News for This Week: Of Cats, Moose, and Supermen

There will be a casting call for the role of "Cat" in the upcoming production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Send your cat's headshot and owner contact info to kittygolightly@oandmco.com This reminded me that the last live real cat to star on Broadway was the feline who played opposite Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage. I'll never forget her acceptance speech when she won the Tony Award. "My friends said I should thank the cat," Dame Maggie archly said. "And I do thank the cat, but it had better behave itself, because it's getting entirely out of hand." 

At the opening of Moose Murders.
Yes, it has come to this.

I had reviews for Moose Murders  Women of Will and Clive at the Backstage website this week. Moose Murders is one of the biggest flops in Broadway history and this tiny company called Beautiful Soup Theatre Collective decided to revive it. The playwright had "shamelessly revised" his script, but it was still awful. Opening night was also the first night they invited critics and everyone was there including John Simon who brought his Playbill from the original production. Charles Busch, Julie Halston, Jackie Hoffman were also in the audience which was not a smart move. It led me to think how much better the production would be with these funny people in it. At least they would know how to camp it up and make this script so bad it would be a riot, as it was it was just bad. They actually had the celebrities--me included--pose with a guy dressed as a moose. Hanging around in the lobby was more fun than watching the show.

Speaking of Broadway flops, Encores will be presenting a concert version of It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superman!, the 1966 musical based on the comic-book hero March 20-24. Long before Spider-Man, this was the first tuner about a super-hero. There have been attempts at musicals based on Batman and Captain America (John Cullum was supposed to star in the latter) but neither got off the ground (no pun intended because neither of these guys could fly.) The original Superman production was overshadowed by the campy new TV Batman and closed after only a few months' run. It's never been revived in NYC and I've always been curious about it. There was a TV version in 1975 shown in the late night slot on ABC and from what I remember, it was pretty awful. There was a recent revival in Dallas with Matt Cavenaugh with a new book, but it never transferred here. The role of the Man of Steel and his secret identity Clark Kent will be played by Edward Watts who was so ravishing as a shirtless Samson in Scandalous, Kathie Lee Gifford's short-lived Aimee Semple McPherson musical earlier this season. Watts will probably not be exposing his impressive pecs, but hopefully, he'll be in the traditional skintight red-and-blue outfit.

Here's a pop quiz: What fictional characters have inspired a Broadway musical, a TV series, and a series of popular films? (The answer: Superman, Spider-Man, Tarzan, and Sherlock Holmes.)

There was also a super-hero quiz on King of the Nerds this week which I'll cover in the Reality update blog.

In other news, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz may be starring in a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal to be directed by Mike Nichols. In a pre-Grammy Awards interview for the Los Angeles Times, record producer Clive Davis announced he plans to stage a Broadway revival of My Fair Lady in 2014. he wuldn't say who has in mind for the leads, but I thought Sting and Anne Hathaway would be perfect.