Broadway New York City

It is a job that has defied the best and brightest of this city for decades, but local officials think they've finally found someone to clean up 42nd Street: Mickey Mouse and his friends at Walt Disney Co. With New York Gov. Mario Cuomo waxing poetic about Disney's role in restoring "old values," the Burbank-based entertainment giant on Wednesday confirmed plans to renovate and reopen the landmark New Amsterdam Theatre as a way to establish a permanent presence in the New York theater world.

Everywhere they turned, the career paths for Magic Johnson and Larry Bird crossed each other. They first met in the 1979 NCAA championship game between Michigan State and Indiana State. The players carried that rivalry to the NBA with the Lakers and Celtics. And each continuously tracked the other's progress as a way to measure his own. They initially hated each other. But then they loved each other, out of respect for their talents, their work ethic, their Midwestern roots.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani may have shuttered most of the porn joints around Times Square, but the hottest sex show in quite some time lands on Broadway on Nov. 27. "The Blue Room" comes with a much better pedigree, of course. David Hare has adapted this sophisticated sex comedy from Arthur Schnitzler's turn-of-the-century Viennese classic of lust and longing, "La Ronde." The brilliant young Sam Mendes has directed it.

They added four new songs, lined up a big theater and psyched up their backers. The producers of "Vanities, A New Musical," originally staged at the Pasadena Playhouse, then announced it was opening on Broadway in February. But three weeks later, on Dec. 5, the producers issued a second bulletin: The show would not go on during this winter of economic discontent. This is not a season for new Broadway shows that might make it.

THE Times Square rehearsal space is mostly bare, with only a door stoop mapped out on the otherwise empty stage. There eventually will be a minimal set, several lighting cues and a few sound effects and music. But when Chazz Palminteri launches the revival of his "A Bronx Tale" on Broadway, it will be almost all Palminteri and hardly anything else. When most little plays graduate from a 72-seat waiver house to a 947-seat auditorium on 48th Street, they collect all kinds of bells and whistles.

Broadway musicians, who staged a four-day strike in 2003 that cost New York City's economy about $10 million, agreed to a three-year contract with producers, both sides announced Tuesday. The contract requires producers to increase contributions to the musicians' health plan and expands the number of musicians eligible to participate. In return, musicians gave up two wage increases over the course of the deal.

"West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin's new play "The Farnsworth Invention" -- the filmmaker's first stage play since his 1989 New York hit, "A Few Good Men" -- will open on Broadway this year. An exploration of the controversial story behind the invention of television, "Farnsworth" was originally commissioned by Dublin's Abbey Theater and developed at the La Jolla Playhouse under departing artistic director Des McAnuff, who will direct the New York production for Dodger Theatricals ("Jersey Boys").

They added four new songs, lined up a big theater and psyched up their backers. The producers of "Vanities, A New Musical," originally staged at the Pasadena Playhouse, then announced it was opening on Broadway in February. But three weeks later, on Dec. 5, the producers issued a second bulletin: The show would not go on during this winter of economic discontent. This is not a season for new Broadway shows that might make it.

After a recent performance of the current Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's "Buried Child," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979, two audience members left arguing the play's merits. One man asserted it was a profound examination of how, when a new person comes into a family, secrets must be unearthed and re-sorted and reexplained if a new family is to be formed. The second man completely disagreed.

It's a Tony Award-winning Mel Brooks lyric: "The toast of society's burning tonight!" On Sunday night, no one in Broadway society glowed more brightly than Brooks, the main man behind the phenomenon, the colossus, the Mothra known as "The Producers." We've officially hit it. Hype-othetically speaking, we've hit the point where people on other planets have heard plenty about this show.

"Vanities, a New Musical," scheduled to open Feb. 26 on Broadway, has been delayed to later in the season. Lead producer Sue Frost attributed the postponement Friday to "this complicated economic time, which makes it very hard to support a new musical on Broadway." The show, directed by Judith Ivey and written by Jack Heifner with music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum, received a production at Pasadena Playhouse earlier this year. No new date has been set for the Broadway opening. -- Diane Haithman

"South Pacific" may be one of the most popular Broadway musicals ever -- with a Rodgers and Hammerstein score that includes "Some Enchanted Evening," "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame," "Bali Ha'i" and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair." But it's never had a Broadway revival. Now Lincoln Center Theater is bringing back the 1949 classic, with Kelli O'Hara as Nellie Forbush and opera baritone Paulo Szot as Emile de Becque.

NEW YORK -- For now, everything on Broadway is coming up roses. After a paralyzing 19-day strike that shut down 26 shows, long lines at the box offices this weekend have finally replaced picket lines. The Rialto is buzzing again, just in time for the holidays. "Broadway's Back!" boomed ads for a free performance Friday in the theater district by an array of stars, including Bernadette Peters, Angela Lansbury and others.

As the Broadway stagehands strike entered its 17th day, the two sides resumed talks Monday night, seeking common ground in a dispute that has temporarily shut down most of the plays and musicals in the theater district. After a marathon 20-hour session ended early Monday, negotiators met again in the evening at a Midtown law office and voiced optimism that a resolution could be reached soon. But there was no indication of when the crippling strike might end.

There was optimism Sunday night on Broadway as both sides in the stagehands strike returned to the bargaining table and said that a settlement might be imminent. "I think that we're going to be able to make a deal," Herschel Waxman, labor relations chief of the Nederlander Organization, told reporters as he arrived on the scene in the Midtown theater district. "I'm very optimistic. I think both sides will be smart."

The stagehands' strike in New York threw a monkey wrench into Broadway's fall season, darkening all but nine shows and leaving a slew of highly anticipated dramas, including Aaron Sorkin's "The Farnsworth Invention," Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County" and Conor McPherson's "The Seafarer," in a state of fretful limbo.

In a bid to keep five struggling Broadway shows running--following the announced closure of five others--members of the union representing stagehands agreed Wednesday to take an unprecedented 25% pay cut for the next four weeks. "Broadway is the guiding light of New York City. Psychologically and philosophically that would be devastating if Broadway went dark ...

Things were looking up, including box-office grosses, attendance and, yes, ticket prices, on Broadway in 2005. Spurred by strong-performing musicals and plays, Broadway grossed a record $825 million in 2005, a jump from $749 million in 2004, according to figures released this week by the League of American Theatres and Producers. Attendance also rose, climbing to 11.98 million for 39 shows, up from 11.33 million the previous calendar year, when 34 productions opened.

On one side of West 44th Street, in the heart of Times Square, festive crowds were pouring into two theaters for Saturday matinees. On the other side, a handful of pickets marched quietly in front of theaters that normally would be filled with audiences on a busy holiday weekend, but were now shuttered. As the Broadway stagehands strike entered its 15th day, the work stoppage had varying effects on a street that, more than any other, has come to symbolize New York's fabled theater district.

Talks to end the nine-day strike by Broadway stagehands broke off late Sunday evening, leaving the work stoppage unresolved and most of the Great White Way in the dark. Members of the striking union, Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and the League of American Theatres and Producers had begun the second day of their talks at 9:30 a.m. But late in the evening, the negotiations abruptly ended.