This was inevitable. Harry Potter, the boy wizard who turned the world on with his wand, is going to be a musical, at least according to the Sunday Mirror in the United Kingdom.

Casting agents have been told to start looking for a young lad to play Potter in an all-singing, all-dancing version of J.K. Rowling’s magic at Hogwarts. Producers are already working on script ideas and hope to bring the musical to London’s West End next year.

A “theater insider” was quoted as saying: “The plan is for spectacular flying scenes, live Quidditch and big showdowns with Voldemort.”

After the middling success of the musical Lord of the Rings (some would call it an outright failure — at least in Canada, the London production is still hobbitting along), producers would be wise to try not cramming one musical full of too many books (the musical Lestat also comes to mind, which tried to jam three books into one godawful musical).

Gotta love the YouTube.
Some genius mashed up the song “If You Were Gay” from Avenue Q and paired it with disgraced Sen. Craig’s emphatic declaration that he is not gay.
Have a look. (This is a clip featuring the original Broadway cast, by the way).

The San Francisco production of Avenue Q closes Sunday. See it if you can.

For Berkeley Repertory Theatre artistic director Tony Taccone, the most interesting thing about his company’s 40th anniversary season is the year 1967.

“So many organizations in the last year are celebrating 40,” Taccone says. “The late ’60s were a really fertile time. Things tend to start when people feel many things are possible. It’s a largely unarticulated feeling or thought, but they all feel or sense the possibility. That was a fecund time period, but it wasn’t about institutionalizing — more like let’s start something.”

Those pioneering ideas became active groups, and those active groups became features of the landscape. “Now we’re permanent in an impermanent world,” Taccone says.

Berkeley Rep was hardly an institution when Michael Leibert staged Woyzek at the International House on the UC Berkeley campus and then converted a storefront on College Avenue into an 85-seat theater to remount the show.

Twelve years later, Berkeley Rep opened its 400-seat Thrust Stage on Addison Street, and soon after, the company was one of the major players on the American regional theater scene.

Sharon Ott became artistic director in 1984, and Taccone joined the staff as associate artistic director in 1988. He took over as artistic director in 1997, the same year Berkeley Rep won the Tony Award as outstanding regional theater.

Taccone has been in the job 10 years now, and has seen his company expand from one stage to two with the 2001 opening of the 600-seat Roda Theatre next door to the Thrust Stage.
There were some significant bumps after the new theater opened — Sept. 11 being a major one — but Berkeley Rep is thriving.

“To be able to do a season like we’ve done the last few years — largely titles not familiar to the audience — and to be as healthy as we are, it’s really satisfying,” Taccone says. “To be successfully selling to a substantial subscription base, to be attracting new audiences and making a big increase in our younger audience, man that feels good.”

Opening a new theater is a tricky business both artistically and commercially. Taccone says he knew that the opening of the Roda meant his theater was embarking on what he thought of as a “10-year experiment to make this two-headed animal work.”

“There’s a lot more possibility with two stages, but a lot more pressure in some ways as well,” he says. “We’re in year seven, and we’re on course. We’ve figured out a lot of stuff about the spaces and tried lots of things to test our working hypotheses. You learn. That’s been cool.”

With so much competition for an audience’s attention (and almighty dollar), Berkeley Rep has grappled with new technologies, new marketing strategies and bold grabs for the under-25 crowd.

But the solution, Taccone says, is actually pretty simple.

“It’s like Peter Brook said: We need to do what we know how to do and do it really well. Theater needs to be more theater, not less,” Taccone says. “We need to go back to theater magic, the primacy of the word, the immediacy of an actor’s transformation. Obviously, we can’t ignore the vocabulary. There’s a lot of video now, not because we’re trying to be hip but because it’s part of the working vocabulary of theater.”

To begin the new season, Taccone chose to acknowledge his theater’s history with another production of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House, the one play that has now been performed in each of the theater’s four decades.

The new production, directed by associate artistic director Les Waters, previews this weekend and opens Wednesday at the Roda.

Why do the show yet again?

“Because it’s a great play and it couldn’t feel more friggin’ perfect right now,” Taccone says. “It’s about a class of people who are desperately trying to avoid the fact that they’re in desperate straits. The Zeppelins are circling.”

