed much since my premiere post: kicky production numbers, fairly accurate backstage fun, juicy Megan Hilty & Christian Borle, some frustrating storytelling and an often vanilla take on a wildly colorful world. I’ll keep watching, particularly to see what new show runner (Gossip Girl‘s Joshua Safran) will bring to the mix in Season Two.

One unequivocal bummer is that one of the best voices on Broadway (and “nicest man in Show Business”) Brian d’Arcy James has only gotten to sing on the show for a total of 10 seconds…and once with a guitar hero game. But fear not, those d’Arcy d’addicts who want to hear him sing on TV, I’m here to give you d’all you’ve been d’asking for. This has to be one of my favorite TV clips featuring Brian; meet The Late Show with David Letterman‘s “singing cop”…

Wait ’til you get back to the precinct and see the strip search pas de deux.

Sebastian La Cause. Image via Hustling Kickstarter.

My friends over at Hustling, the hit webs series about an adult entertainer looking for a new line of work, are gearing up for a second season and looking for some cash. The jokes write themselves…so you don’t need me.

Wait, you do need me to tell you about the kickstarter campaign devised by series creator and Broadway vet Sebastian La Cause (Rocky Horror Show). And you need me to share with you (after the jump) an entertaining video describing the campaign but also giving you behind-the-scenes clips and bloopers from Season One.

Gosh, I feel so much more needed now…

Nick Jonas & Rob Bartlett in "How to Succeed...". Photo by Joan Marcus.

What’s that smell in the Broadway air? Dance belt and shattered dreams? Well, yes. But I’m talking about the delightfully floral scent of a theater news potpourri..

• Michael Riedel at the New York Post broke the news this week that Tom Hanks (Bosom Buddies) will make his Broadway debut in a new play by Nora Ephron. He’ll play famed tabloid columnist Mike McAlary in Lucky Guy, January 2013. Sleepless in the Newsroom?

• Movie stars are coming up like weeds, it would seem, because Hanks isn’t the only film favorite coming to the Great White Way—although he is a bit more alive than the other arrival. The New York Times reports that a bio-musical about Chaplin (as in Charlie Chaplin) will begin previews August 10.

• Lay wreathes at two more Broadway theaters this week as the season ending culling continues. The new musical Leap of Faith, with only a single Tony nomination and disappointing sales, will shutter this Sunday, and the teen friendly reboot of How to Succeed… (currently starring Nick Jonas) will cash it’s last (investment recouped) check on May 20 after 473 regular performances. Expect the death toll to increase in the coming weeks.

• 

  Reeve Carney & Rebecca Faulkenberry in "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark". Photo by Jacob Cohl.

  Turning the proverbial lemons into lemonade (Is there a lemon flower? Have I lost the thread of my organizing theme already?), the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have cheekily and quite delightfully decided to acknowledge their underrepresentation at the Tony Nominations by celebrating “Tonys”. People named “Tony” or variations thereof will be eligible for free tickets to see the musical at the matinee on Tony Sunday. The rules and regulations are here; there may still be time for a legal name change should you so desire.

• Feeling like a bud vase of theater instead of a whole bouquet? Scrappy Milk Can Theatre Company is offering an evening of seven ten minute plays, The Snap Shot Plays, this weekend at Shetler Studios. The twist: each play was inspired by a local photographer’s work. Sounds interesting and worth a peak.

• Isn’t one supposed to throw roses at a diva? Well, get your dozen ready to toss at your TV because Christine (and her beloved Phantom) are making their way to PBS. A filmed performance of the much-discussed sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, will be presented in June. As they say, check your local listings.

• In the world of grand laurels, I have once again received the honor of being a guest on the radio show This Show is So Gay to discuss all things Broadway. As usual, I embarrass myself at least twice. How I suffer for my art.

