TV and stage star Jason Alexander (pictured above) will be starring in a reading of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple opposite Martin Short, at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles as part of the Reprise! Broadway’s Best series. Widely known for his work on TV’s Seinfeld, Alexander made his Broadway debut in the original cast of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along back in 1981. He later appeared opposite Chita and Liza in The Rink, and won a Tony award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Both Alexander and Short starred in the Los Angeles production of The Producers.

Speaking of The Producers, a touring production of the musical will be playing UB’s Center for the Arts on January 25 and 26. Later in the spring, the Center for the Arts will be presenting the musical Evita.

Nathan Lane is back on Broadway starring in David Mamet’s new play November. Lane’s standby is Richard Kline who was last seen at Studio Arena in Don’t Talk to the Actors. Buffalo’s Greg Stuhr is also in the company, being the standby for two other lead roles. Stuhr last appeared on Broadway in the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The musical, which opened on Broadway in April in May 2005, and won the Tony award for Best Book of a Musical, is set to close next January 20. Incidentally, the touring production arrives at Shea’s next week.

Doug Zschiegner, Associate Director of Niagara University Theatre, will be playing Atticus Finch in the upcoming Road Less Traveled production of To Kill a Mockingbird, which begins performances at Studio Arena on January 29th. The production will also feature NU senior (and Zschiegner’s student) Mayella Ewell. The role of Scout will be played by Faith Sheehan.

Maggie Zindle, Kelly Beuth and Joy Scime will star in the upcoming production of Frank Canino’s The Angelina Project, which will be presented by Theatre Plus at the Alleyway Theatre, January 31-February 16. The production will also feature Megan Townsend, Annette Daniels Taylor, Thomas LaChiusa, Kate Olena and Hugh Davis.

Rumor has it that the fabulous Catherine Eaton, who recently appeared in A Moon for the Misbegotten and Corsetless for the Irish Classical Theatre Company, might return in the 2008-09 season to star in Hedda Gabler.

Artpark will be holding auditions for its production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast February 1 and 2. Among those being sought, “a strong female or male gymnast, age 16 or older and with the ability to tumble without a mat…to play the role of Carpet.” Beauty and the Beast closed on Broadway last July (it opened in April 1994), to make room for Disney’s newest stage project The Little Mermaid, which opens this week. The Artpark production of Beauty is scheduled to open August 14, under the direction of Randy Kramer.

Manny Fried, who turns 95 in March, will receive the Knox Lifetime Achievement Award at the Annual Arts Council Luncheon which will take place on March 14 at the Statler.

2007 was a good year for Buffalo’s Jeffry Denman. He starred a couple of times in the musical Crazy for You at regional theaters; starred in the City Center’s Encores production of the 1932 Irving Berlin and Moss Hart musical, Face the Music; starred in and choreographed the new musical Yank! off-Broadway; reprised his performance in the musical White Christmas in Boston; and in September he became engaged to marry his White Christmas co-star Erin Crouch (pictured below). Congratulations! Denman will be appearing in an upcoming episode of Law & Order and will be heading to Houston in March to start working on a new Gershwin musical written by Ken Ludwig, who also wrote Crazy for You (which, by the way, was based on the Gershwin musical Girl Crazy).