The play feels even more relevant, Taccone says, than that last time the theater produced it in 1996. “And that’s a little terrifying.”

One of the things Taccone is proudest of in his decade as artistic director is a program to create new plays that is funded, in large part, by an ongoing capital campaign.

“We want to commission 50 plays over the next 10 years,” Taccone says. “We’ve gotten off to a good start with seven or eight in the works. That’s a significant commitment. We’re making a commitment to these plays being born and nurtured. If they don’t get onstage here, we’ll help them get onstage somewhere else.”

With the development of new plays, the strengthening of the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre and a solid returning audience, Taccone says he’s pleased with the state of his theater.
“We’ve been able to survive,” Taccone says. “And now we’re able to tilt the organization toward the ambitious.”

Here’s more with Taccone:

On planning a season: “It’s like an experiment in failure. There’s never a perfect season, but you’re always trying to plan the perfect season. Only a portion of the audience actually sees the entire season, and that’s how the world is moving — single ticket sales, though we have a healthy subscription base. The world changes really fast.

On technology: “Technology is blowing us out of the water. The whole blogosphere is exciting and terrifying. I don’t like a lot of what I see. There’s crazy stuff out there. It’s like sports radio — a lot of uninformed opinion. I can respect that, but I guess I’m too much of an elitist to buy into that stuff. I just wonder why we’re listening to that. Now suddenly everybody’s a writer? Well, no. A lot of it is horrible.”

More on the blogosphere: “One of my sons (Jorma Taccone, who helped create the “Saturday Night Live” digital shorts “Lazy Sunday” and “Dick in a Box”) is credited with going from the Internet to mainstream movies (with Hot Rod). It’s very odd. Now the movie studio can’t deal with the Internet audience. Nobody knows anymore how to get your stuff seen by a lot of people. Some kid makes stuff on YouTube, and millions of people see it. You can’t imitate it. A lot of people are trying, and there’s more shortfall than overwhelming success. Organs of communication are changing a lot. We have to get used to higher risk. That’s especially true of organizations that require stability to plan and budget and build something.”

On “interactive” theater: “That’s the buzz word around here — interactive. But what does that mean? The audience votes on the ending? Can people eat in the theater? Is that interactive? The way we’re thinking about it is how can our space be more flexible? Can the courtyard be a cafe? We want to create somewhere people can have some fun without trashing the art form.”

On catching the young audience: “You get too sidetracked trying to go after the 25-year-old audience. That misses the point. We need to make people more comfortable in our space. That’s just more people — regardless of age, creed, color. We need to get people over the feeling that the theater is not for them, is boring or uses a vocabulary way beyond them.

Heartbreak House continues through Oct. 14 at the Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $33 to $69. Call 510-647-2949 or visit www.berkeleyrep.org.

In celebration of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s 40th anniversary season, which officially opens Sept. 5 with Heartbreak House, here’s a timeline featuring key moment’s in the company’s journey toward becoming one of the nation’s most vital regional theaters.

1968
A theater is born. Michael Leibert’s production of Woyzek at the International House on the UC Berkeley campus is a hit, so he rents a storefront at 2980 College Ave. and transforms it into an 85-seat theater. This is BRT’s home for the next 12 years.

1969
BRT stages the first of what will become 44 world premieres (and counting): Pigeon, Pigeon, a one-act by John Chioles.

1972
Mitzi Sales begins an 18-year tenure as BRT’s managing director.

1973
People start to notice Berkeley’s little storefront theater with the “Summer of Shakespeare, Sheridan and Shaw,” which proves to be popular.

1974
World premiere of Dracula, A Musical Nightmare, written by two company artists, Douglas Johnson and John Aschenbrenner.

1975
Joe Spano plays Hamlet and captures some national attention. Leibert’s revival of The Iceman Cometh sells out.

1977
Tenth anniversary season begins with world-premiere comedy called Rep! and a board of directors is formed.

1978
BRT breaks ground on its new theater on Addison St., which will come to be known as the Thrust Stage. The theater opens in …

1980
The 400-seat theater opens with a successful production of Galileo.

1982
Albert Takazauckas directs Heartbreak House, the Shaw play that will become the only play to be produced in each of the theater’s four decades.