Taking a look at the winners and nominees, one thing is clear: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Two of this year’s best revival of a musical candidates, Follies and Jesus Christ Superstar were fighting it out in many of the musical categories (alongside Grease and surprising Best Musical winner Two Gentleman of Verona). Mike Nichols was the Best Director for Prisoner of Second Avenue (a possible repeat this year for Death of a Salesman). And Bernadette Peters, like this year, was up for…oh, wait. Sore spot for some. At least forty years ago (Was she 10? Holy Moly, how old is Bernadette Peters and where is the aging painting of her), she was nominated for featured actress in On the Town alongside my secret favorite Adrienne Barbeau (Grease) — both losing to Linda Hopkins (Inner City).

And what would you have seen performing on the stage that night? Oh, my friend, wonders. True wonders. Just look up at the stage (via YouTube clips)…

What have we learned about 1972, my friends? We’ve learned that manscaping had not been invented yet. We’ve discovered that the “Temple” scene from the original Jesus Christ Superstar was staged like the opening of The Lion King but, instead of large animal puppets on people’s heads, they wore enormous vegetables like cauliflower. And we’ve discovered that thanks to the absence of body mics, people sang into crocheted umbilical chords.

Shall we explore a bit further? Of course, my time traveling friends. Here’s a performance (musical number doesn’t seem to begin to encompass it) from Best Musical nominee Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death.

Well, well. Did we just see a Broadway musical featuring deeply political monologues, fiery voices from the inner city, the seeds of poetry slam/rap and a violently abused stripper pole. Why yes, we did? No, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Oklahoma anymore.

Nina Arianda & Hugh Dancy in "Venus in Fur". Photo by Joan Marcus.

“There’s nothing in that.”

Those were the sage words of advice David Ives received from his father as the young playwright headed off to the Yale School of Drama. We should all have such nothing. With a career spanning influential comedies like All in the Timing and acclaimed translations of classics like the Moliere “rewrite” School for Lies, to his current Tony-nominated, Broadway hit Venus in Fur, Ives has proven those words wrong and made a life working in the theater.

During a recent discussion moderated by famed critic John Lahr at the 92nd Street Y Tribecca, Ives opened up about the highs and lows of his career in sparklingly articulate and, at times, raucously deadpan stories — from his tragically lost first play to his current much-anticipated collaboration with Stephen Sondheim.

On his unfortunate debut as a playwright: 

I got bitten by the theater bug quite early and I wrote my first play when I was nine. I took this three hundred page, sort of noir novel out of my parents’ library and I turned it into a ten minute play. For my cub scout troupe. I was going to play the lead, of course, and all my friends were going to play the secondary roles which were much smaller. But what I didn’t know is that everyone in the play has to get a copy of the script. And so I learned my lines, I passed the script on and he lost it. And it was probably my best work ever. I’m still looking for it.

On the thrill of discovering his love for theater:

The stinger really stuck in my flesh when I was seventeen and I went to see Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in A Delicate Balance. It came through Chicago. I well remember the sensation that I had sitting in the front of the balcony for $3.65 and watching Cronyn & Tandy and feeling like I was in the front car of the Cyclone in Coney Island. Because I had never seen anything like this, something so extraordinarily passionate and eloquent. I might as well have just gone home that day and written my parents a note that said, “Dear Mom & Dad, I’m going to be a playwright. Nothing can stop me.”

David Ives. Image via BBB.

On the ins and outs of reading dirty books:

I’d been translating French plays for the past five or six years and so, translating French plays, it’s very good to keep up your French. My French is based on a year and a half at Northwestern and a girlfriend who lived in Paris — visiting her for a week… I started reading and boning up on my French. One of the things I read was Story of O which I’d read when everyone was reading all those dirty books back in the 60’s… all of things that had been coming off of the Supreme Court. The docket was filled with dirty books in the 60’s. Story of O was one of them. And I went back and I read it because it was in French and I remembered it being interesting. I became fascinated by it and I thought, “Wouldn’t this make a great play!” Which is, of course, a terrible idea. If you don’t know Story of O, it’s sort of a grizzly S&M novel written in this pure, Racinian French — a glory to read. But the woman who is the lover, who is O, submits on the first page to her lover and continues to submit for three hundred pages. Which is not very dramatic. Luckily, I found that the rights were not available. And since my mind was running along dirty books, I decided to reread Venus in Furs just for the hell of it… Venus in Furs is probably the dullest dirty book ever written. It’s written in German which gives it already — it’s like velvet sandbags. …I thought, “This really would make a fantastic play.” Because the relationship, unlike Story of O, is constantly teetering back and forth, where you never quite know who is running the relationship at any particular moment.

