Broadway Headliners

What is going on here? I leave the country for 9 days and all of a sudden the theater community goes up in arms, and crazy things happen!

• There is yet another new tour cast of Rent launching the show in October, featuring two American Idol finalists. The first South African Idol winner, Heinz Winckler, will play Roger, and, I called this next one, Anwar Robinson from AI Season 4, will play Collins. I was in love with this guy and his voice when he was on the show, and I am really excited at the prospect of him playing Collins. Not to say that if I wanted to see Rent I wouldn't just go down to 41st & Broadway and walk into the Nederlander Theater. But you know what I mean.
• MTV will record and broadcast Legally Blonde on its network at the end of this month. I have mixed feelings about this. Of course I think it's great that the network is attempting to reach out to its young target audience in an attempt to get them interested in theater. But ultimately, I think this is predicting the downfall of the show. The tweeny audience is the show's target audience to begin with, and to make it so widely accessible to them on MTV, it may be harder to get an audience in. Judging from the Playbill attendence percentages from last week, now that school has started, attandance is way down all over Broadway, not just Legally Blonde, and that cannot bode well for the show. But I'm still excited to watch it, don't get me wrong!
• Speaking of Rent, Denise Van Outen, who co-hosted "Grease: You're The One That I Want," landed the role of Maureen in the newly re-invented Rent going up in London. Yeah, this is the newly orchestrated version of the show, updating it and giving it a "new" sound. 'Cause the current sound isn't new enough.