1983
Leibert departs the office of artistic director. Joy Carlin septs in as acting AD for a year. BRT teams with Milwaukee Rep to present Mamet’s American Buffalo. Geoff Hoyle makes the first of many (and counting) appearances on the Thrust Stage.

1984
Sharon Ott is named the new artistic director, a position she will hold until 1997.

1987
Philip Kan Gotanda begins a long association with BRT when Ott directs the world premiere of Yankee Dawg You Die.

1988
Tony Taccone joins the staff as associate artistic director. Mary Louise-Parker stars in Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss.

1989
Justine Bateman (of “Family Ties” fame) stars in Ott’s staging of Lulu and attracts a stalker who shows up at the theater with a gun.

1990
Sales departs and Susie Medak steps in as managing director.

1991
BRT presents its first commissioned play: McTeague: A Tale of San Francisco. Tony Kushner’s The Illusion kicks off a long (and counting) relationship with the writer who will return frequently to BRT.

1995
Stephen Wadsworth’s An Ideal Husband becomes a huge hit.

1996
BRT presents Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles: 1992 at the Marines Memorial Theatre in San Francisco. Mary Zimmerman makes her first (of many and counting) trip to BRT with Journey to the West.

1997
BRT receives the regional theater Tony Award. Taccone is named artistic director.

1999
Mabou Mines’ Peter & Wendy and Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses run at BRT and become take their places as two of the most beautiful shows ever seen in the Bay Area (OK, that one is highly subjective but I stand fully behind the statement).

2000
Maggie Gyllenhaal stars in BRT’s Closer.

2001
BRT opens the 600-seat Roda Theatre and unveils the new Berkeley Rep School of Theatre.

2002
Taccone’s production of Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul extends for five weeks, playing more performances than any show in Berkeley Rep history.

2003
Les Waters signs on as associate artistic director. Taccone’s staging of David Edgar’s two-part Continental Divide becomes the company’s first coproduction with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

2004
Berkeley resident Rita Moreno makes her first of several (and counting) appearances at BRT in Terrence McNally’s Master Class.

2005
BRT hosts Taccone’s workshop of Bridge & Tunnel by the extraordinary Sarah Jones. The show will go on to win a Tony Award for its star. The theater also premieres The People’s Temple, a piece of documentary theater abut the Rev. Jim Jones and the massacre at Jonestown.

And that, more or less, brings up to date.
For the most current info on Berkeley Repertory Theatre, visit www.berkeleyrep.org.

A Theater Dogs reader sends the following correction that appears in the current issue of American Theatre magazine.

Due to transcription problems, some errors and misquotes appeared in the interview ‘Simply Seldes’ (July/August ‘07). Marian Seldes was referring to Philip Barry, not J.M. Barrie, when she mentioned playwrights she had seen growing up. In a discussion with John Gielgud about her experiences with Greek plays, Seldes stated ‘I’ve worked on them,’ not ‘I’ve workshopped them.’ She was similarly misquoted in her reply to a telegram from the Whitehead office. Seldes said ‘Is it a speaking part?’ and not ‘Is it a stinky part?’

Hilarious. Thank you, Ms. Reid, for sharing.

Opened Aug. 25 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

TheatreWorks’ Emma charms, delights in world premiere musical adaptation
three [1/2] stars A match well made

Oh the pain of being an eligible bachelor in a Jane Austen novel. All the single women claw at you like cats at a scratching post, and everyone in the county is up in your business like Lindsay Lohan on a bender.

Such is the case with single men Mr. Knightley, Mr. Elton, Mr. Churchill and Mr. Martin in Austen’s Emma. Their very bachelorhood drives the plot and throws everyone in the book into an upright British tizzy.

There are so many flustered emotions and heaving bodices in Austen’s novel, it’s no wonder Paul Gordon took the next logical step and made all these desperately romantic people sing.

Writing the music, lyrics, book and orchestrations, Gordon is the mastermind behind Emma, the world-premiere musical that opened Saturday at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. The opening marked a milestone for its producer, TheatreWorks, by being the company’s 50th world premiere.

