Broadway-Bound

FANFAIR

FROM SCREEN TO THEATER AND BACK AGAIN

Art has returned to what it knows best, imitating itself. Hollywood and Broadway have been feeding off each other for material to produce a new crop of theatrical productions certain to leave audiences asking one question; "Which version did you like better—the film or the play?"

Mel Brooks's stage adaptation of his 1968 film, The Producers, has grossed more than $204 million—proving that story lines and characters, with all their triumphs and blunders, can successfully translate from one medium to the other. Spamalot, the musical comedy written by Monty Python member Eric Idle, heads this spring's lineup as the most anticipated production to move from screen to stage. Director Mike Nichols brings the madness and the folly of Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the theater with a cast that includes Hank Azaria, Tim Curry, and David Hyde Pierce. Other marquee lights set to shine in Times Square are for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with John

Lithgow playing the con in the musical version; Steel Magnolias, featuring Delta Burke in the role Dolly Parton brought to life in the film; On Golden Pond, with Tony Award winners James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams taking on the Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn parts; and David Mamet's gritty Glengarry Glen Ross, with Alan Alda, Liev Schreiber, and Jeffrey Tambor leading the ensemble cast. (The latter two works, incidentally, debuted onstage before being made into films.)

In Hollywood, things have come full circle as well, as Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick team up again, in the Producers remake for Universal Pictures. Oscar-winning directors Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will re-create Hairspray with Harvey Fierstein. And Rosario Dawson joins Taye Diggs in Chris Columbus's adaptation of Rent.

CAROLYN BIELFELDT