When an actor does a Broadway play, it’s either because they want to further their craft or because they can’t get movie work any more.

With that in mind, Jane Fonda – the woman last seen smugly screaming about how old she was on an advert for overpriced skin cream – has just agreed to do a Broadway play. We hear she’s going to further that craft like the son of a bitch it is.

The good news is that Jane Fonda has decided to star in 33 Variations, a play about a woman studying a waltz that Beethoven also studied. The bad news is that Jane Fonda isn’t starring in a belated stage adaptation of Barbarella because, what with Equus doing so well, it would have provided a nice overflow play for theatregoers interested in enduring a barrage of stomach-churningly inappropriate nudity.

We’re always hearing about how older actresses have a tough time getting decent roles in movies, and that seems to absolutely be the case with Jane Fonda. He last movie was the dreadful Lindsay Lohan film Georgia Rule last year and, without any new movies on the horizon for her, she’s regressed to the point that all she ever does is grumble about President Bush and swear like an angry docker on daytime TV.

That left Jane Fonda with only two options – firstly she could retire and live a happy life on the money she made from her Jane Fonda’s Workout Presents Fun House Fitness: The Swamp Stomp videos, or secondly she could go and do a play. Any play. Even if it’s a boring detective story where both the victim and perpetrator died almost 200 years ago and the crime was ‘mild fascination’. Variety reports:

Jane Fonda will topline an upcoming Broadway production of “33 Variations,” the latest play written and directed by Moises Kaufman… “Variations” centers on a musicologist (Fonda) investigating Beethoven’s seemingly inexplicable interest in another composer’s second-rate waltz, which inspired him to pen 33 variations on it.

That sounds excellent. No, really, it does. We’ve always wanted to watch a sort of version of Inspector Morse about an old woman studying tiny differences in the time structure of centuries-old pieces of music for hours at a time without any real emotional connection or satisfying conclusion. Yup, Jane Fonda has really done herself proud with this one.

Or maybe we’re writing 33 Variations off too quickly. After all, an elderly person studying something that seemingly has no relevance to their life does sound a little bit like The Da Vinci Code, and look how popular that was.

Bugger, we’ve just given away the ending, haven’t we? Jane Fonda turns out to be Jesus. Or the Mona Lisa. Or bloody Beethoven or something. Oh, we don’t know.