As far as world premieres go, Emma is in remarkably good shape. Gordon’s score — an easy-on-the-ears kind of chamber pop orchestrated for violin, cello, oboe/English horn and piano — hits all the right notes and captures both the silliness and earnest romance in Austen’s 1815 novel.

Robert Kelley’s direction is fluid and unfussy, with Joe Ragey’s simple, swiftly moving set — which places the small orchestra on top of a pavilion center stage — adding immeasurably to the cinematic speed of scene changes.

But setting really is the least important thing about Emma. All we need to know is that we’re in the town of Highbury, south of London, where everybody’s business is everybody’s business, and the bulk of that business is who’s going to marry whom.

Chief busybody in this story is Emma Woodhouse (Lianne Marie Dobbs), a perky young woman of means with a penchant for matchmaking. She’s not really any good at it, but that doesn’t stop her. By musical’s end, she will have realized her “insufferable vanity” and “unpardonable arrogance,” and that helps us like her from the beginning, even as she sings things like, “I’m awed by my talent” or “Why pick your own mate when I can impose?”

Emma attempts to match her friend Harriet (Dani Marcus) with the town’s new vicar, Mr. Elton (Brian Herndon). What Emma doesn’t realize, in all her ministrations, is that Elton is infatuated with her, not Harriet, which leaves poor Harriet hanging out to dry, especially Emma has encouraged her not to marry the nice farm boy Mr. Martin (Nick Nakashima), who is apparently too low for consideration.

Emma attempts a match for herself with Mr. Frank Churchill (Travis Poelle) if only because, on paper, he’s perfect for her. In the flesh, he also happens to be handsome and charming, but there are no sparks.

The only sparking onstage comes from Emma’s interaction with Mr. Knightley (Timothy Gulan), a sort of family member — his brother is married to Emma’s sister. The two spar like brother and sister, but come Act 2, they both begin to realize that under their quarreling lies something much more intense.

Gordon’s last musical was Jane Eyre, which had a go on Broadway before it hit the regional theaters. TheatreWorks was the first to produce it outside New York, and the 2003 production was admirable. But to be frank, it made little sense to have such dark, gloomy 19th century folks singing.

It’s much more reasonable to accept Austen’s characters singing nonstop about love and fate and heartache. And Gordon’s score — much less bland and far more shaped than many a new musical — provides comedy (“Humiliation,” “Mr. Robert Martin,” “Relations”), heart (“Emma,” “Home”) and even a diva moment or two (“Should We Ever Meet,” “The Recital’). There are moments when the show threatens to become twee — too much singing about strawberries, for instance — but the humor undercuts the preciousness.

The cast is highly enjoyable, with Dobbs, a homegrown Bay Area performer who has truly come into her own as a musical theater star, elevating the entire show with her eminently likable Emma.

The combination of Austen’s sturdy storytelling and Gordon’s masterful music is a match even Emma would approve of, and that’s saying quite a lot.

For information about Emma, visit www.theatreworks.org.

Mel Brooks’ new musical comedy adaptation of Young Frankenstein, based on his and Gene Wilder’s 1974 movie of the same name, opened in its pre-Broadway tryout last week in Seattle.

The two major critics, Misha Barton of the Seattle Times and Joe Adcock of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, had differing views on the show, which stars Roger Bart as Victor Frankenstein (that’s Fronk-en-steen), Andrea Martin as Frau Blecher, Shuler Hensley as the Monster, Sutton Foster as Inga, Megan Mullally as Elizabeth and Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor

Barton called the piece a “supersize, eager-to-please and arguably redundant musical comedy” and says, “The musical is freshest and funniest in the second act, when it stops doggedly aping the film and lets the actors concoct their own comic chemistry.”

Here’s more from Barton:

Brooks has composed some 18 songs for the show, mostly breezy knockoffs with a Gypsy or vaudeville ring and shamelessly silly lyrics (”There is nothing like a brain!”). Most tunes are calling cards (Elizabeth’s “Please Don’t Touch Me”). At least one is superfluous (”Join the Family Business”).

But there are two good vehicles for [director/choreographer Susan] Stroman’s clever choreography: “The Transylvania Mania,” blending 42nd Street hoofing with Fiddler on the Roof folk dancing; and “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which expands the film’s Monster-Frederick tap duet to the Irving Berlin song into a major extravaganza.

