If there’s one thing Hecklerspray thoroughly enjoys, it’s necking with the various plant life naturally inhabiting Puerto Rico. Sure – you may think that sounds weird but that’s just because you’ve never seen one of their shrubs in a bikini. You should go in the late spring – that’s when things are particularly leafy.

If there’s another thing we love it’s watching Broadway shows written by heavy-set senior citizens who carry guns through airport metal detectors and then fake dismay when TSA declines them that privilege.

Lucky for us, then, that Jerry Lewis is bringing his Nutty Professor movie to Broadway.

Jerry Lewis is going to turn the Nutty Professor into a Broadway musical. He likely takes the task quite seriously because he knows there’s gotta be at least enough good source material for Eddie Murphy to remake it in 30 years time.

We’ve yet to see the script, but there are a couple of things we feel secure in predicting as definite inclusions. The first, of course, being that any effeminite male-characters are definitely gonna know how to read – lesson learned, eh Jerr? Secondly – you can feel free to bring a gun to the show so long as you don’t try to use it at the overpriced snack bar. The last thing you’re sure to see present on opening night is all the actors looking quite confused as they appear to fake a heart attack in a director’s chair off the cuff.

That’s just what happens when the guy sitting there is older than Moses.

That’s right – Lewis is directing. Playbill News has the scoop:

“Marvin Hamlisch and Rupert Holmes will write the songs, and legendary actor, director, writer and producer Jerry Lewis will make his theatrical directorial debut with the new Broadway musical, The Nutty Professor, based on the 1963 film that Lewis starred in and co-wrote.”

When asked how excited he was to direct on Broadway, Lewis mumbled something about misplacing his bottom teeth, and then he turned up his TV set to an unearthly volume and held up one of those old-timey hearing-cones to his ear.

That’s more of an approximation than a quote. Here’s a quote:

“I was born with show business in my blood and working on Broadway gets it coursing through my veins like no other place can. Marvin and Rupert have given one of my favorite and most enduring films…a hilarious and gorgeous adaptation for Broadway and I could not be happier. Does this story sing and dance? You bet it does.”

If you are planning to attend on opening night – don’t bother. We feel like telling you he’s filling the seats with kids who suffer from that disease he always tries to fight. What is it again? The pumpkin flu?

So unless you want to get really sick and die from something with no known cure – don’t go that night.

Really you can go. We made up the sick-kids bit.

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Here’s a killer pitch for you. James Bond and Wolverine team up to fight crime together. Sounds good, huh?

Wait, we’re not finished. James Bond and Wolverine team up to fight crime together… within the strict confines of the law. And nobody kills anyone. And nothing explodes. And there’s probably a lot of crying. And it’s not even a film, it’s a play. God, we take it all back. This is a rubbish pitch.

But it’s going to happen. Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are going to star in that exact play on Broadway. Not James Bond and Wolverine. Sorry.

Right now, both Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are at the top of their powers. Daniel Craig has transformed James Bond from an entertainingly suave spy into a nightclub bouncer who punches stuff for a living, and Hugh Jackman has transformed Wolverine from an entertainingly wisecracking superhero to a wimp who can’t go any longer than four seconds without dropping to his knees and shouting “Nooooo!” at the sky. They’re both remarkable achievements.

So what’s next for them? Why, isn’t it obvious? It’s the theatre. After all, the theatre is where stars of the big screen go to reconnect with their craft, slowly realise that they get more money and better food on films and then pretend that they’re dying of a sushi overdose so that they can cut their run short and bolt off back to Hollywood. Or, if they’re uncomfortably young, it’s where they can get their genitals out night after night.

And best of all, Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are doing it together, as AP reports:

Nothing has been officially confirmed but two of Hollywood’s reigning hunks may be paired next fall on Broadway in “A Steady Rain,” a two-character drama by Keith Huff. The actors are set to star in the play about two Chicago policemen, friends since childhood, whose lives take divergent paths after an unnerving incident. The Chicago Tribune called the play an “exceptionally rich, gritty and emotional drama.”

