Issue #56: November 15, 2000

• Former Blondie front woman Deborah Harry is currently appearing at the Axis Company in Crave. Playwright Sara Kane’s dark play is a window to the troubled writer’s sole who in February 1999 committed suicide at 28 years of age. Her final work, Crave continues until December 23.

• Bill Cosby’s longtime television wife Phylicia Rashad will star in the Roundabout’s Charles Randolph-Wright’s new play Blue at the Gramercy Theater. The comedy is about an African-American family operating a funeral home. Blue debuted last spring at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage where Randolph-Wright is an associate artist. Opening date is set for June 28.

• It looks like Boston will be getting its first new legitimate theaters in nearly 70 years. Plans are in place to build a 350-seat proscenium theater that will be the nonprofit Huntington Theater Co’s second stage, as well as a 200-seat flexible-use theater that will be available to Boston’s performing arts community.

• West Hollywood’s Tiffany Theater was to play host to a limited engagement of three weeks of George Gershwin Alone. The sleeper hit, now in its sixth month, will head to West Palm Beach’s Cuillo Center in January. Plans are being made to bring it to Broadway.

• No grass growing under Charles Randolph-Wright’s feet. His recent production of Guys and Dolls at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. will go out on a national tour in 2001.

• Ann-Margret, the 60’s sex kitten, will be making her stage debut headlining a new tour of the 1978 musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. In February the revival will kick off at Connecticut’s Oakdale Performing Arts Center on the 13^th. The producers boast it has booked 28 cities so far including Boston, Philadelphia and Atlanta. The musical has been updated with new music written especially for Ann-Margret, and designer to the stars Bob Mackie will be dressing Ms. Margret.

• Sir Peter Hall isn’t taking any time off following the 10 1/2-hour marathon production of Tantalus currently at the Stage Theatre in Denver, Colorado. He is back in London in rehearsals for the new Simon Gray play Japes which is expected to open early in the new year. There will be an out-of-town tryout at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester from November 23 to December 9. Former Tony nominee for her performance a few seasons ago in Skylight, Lia Williams joins Toby Stephens (from Clint Eastwood’s latest film Space Cowboys) and Jasper Britton, an up-and-coming star, in the three-person cast.

• Fans of John Thaw as Inspector Morse, in the popular television series of the same name, may be pleased to know that although the series is ending after 13 years, Thaw has agreed to a one off film of the grumpy detective which will be aired next Christmas. This veteran British actor, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, has appeared on the London stage in Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day opposite Diana Rigg, and in Business as Usual opposite Glenda Jackson. A stint at Stratford saw him as Wolsey in Henry VIII and as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. Two in One at the Shaftsbury Theatre in the West End followed a season of the play in Toronto.