Adcock in the Seattle PI was more enthused about the musical, writing, “Everything about the show is an inspired revitalization of something old or very old or very, very old.” His favorite performer is Martin, who “does a 1920s Berlin cabaret-style number that could have been borrowed from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera” and proves “once and for all that true comedy can be made out of the solemn performance style of bygone German divas on the order of Marlene Dietrich or Lotte Lenya.”

Here’s a great peek at both the movie and the show from a Seattle TV station:

Check out the official Web site for Young Frankenstein.

Here’s how Jane Austen describes the title character of her novel Emma:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence, and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

Austen goes on to mention, in a nice way, that Emma is spoiled and that she had “rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.”

Emma, in her sweet arrogance, goes on to meddle — always with good intentions — in the lives of those around her, matchmaking and fussing until she finds love right under her own nose.
If Austen were around today, she would have seen Emma portrayed on film by Gwyneth Paltrow in a fairly straightforward adaptation called Emma and by Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, a perky teen comedy that is actually a clever adaptation of Austen’s novel.

This weekend, Austen might be delighted (or alarmed) to see her “handsome, clever and rich” Emma singing onstage in TheatreWorks’ Emma, a world-premiere musical by Paul Gordon.

In 2000, Gordon was represented on Broadway by another literary musical heroine, Jane Eyre. That’s the show that connected him with TheatreWorks, the first regional theater company to produce Jane Eyre after its Broadway run.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I came to see Jane Eyre in Mountain View,” Gordon says. “But I fell in love with the production and with (artistic director) Robert Kelley’s direction.”

The new relationship continued when Gordon’s Emma, for which he is doing triple duty writing music, lyrics and book, was selected to be part of TheatreWorks’ 2006 New Works Initiative.

Talk about fast track _ a year later the show is already on the main stage.

“Some projects just go faster than others,” Gordon says before heading into a rehearsal. “For whatever reason, I wrote Emma in six months, and before I was even done, TheatreWorks was doing the first reading. Now, not even a year after that, we’re up to the first production.”

Gordon, whose background includes penning pop hits for Peter Cetera and Amy Grant (“Next Time I Fall”) as well as for Bette Midler, Quincy Jones and others, didn’t intend to write the entire show by himself.

He wrote the score, which he describes as a “chamber musical scored by oboe, cello, violin and piano that blends theater music with the Beatles — think `Eleanor Rigby,’[TH]” and sketched out a first-draft script.

“I figured someone would come in later and write the actual book,” Gordon explains. “But the first reading went just fine. Remarkably, the thing worked.”

The reason? Gordon’s collaborator — his book writer, if you will — was Jane Austen.

“It’s not like I’ve written a new story,” Gordon says. “Obviously I’m writing some different scenes and transitions, things you naturally do in an adaptation, but this is her story. I’m using as many of her words as I can. I’m humble enough to know that whatever anyone thinks of the book, good or bad, it’s Jane Austen.”

Kelley is back in the director’s seat for Emma, opens Saturday at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, and there’s another holdover from Jane Eyre as well.

Pleasanton native Lianne Marie Dobbs, a veteran of TheatreWorks and 42nd Street Moon shows, played Helen Burns in “Jane Eyre” and now plays the title role in Emma.

Dobbs has been something of a muse to Gordon on this project.

“It turned out that Lianne was instrumental in making TheatreWorks aware that I was writing Emma,” Gordon says. “She made sure I got the script to (TheatreWorks’ director of New Works) Kent Nicholson, and then she flew out to L.A. to record the demos with me.”

Gordon says he wrote the character of Emma with Dobbs in mind.

“She has the right presence, spirit and intelligence for a role such as Emma,” Gordon says. “It’s hard to find actresses who sing well and act well. Lianne personifies the idea of Emma, and she’s such a great musician with a wonderfully trained ear. She cares deeply about the character, and that really helps me.”

Emma hits the stage only a few weeks after another Austen-themed project, Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway as the British writer, hit movie screens. hardly a year goes by, it seems, without popular culture rummaging through Austen’s collected works.

