In Legally Blonde, Orfeh, who's stunningly, legally blonde, and the tall, handsome Andy Karl play the irresistible "trailer trash," hopelessly-in-love manicurist, Paulette Bonafonte and the object of her manicured, pedicured lust, Kyle, the UPS guy. Their onstage chemistry is as strong as their offstage chemistry.

The ever-dependable Brian Murray, one of the hardest and always-working actor/directors in the business, is back onstage after a two-year absence. He's playing Scotland Yard Inspector Rough in the Irish Repertory Theater's revival of Angel Street, now known as "Gaslight.

The play is a dark drama about a husband with a mysterious past, who, believing his new wife is being unfaithful, submits her to psychological abuse and manipulative dominance that brings her to the brink of a nervous breakdown.

We're forever hearing about the many loves and marriages
among Hollywood stars, but Dallas
has its share of stage romances, and three of them have played out over the
years on the stages of Theater Three.

 Actors' Equity was one of the first unions to stand up against "Jm Crow."

In 1944, the union created a committee to assist minority actors turned away on the road from segregated hotels. Jose Ferrer, who co-starred with Paul Robeson in Othello on Broadway, was outraged by segregation and announced he'd never perform in front of a segregated audience.

Christina Aguilera, Stevie Wonder, Ricky Martin and Michael Bolton have sold millions of records with his songs, making him one of the most prosperous of all theatrical lyric writers. But David Zippel says that his name is still just an answer to a trivia question. He modestly recalls that, when a revue of his songs, "It's Better With a Band," opened, he couldn't even afford a band, and the show used only a piano.

No, I didn't get nominated for a Tony Award as Leading Actress in a Musical, laughed Miss Margaret Whiting, the legendary hitmaker and saloon singer. In fact, I didn't get nominated for a damn thing from any of the awards. Nor did I expect to. And it's not that she doesn't deserve a few nominations. Here's a broad, and she doesn't mind being called one!, who has done it all and done it all memorably. Yes, I have, she says with a howl of laughter, and lived to tell about it.

Mary Louise Wilson, after years of playing showy featured roles in musicals and plays, finally has a starring role: fashion doyen Diana Vreeland in Full Gallop. "And," she quips, "I had to write it myself!" Her one-woman show was six years in the works -- originating in Sag Harbor, NY, followed by a successful Manhattan Theater Club run before moving to the Westside Theater (43rd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues). "The hardest thing was to write and then perform it," said Wilson. "I'd often said to friends, 'Let's write a show.' Mark Hampton took me seriously.

When I was planning a trip to New York to visit playwright Doug Wright, I asked him for some restaurant recommendations. The places he recommended turned out to be not at all where you'd expect an Off-Broadway playwright to eat. My wife and I checked out several of them and none of them were cheap.

Is Jerry Zaks the most beloved director in the history of modern theater? Well, he is if the accolades heaped upon him by such stars as Nathan Lane, Richard Dreyfuss, Kristin Chenoweth and Lewis J. Stadlen at the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life gala (held December 2003), which also honored Tovah Feldshuh, the award-winning and acclaimed star of Golda's Balcony] are any indication. It was a love fest for the three-time Tony Award winner, who obviously has as much of a devilish sense of humor as those who were "roasting" him.

Written 2,700 years ago, Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey" remains arguably the greatest most fantastical tale of all time for the armchair adventurer. Adapter-director Mary Zimmerman agrees. And that is why she has taken the 12,000 lines of verse, which would take 12 to 13 hours to read in one sitting, and put the romance, sea voyage, ship-wreck, seduction, and supernatural doings into one theatrical package lasting a little more than three hours.

 It's your last chance to catch one of the stand-out gay-themed productions in this season of numerous gay-themed shows, Joseph and David Zellnik's Yank! A WWII Love Story, Lortel nominated for Outstanding Musical - at the York Theater Company's Saint Peter's home. (Lexington and East 54th Street). It's been one of the company's biggest box office bonanzas but finally must close on Sunday.

 An economic downturn, rampant unemployment, home mortagemania, terrorist plots, and a drop in tourism must have happened in a Dallas-type dream. It certainly hasn't affected theater attendance with Broadway and Off Broadway boasting their best season yet.

Style is a funny thing with writers, often portrayed as the opposite of substance, as though the two can't happily co-exist. One could argue - and one will - that the style of a David Mamet play is its substance; imagine his work without the staccato chatter, the pauses, the repetition, the doubling-back fragments, the New York-infused vulgarity sweetened with a drop of Los Angeles gloss. His characters talk fast, think fast, and invariably all sound the same. A Mamet play remains an exercise in speed. Speed, I believe Mamet would say, kills.

MILLER: Last year, I did Joseph [and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat] at the Arkansas Rep for a long stint, and I did 42nd Street at Goodspeed and on tour. I didn't sleep in my own bed at all last year. I was supposed to go into Joseph in London, but then the show closed. I was really upset, because that's another one of my dream roles, so I'm glad to get to do it in Little Rock.

 "I have to say, I'm happy The Addams Family and a few other shows that got bad reviews are selling out week after week. I love it when people ignore the critics and just go see what they want to see."

As you might imagine, I was taken aback when a friend of mine expressed this sentiment, especially because he works in the theater industry. It's not unusual to hear regular theatergoers badmouth the critics, but when people in the business do so, it gives me pause.

  "Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical" by Charlotte Greenspan [Oxford University Press, Broadway Legacy Series; 298 pages; 16 pages of vintage photos; Index, Song index, 17-page section of source notes; SRP $28] is a lively biography of one of the most prolific and pioneering lyricists in American popular music history.

THE BEST AND WORST OF 1993

Editor's Note: This look at the best and worst New York productions of 1993 was the cover story for the December 23, 1993 issue of Performing Arts Insider.

THE BEST

1. Angels in America
It took both parts of this epic to convince me, but so much of Tony Kushner's fantasia is fantastic, Angels dwarfs nearly everything else around, not because of the scope, but because of its power. And Ron Leibman's Roy Cohn is the kind of miracle we'll tell our kids about.

 Men of Broadway

It's springtime in New York City, and gala benefits are coming at us fast and furious. One that should definitely be on your calendar is "The Broadway Beauty Pageant," an annual event in support of the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and other services for homeless LGBT youth. The 2010 edition of this all-male pageant will be held on Monday evening, April 19, 2010, at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway at 95th Street).

Playwright Lucy Prebble, about to turn 30, says she didn't want to write a conventional docudrama about how tangled finances, superegos, and greed brought down an American energy giant. "I collaborated with Rupert [Goold, an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare as well as Headlong's A.D.] to shape a hyper-theatrical event."