On discovering that Venus in Fur could have been a blockbuster sequel:

I did a straight ahead adaptation of the novel for four actors, two playing the main characters and two playing all the other parts. I gave it to Walter Bobbie who ultimately did direct Venus in Fur… Walter and I have this extraordinary relationship where you go straight to the truth. He said to me, “You know, I don’t think this works for two reasons. It doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with today because it was set in 1870. And, I don’t know how you put a sado-masochistic relationship on stage without it being ridiculous.” Because…reading the dirty book is all in your mind, but once you put anything literally on the stage you have crossed the line into Monty Python land. So, without realizing it, I had written a wonderful Monty Python S&M play. If we’d gotten Palin, Cleese and the rest of them to do this, we would have had a hit. It would have been Spamalot 2.

Hugh Dancy & Nina Arianda in "Venus in Fur". Photo by Joan Marcus.

On nine days that turned a miss into a Broadway hit:

I went off and I thought about [Venus in Fur] for a few months actually. The thing is these characters, this central relationship would not leave me. I could not let go of it. And so what I did was one day, I took out my adaptation and I crossed everything that wasn’t drama. I crossed out all the side characters. I cut out anything that was not conflict. Once I had that, I had these sort of dramatic nuggets and then — I don’t really know how I got from there to Venus as it begins — but I just somehow set it in a rehearsal room. And all I had to do was put the two modern characters in collision, in conversation with the play I had written. And so, what’s on Broadway now I actually wrote in about nine days.

On turning down stars to play the leading lady:

What we found was that casting the part of Vanda was almost impossible because it’s very hard to find an actress who has the qualities of both of those people: a contemporary East Side, very streetwise, tough [woman] and a woman of 1870 who is continental, cultivated and literate… And we had names who wanted to do this play that we had to turn down because we did readings with them and they could do one or the other but they couldn’t do both. So we were really in despair and we had spent probably six months, I would say, trying to cast the woman.

Nina Arianda in "Venus in Fur". Photo by Joan Marcus.

On finding a new star in the most unlikely of scenarios:

We were at the end of our rope and then James Calleri, the casting director at Classic Stage, basically had a day that was the equivalent of a cattle call, when he had people come in that we didn’t know and had never seen. And so we were in a room exactly like the one that is on Broadway, the same bad floor and the ceiling falling down. We had little hope. We ran our eyes down the list of actresses coming in and no name was familiar. And this woman walked in named Nina Arianda and I remember looking at her resume and the only thing she had on it were school plays and special skills. It was like school play, school play, school play, speaks Ukranian and great legs or something. So she walked in and Brian Kulick, the artistic director of Classic Stage, told me later that he made a mental note to tell the casting director to never send anyone as hopeless as this into the room again.

And so she threw down her bag and she said, “What do you want?” And Walter said, “Well, why don’t you try the first side?” Exactly as Thomas does in the play. She started reading, and she was reading the contemporary girl, and she was amazing. Everybody sat up when they heard her, but we had been through a lot of actresses who could do that. So she finished and she said, “What do you want?” And Walter said, “Why don’t you try the second sides?” And so she launched in and I have to say that when she got to the point that Vanda transforms into Dunayev and we are suddenly in 1870, I think every hair on every body in that room stood up, because it was an extraordinary transformation. She was just suddenly there, a totally different person. We knew that this was it. And so, we were very cool and she said, “Thank you very much.” “Your name is?” “Nina Arianda.” “Well, great. We’ll get back to you.” The door closed and it was instant bedlam. It was like people were throwing chairs around, papers were flying and Brian was saying, “Who’s her agent?! How do we get a hold of her agent?!”  I believe that Nina got the call that she got this job on the way to the subway. We were calling her agent as she was going down the steps form the audition studio.

