Broadway

How you doin', Broadway? Daytime talk-show host Wendy Williams announced Monday that she'll join the cast of the Tony-winning revival of "Chicago.” Williams will step in as corrupt key-wielding Matron Mama Morton, currently played by Christine Pedi, for a seven-week run starting June 25 at the Ambassador Theatre. Williams showed off her footwork as a short-lived contestant on “Dancing With the Stars" (she was dismissed during Week 2), but viewers have yet to hear her sing.

NEW YORK - Like world-class athletes, actors often measure their achievements by the degree of difficulty. Does a part require an unusual amount of range? An extraordinary number of man hours? Is it simply a matter of a chewy set of lines to get one's lips around? By all these standards, Alan Cumming would be an extreme-sports medalist. In a stage turn that will last nearly two hours, Cumming is set to play the part of Macbeth. Or, rather, the parts of Macbeth, as he tackles 15 roles from the Shakespearean tragedy, including the title character, Banquo, Duncan, Lady Macbeth and plenty of others (as well as, in a story that frames the performance, a disoriented mental patient reenacting the play)

“Matilda: The Musical,” the stage incarnation of Roald Dahl's famed storybook, made its Broadway debut Thursday at the Shubert Theatre. The London import, minted by the Royal Shakespeare Company, follows a troubled girl genius whose gifts are lost on her idiotic parents and a tyrannical boarding school headmistress played by British actor Bertie Carvel in drag. The musical, with a book by Dennis Kelly and a score by Australian comedian and composer Tim Minchin, features a kid-centric cast, including four girls who share the title (and telekinetic)

A fledgling rooftop drive-in theater in downtown Los Angeles - a recent cause celebre for urbanites - has landed safely on its wheels after getting booted from its home atop a parking structure in the historic core. To make way for a new skyscraper on Broadway, Electric Dusk Drive-In, where fans assemble in cars and lawn chairs to watch classic movies on a big inflatable screen, is moving to the site of another planned mega development on San Julian Street in the fashion district.

NEW YORK - The songs are among the most popular of the baby boom era - "My Girl," "I Want You Back," "Dancing in the Streets. " They may be the staple of oldies radio; they haven't been part of a big Broadway musical. Now "Motown: The Musical" is about to become this season's big bet on the drawing power of the jukebox. The show will tell the real story that "Dreamgirls" was merely based on: the life of producer Berry Gordy, a onetime boxer who founded the Motown record label and signed some of the decade's biggest R&B stars, including the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.

“Hands on a Hardbody,” the new musical about cash-strapped Texans competing for a truck, couldn't pick up speed on Broadway. Producers announced Monday that the show, which opened March 21 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York City, will close Saturday after 28 regular performances and dismal ticket sales. The production grossed $240,040 for eight shows last week -- or about 22% of its potential $1,071,968. Critics initially praised the pared-down production that featured an ensemble cast of 15 and a red Nissan.

NEW YORK - Cyndi Lauper, garlanded in enough jewelry to make the Queen of Sheba jealous, is wondering if she should add yet another bauble. "It's a whatchamacallit, like a Sicilian good luck charm. Whaddya think?" she asks a coterie of assistants buzzing around Sardi's restaurant in Manhattan preparing her for a photo shoot. "Less is more," someone pipes up. PHOTOS: Hollywood stars on stage Lauper fixes her with a self-aware gaze. "Look who you're talkin' to," she says.

Hollywood power couple Daniel Craig (a.k.a. James Bond) and Rachel Weisz (most recently in "Oz: The Great and Powerful") are to head to Broadway in the fall, costarring as husband and wife in Harold Pinter's "Betrayal. " Tony Award winner Mike Nichols is to direct the revival and Scott Rudin will produce, Rudin's office announced Friday. The production marks Craig's return to Broadway after the hugely successful "A Steady Rain," which costarred Hugh Jackman, in 2009. The Pinter play will be Weisz's Broadway debut, though she's no stranger to theater.

“Kinky Boots,” a new Broadway musical about a sole-saving drag queen, high-stepped Thursday night into the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. The musical features a score by '80s pop queen Cyndi Lauper - her first turn as a Broadway composer -- and a book by stage and screen's Harvey Fierstein. Based on the little-seen 2005 British film comedy of the same name, the show follows an unlikely partnership between struggling shoe-factory owner, Charlie (Stark Sands), and flashy drag queen, Lola (Billy Porter)

NEW YORK - Let the record show that on April 4, 2013, the night that "Kinky Boots" opened on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, drag officially became a commodity of the tourist masses. Female impersonation has long had mainstream appeal, but now even the campier tradition has been co-opted. "La Cage Aux Folles" proved that a man in a dress belting "I Am What I Am" could move straight theatergoers to tears. "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" showed that sparkly attired male disco divas traveling the outback on a bus could bring in audiences by the busload.