Maureen Mcgovern

The launch of the national tour of the Broadway musical "Little Women," starring Maureen McGovern, scheduled to begin Tuesday at the Civic Theatre in San Diego, will now open on Sept. 2 because of a fire that occurred backstage at the theater in the early morning of Aug. 18. Some set pieces for the production were damaged in the fire, believed to have started when drapes were ignited by a halogen lamp backstage, said Joe Kobryner, Broadway/San Diego general manager.

"Santa Took the Subway" and "Don't Let Gramma Cook Christmas Dinner" aren't your traditional Christmas tunes, but they join 43 carols featured on a pair of holiday CDs to provide financial help to people with AIDS. Just released is "Cabaret Noel: A Broadway Cares Christmas," performed by 58 soloists and groups from New York and Los Angeles cabaret and musical theater to support Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS.

Maureen McGovern's performance at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Friday (where she appeared with the recently reviewed Joel Grey) may not have had Whitney Houston's contemporary stylishness or Barbra Streisand's legendary framing, but in terms of pure, gorgeously articulated, musically superb singing, it was as good as mainstream pop gets.

“The Book of Mormon” and “Once,” Broadway musicals that dominated the two most recent Tony Awards, will come to Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa during the three-venue complex's 2013-14 season. Bernadette Peters (Oct. 11) and Patti LuPone (March 22, 2014) are the season's top Broadway concert divas, each performing in Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis plays Segerstrom Concert Hall (March 14, 2014)

If you think Mel Torme's appearance with Maureen McGovern entitled "The Great American Songbook" is just another trip down Tin Pan Alley, think again. "We didn't want to do just another wonderful nostalgia show," the singer, arranger and author said last week in a phone interview from his home in Beverly Hills. "That would really bore me." Instead, says the 66-year-old vocalist, the program will embrace the entire spectrum, past to near-present, of the American pop tune.

* Dance. Donald Byrd's "Harlem Nutcracker" returns on Nov. 12 and 13 at 8 p.m., Nov. 14 at 2 and 8 p.m. and Nov. 15 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd. $25 to $45. (310) 825-2101. * Theater. The 1931 Gershwin musical satire "Of Thee I Sing," about a president in trouble over his love life, with Maureen McGovern and Gregory Harrison, will be presented by Reprise! Broadway's Best in Concert at UCLA, Freud Playhouse, Westwood. It opens Wednesday.

Sequels are all the rage in movies, so why not at concerts? That seemed to be the assumption when "Hollywood Dreams II," a follow-up to last year's program of movie music, was presented Friday and Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl. The idea worked well enough for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, conducted by John Mauceri, but not for Maureen McGovern, whose choice of movie songs would hardly have been less felicitous.

Theater Nancy Dussault, Davis Gaines, Dorian Harewood, Gregory Harrison, Dale Kristien, Michele Lee, Hal Linden, Maureen McGovern, Jennifer Paz and Jean Smart are only a handful of more than three dozen performers slated to appear in "A.B.C.--Adler, Bock & Coleman." The musical extravaganza, the 15th annual S.T.A.G.E. (Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event) AIDS benefit, pays tribute to Richard Adler, Jerry Bock and Cy Coleman. * Luckman Theatre, Cal State L.A., 5151 State University Drive.

The New American Orchestra celebrated its seventh anniversary Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with a program befitting the group's designed lack of musical direction. Drawing on its members' symphonic, jazz and pop backgrounds, the New American Orchestra, under the skillful direction of Jack Elliott, performed from all three of the musical genres and featured guest artists Maureen McGovern, Stan Getz and Ray Charles.