On the depth Wes Bentley brought to his role in the Off-Broadway production:

He was great. He was fantastic in the part. He had also, interestingly enough — Walter and I didn’t know it until we read it in the New York Times when the play was running, they ran a front page of the Arts piece about Wes — they said that he had just been through detox, heroin, divorce, bankruptcy. We knew none of that. The thing is, we had caught Wes just at the moment when he was changing his life. And that change just continued. It was like we were seeing a man crawling out of the ocean saying, “I want this. This life preserver is what I want.” And so his insane commitment to the play was coming from a place of having gone sober, having gotten off drugs, having found a woman who he was in love. In a weird way, we had a man who had been way beyond where the play takes you and who was at a place of extraordinary centeredness. So he brought all that to the play. If you saw it down town, you know he brought all that intensity… So when we moved to Broadway, Wes was filming The Hunger Games. His whole life has turned around. He’s gotten great parts, partly because of Venus in Fur.

Hugh Dancy in "Venus in Fur". Photo by Joan Marcus.

On finding a new leading man for Broadway: 

We had to find someone else to do it and Hugh Dancy, an extraordinary actor whom I fell in love with watching Journey’s End, came to us and Hugh was willing to audition… Hugh was willing to audition for us because we knew that in order to find the right person for that part we could not do it on the basis of making an offer… Hugh was willing to do that, which is a sign of who Hugh Dancy is. He is another, total, whole human being. He came in, he read, he was brilliant and it was over. It was cast instantly. He’s amazing and brilliant. He has all of that extraordinary English technique which is very nice.

On the best/worst phone call a writer could ever get:

There was a day in my life which was simultaneously the happiest and the worst day of my life. I was living in New York way back in 1990. I was just bottoming out. I was tired of the business and I was tired of being poor. And I was tired of writing plays. And I had a play done in San Francisco and I just loved it. I was there for a week or two and I was working at The Magic. I thought, “What a great place to live. It’s clean. It’s beautiful. Next to the ocean. All these nice people. Totally delusional, of course. I was under that thing that San Francisco does to you — for ten days. I decided on the spur of this insane delusion that I was going to move from New York to San Francisco. Big theater town, right? I packed up all my books and moved — knowing nobody. Knowing nothing. I went cold. But I found this nice apartment. I seemed to be surrounded by the same nice people I had run into before. And I think my phone had just been hooked up that day or the day before and it rang. Nobody knew I was even there. I picked it up and it was Stephen Sondheim. And he said, “David. Hi. It’s Steve Sondheim. What are you doing in San Francisco?” And I said, “Well, it’s a long story but I’ve moved here.” And he said, “Oh, that’s too bad. I have a new idea for a musical and I was thinking maybe we could work on it.” And so, there I was standing in my empty apartment with my book boxes around me with Stephen Sondheim on the other end of the phone saying, “I thought maybe we could work together.” I hung up and I think I checked into an asylum for the next two years.

On getting a second chance to work with Sondheim:

About two years ago, I got a call from Stephen Sondheim and he said, “Listen, I was wondering if you’d like to come over for a drink and talk. It’s not about anything important.” I said, “Sure.” I’d never been over to his house… beautiful house filled with puzzles. So we’re sitting and drinking and chatting away. And I’d been there an hour and I said, “So, what did you want to talk about? You said it was nothing important.” “Did I say that?” “Yes.” “Well, it is important. I was wondering if you’d like to work on something. I’ve had an idea that I’ve been kicking around.” He told me the idea and I said, “That’s a really great idea!” And he said, “Well, actually, I also have this packet of notes that I’ve typed on it. Would you like to take these home and read them?” And I said, “Sure. What the hell?” I’d had a glass of wine.

On where his project with Sondheim stands today:

When Stephen Sondheim comes calling, you give it your attention. And the thing is, not only did I give it my attention but it was really a good idea. I started going over there and we would meet and we would talk. We brainstormed every couple weeks, every three weeks. And then his book, his two books, started happening, which sort of interrupted us. I was continuing to take notes and so I would send them to him and then we would talk on the phone or I would go over. Ultimately, he finished his books and he started writing some music and that’s where we are now. I was on the phone with him today. He sent me some pages. I have no idea if this will turn into anything. I can tell you this: it is the most amazing fun in the world to sit and brainstorm and dish with Steve Sondheim.