“The timing is good for us, but it’s certainly not planned,” Gordon says. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this resurgence of love for Austen’s brilliant work will help the journey of this show. Our goal is to try and live up to Jane Austen’s vision. She set the bar pretty high. I respect that and want to do right by her.”

Another project close to Gordon’s heart is the Web site indiEclectic.com, an attempt to shine the spotlight on singers and songwriters who, in Gordon’s opinion, aren’t receiving the kind of exposure they should in th emusic business and the mainstream media.

“I went to a bunch of singers and songwriters I know — one of the first was Alanis Morissette – and asked them to recommend 10 artists they love and that no one has ever heard of,” Gordon says. I went to Robbie Robertson and Jackson Browne and a bunch of people, and they were more than happy to share the music they really love, and those people in turn make recommendations and so on, and so on.”

The hope behind the site, Gordon says, is to try and find a way for the artists to support themselves — “we’re not expecting millionaires here” — to to allow the musicians to devote themselves to their music and find a way in this digital age to support other artists and create community.

In the near future, Gordon hopes the site will offer what he calls a “backstage pass,” which for about $20 or so, subscribers can download all the content on the site, which would be songs by 200 to 300 artists.

“The artists are really enthusiastic,” Gordon says. “They love the idea.”

Visitors to indieEclectic.com can search on Gordon’s name to come up with what he considers a decent introduction to his work. He recommends visitors take a listen to “Theme from Emma” (from his current project), “Secret of Happiness” (from another project with Jane Eyre collaborator John Caird based on Daddy Long Legs) and “Unholy Train” (a solo work that’s more of his pop music/singer-songwriter side).

Emma continues through Sept. 16 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, corner of Castro and Mercy streets, Mountain View. Tickets are $25 to $61. Call 650-903-6000 or visit www.theatreworks.org.

This is not — I repeat — not a review of The Joan Rivers Theatre Project at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre. Rivers and her crew are in town for a few weeks to workshop a new play, and reviews are not allowed.

The show had its unofficial opening Wednesday, and I will say this about the experience: I haven’t laughed so hard or so well in a long time.

I’m not going to talk about the show’s problems (at nearly two intermissionless hours, it’s about 20 minutes too long, the supporting characters are straight out of sitcom land, etc.) because that’s the whole point of performing in San Francisco — to do some major work on a brand-new piece of work.

But I am going to say that Rivers is extraordinary. At 74, she doesn’t need to be getting a new play on its feet, let alone a play she co-wrote (with Doug Bernstein and Denis Markell) and stars in. The admirable thing here is that Rivers wants to create a real play — with characters and a story arc — and not just do her usual stand-up routine.

To be sure, she gives her fans what they want. There’s an awful lot of stand-up material in here (some old, some new) when Rivers breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience. Rivers’ comedy has only gotten rougher and raunchier and funnier over the years. You really ought to hear her talk about aging and sex over 60. Unbelievably funny stuff. And yes, she talks about her plastic surgery (she estimates she has spent upwards of $150,000 on procedures), and she talks frankly about ageism in show business.

There’s a spirit to this show — of survival, of finding your bliss, of proving the world wrong — that goes beyond comedy, and as the show develops, this aspect is certain to become as powerful as the jokes.

Rivers and director Mark Rucker are doing an interesting thing during the San Francisco run. They’re inviting the audience to stay after the show and offer feedback directly to Rivers about what worked and what didn’t in the show. At Wednesday’s show, the audience was pretty evenly divided about whether or not they thought the show should be solo or with the other actors. Some felt Rivers’ story was strong enough to stand on its own, while others appreciated the interaction with other people (which differentiates the show from other celeb tell-alls).

Rivers deserves a big, fat hit at this point in her storied career. Enough with the ups and downs. Time for audiences to start celebrating her comic genius and the fact that she’s every bit as funny as she was when she started more than 40 years ago.

For information about The Joan Rivers Theatre Project, which runs through Sept. 2, visit www.magictheatre.org.

If you’re not reading Rivers’ daily blog, you should be. She writes a lot about the development of her play: Joan Rivers Blog.

The Associated Press is reporting that Xanadu, the surprise hit Broadway musical version of the wretched 1980 movie of the same name, will begin its tour next summer in San Francisco.

Stay tuned for more details…