Issue #125: March 1, 2004

• Funny man Chris Kattan from Saturday Night Live fame makes his Broadway debut this summer opposite Nathan Lane (The Producers)  in the Lincoln Center production of The Frogs.  You can be sure there won't be much drama on stage with these two!

• Liev Schreiber will not be seen in Donald Margulies' Sight Unseen due to a "conflict of schedules" as first believed.  He had warned the Manhattan Theater Club that if financing came through for a film project he had optioned, that would take priority.  And indeed the money has been anted up so Schreiber is off to Hollywood to direct his adaptation of Johnathan Safran Foer's Holocaust novel "Everything is Illuminated."

• Undeterred by her disastrous first outing in the world of Broadway producing, Rosie O'Donnell is currently at work with pal Cyndi Lauper on a two-person musical adapted from O'Donnell's autobiography "Find Me."  Look for these two to originate the roles when it hits the boards.  No date or theater has been mentioned at this time.

• Producer Cameron Mackintosh has confirmed the long awaited casting of the title role of Mary Poppins..  Look for Laura Michelle Kelly to originate the role at the December premiere. The long anticipated staging of this movie musical classic brings together two powerhouse producers, Mackintosh and Disney.

• We all know Jude Law from his many film roles but it was the stage where he began his career.  Now Law is turning the popular Patrick Marber play Closer into a film with director extraordinaire Mick Nichols at the helm.  The movie of this Tony award-winning stage piece also features another hunkalishish stage actor turned film star, Clive Owen (Gosford Park, Croupier).  I'm sure the female audience will be looking forward to its opening at the end of the year, just in time for next year's Oscars.

• It looks as though all those announced stage appearances by Calista Flockhart are quietly disappearing.  The most recent one of her starring in the revival of Anna Christie  has quietly disappeared, along with her other announced appearances in The Philadelphia Story and A Doll's House.  Could it be that Harrison Ford is busy keeping her off the stage these days?

• You probably remember her as everyone's favourite manicurist, Madge, from Palmolive detergent television commercials, but Jan Miner's first love was the theater. Miner died on February 14 at the age of 86.  For more than forty years Miner was never far from Broadway, off Broadway or on the road with a touring company.  Miner never resented her 27 years as "Madge" as the role afforded her financial freedom to appear on stage and to choose her roles.  Her Broadway appearances included The Women in 1973, Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine in 1980 and Heartbreak House in 1983-84.  She trained for the stage under Lee Strasberg and made her stage debut in Boston in Elmer Rice's Street Scene in 1945 and in New York in Obligatoo in 1948.   So when you watch commercials and wonder what those actors do other than the ads, they could very well be supporting a wonderful stage talent, as they did for Jan Miner.