On Sondheim, love and the joy of theater:

You know, I’ve spent so much of my life thinking, “What would it be like to meet Shakespeare? What would it be like to run into Mozart? To meet Verdi?” The thing is, we have Verdi living with us. We have Mozart living with us. And his name is Stephen Sondheim. The extraordinary thing is that Verdi/Mozart is an incredibly practical man of the theater. It is all about making something good, which is really the thing I love about the theater. It is this little democracy, you may have heard me say this before, but what I’ve always loved about the theater, ever since I stepped into my first rehearsal room, is that you go into a room with a bunch of people with no ulterior motive except this thing good. You can’t be doing it for the money or you’re an idiot. You are working and meeting new people who do something for love and because they’re good at it. And so this is sort of a continuation, with Stephen Sondheim, of what I’m been doing out of love for forty years.

"Much Ado About Nothing". Image via YouTube.com.

Did you hear that school bell? Yep, it’s time for our next master class from the amazing artists at London’s National Theatre. Now that we’ve cast the play, it’s time to rehearse it.

I bet rehearsal is one of the least understood parts of the process to those not involved in theater. It isn’t just learning where you stand and then repeating things over and over again until you get it “right”. With the help of brilliant director Nicholas Hytner (currently represented on Broadway with One Man, Two Guvnors) and consummate actor Simon Russell Beale, this bite-sized video takes you inside the rehearsal room and into the process of what actually goes on. [From my experience, the only important things they've left out are gallons of coffee and gossipy five-minute breaks.]

Nick Kenkel for "Broadway Bares: Happy Endings". Photo by Andrew Eccles.

• If the weather is getting warmer than you know it’s time for Broadway to bare it all. The run up to the big burlesque night of all nights, Broadway Bares, begins this Sunday at 9pm with a curtain raiser, so to speak, of Solo Strips. This one-night-only fundraiser will feature ten of the hottest men of Broadway (including Theater Buffs Nick Kenkel and Sam Cahn) shaking their money makers to make some money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

• As sure as some producers are popping champagne on Tony nomination morning, others are dropping the axe. Without Tony love to build audience awareness both Seminar and Magic/Bird posted closing notices. While Bird never found its box office magic, Seminar completes a fairly healthy run, suffering only from a drop in sales after the loss of its original marquee star, Alan Rickman.

• That fiery gal Rebecca is actually making it to Manderlay via Broadway as the on-again, off-again musical announced an October 20 start date for previews. Unfortunately, the presumed leading lady Sierra Boggess has moved on to another Broadway production slated for the same period, Prince of Broadway.

• Two “hotties” making theater related news this week: two-time Tony nominee (and Sutton Foster main squeeze) Bobby Cannavale will return to Broadway in a revival of Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife and indie-film pin-up Joseph Gordon-Levitt is developing a movie remake of the classic Menken & Ashman musical Little Shop of Horrors. If you’ve seen this little number from 500 Days of Summer, you know that Gordon-Levitt has some dance moves in him…so this might not be a bad thing.

• The anniversary of an important milestone in the history of musicals passed this week, but no one seemed to notice. Well, no one but my good friend and amazing writer at large (yes, Jason, amazing as in awe-inspiring) Jason Cochran in this insightful article about the film version of Chicago and its “justified” musical numbers. I couldn’t agree more with his analysis and have to say that the box this has created is constraining the musical imagination, even on stage.  Will the film version of Les Miserables swing the pendulum back?

• Finally, two very interesting articles this week about Broadway reaching out to specialized audiences: one detailing special “autism friendly” performances and another reaching out to faith-based organizations.

Heather Headley in "Aida". Photo by Joan Marcus.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Queen is back.

The very regal Tony-winner Heather Headley (Aida) is returning to music theater in the upcoming adaptation of The Bodyguard, set to premiere in London late this year. The film smash about a pop singer and her, well, bodyguard is getting the full jukebox treatment with songs from the Whitney Houston catalog beyond the film soundtrack. And now we have our first taste of what to expect in this video preview from the London workshop.

I get so emotional, indeed…