Issue #156: August 1, 2005,
Next issue September 1.

• Following Brooke Shields' Roxie Hart performance in Chicago will be pop star Huey Lewis in the Billy Flynn role.  Shields wraps her stint on October 30 with Lewis hitting the boards in the Kander and Ebb musical revival classic that has been packing them in at the Ambassador Theatre since November 1996.

• Former Sex in the City star Cynthia Nixon is slated to star in David Lindsay-Abaire's production of Rabbit Hole, which opens on February 2 at the Biltmore Theatre.

• The powers that be are trying to knock out an agreement to bring the smash Brit hit Billy Elliot the Musical to Broadway.  At the moment they are looking at a late 2006 or early 2007 opening.  This will be another  live theatre foray for pop superstar Elton John who is attached to the project as composer, working with the rest of the creative team. 

• Casting has just been announced for the world premier of The Lord of the Rings, which begins performances in Toronto at the Princess of Wales Theatre on February 2, 2006.  Leading the long list of Canadian actors is Tony award-winner Brent Carver landing the role of Gandalf.  Carver won his Tony for his brilliant performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman.

• He was known to millions of "trekkie" fans as "Scotty" but the actor from Sarnia,  Ontario, James Doohan, who died on Wednesday, July 20, at age 85, had a celebrated stage, radio and television career before his now famous role on Star Trek.  Born in Vancouver, B.C., Doohan commanded 120 men on the D-Day invasion of Normandy landing on Juno Beach where he was wounded and had a finger amputated.  Following his heroics during the war, he signed up for drama school in Toronto and in quick succession won a scholarship to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in Manhattan.  Others attending the school at that time were Lee Marvin and fellow Canadian and close friend Leslie Neilsen.  Through the 1950s he appeared in 450 live television broadcasts and 4,000 radio shows with work in both New York and Toronto.  He also performed Shakespeare under the direction of Canadian theatre legend Mavor Moore.  But he will be fondly remembered in the line that has a cult following. "Beam me up, Scotty."