We’ve got high hopes for A Steady Rain. The combination of Hugh Jackman’s tested Broadway popularity and the instinctive masculinity of Daniel Craig coming together in a haunting play by an exciting new playwright promises to provide audiences with a night of electrifying intensity. In particular, we’re looking forward to seeing the songs This Steady Rain Has Got Me Moist, (I’ll Show You My) Warrant To Boogie and I Killed And Ate My Vietnamese Nephew Because I’m A Cannibalistic Serial Killer, which – SPOILER ALERT – is performed from inside an enchanted flying car.

So good luck to Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman. We hope that A Steady Rain runs and runs and runs. Admittedly that’s because Wolverine and the last James Bond film were so terrible that we’d like for neither of them to ever star in another film ever again, but shut up.

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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.

Last night, that’s what the world got – Katie Holmes made her Broadway debut in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. It’s a big career move for her – we’ll no longer see Katie Holmes as Tom Cruise’s wife, but as Tom Cruise’s wife who Tom Cruise occasionally lets star in plays so long as she promises to never get more famous than him.

All My Sons is, of course, a harsh critique of the American dream and an examination of culpability in the face of death. Or at least it was – we hear that Tom Cruise was at dress rehearsal last night, and as a result the finished play has got more atomic bombs and volcanoes and evil alien overlords in it. Plus the Katie Holmes character is now locked in something called a ‘Thetan Cage’ for the entire play. We don’t know why that is.

TV acting, film acting and stage acting are three very different disciplines and, now that Katie Holmes has managed to do all three, she’ll be able realise that stage acting is the most real. There are no hiding places, there’s an audience who will react to your every word and there’s enough repetition for you to explore the subtleties of your character.

Plus you can totally crawl out of your dressing room window and escape your lunatic controlling husband and his preposterous religious beliefs. If you have one, that is. Katie Holmes doesn’t, so she doesn’t have to worry.

Anyway, Katie Holmes will know this because her Broadway run of All My Sons opened in Broadway last night. Yes, technically we know that the play opened last month, but that was only for previews. Now it’s really open, so the world can really get to see what Katie Holmes is about, in her starring role as the girlfriend of a man whose father is the man who the play is really about. It literally doesn’t get any bigger than that.

But forget the play, because we want to know how Katie Holmes manages to juggle so many things at once, like having a minor role in an old play and being a mother and joylessly tramping around behind Tom Cruise in a pair of sunglasses all the time and trying to be friends with someone as pointless as Victoria Beckham.

But we must be the only ones, because People magazine had a quick Q&A with Katie Holmes directly after her performance about what was perhaps the most important and challenging theme of Arthur Miller’s play:

PEOPLE: Is it difficult balancing your theater work with being a mom?
KH: It’s a great schedule, because [Suri and I] get to spend the whole day together and then I go and do the play. Then I come home and we play some more!

PEOPLE: And Suri had her own dressing room at the theater?
KH: Yeah, we have a dressing room that is transformed into a playroom. It has a little piano.

Did you hear that noise? That was your mind blowing up.

However, Katie Holmes must have also been fairly excited ahead of her debut in All My Sons – not only would it teach her critics once and for all that she was an actress to contend with, but it’d also give her plenty of chances to blink out ‘HELP ME HELP ME HE KEEPS ME LOCKED IN A CAGE HELP ME’ in Morse code to a room of understanding strangers every night.

But, of course, Katie Holmes’ Broadway debut was also exciting for the members of anti-Scientology group Anonymous, who decided to bring down Scientology once and for all by getting about 20 people to stand outside the theatre holding some signs in a sort of semi-apologetic way. Yeah, take that, Scientology.

It’s hard to think of Katie Holmes as an actress these days, much less the actress who was once in Dawson’s Creek. Maybe that’s because she’s single-handedly been the worst thing in the – already mostly pretty terrible – films that she’s starred in lately, or maybe it’s because she seems to have given up acting for a life of glumly trudging three paces behind Tom Cruise with a weird boy’s haircut and her boobs taped down.

But either way, Katie Holmes recently realised that she needed to reassert her acting credentials and – having formally submitted the appropriate forms in triplicate to Tom Cruise’s Fresh Air Allowance clerk beforehand – was granted the temporary right to leave her hermetic dungeon on a regular basis to go and act in an Arthur Miller play.

It seemed so perfect at the time – nothing shows the public that an actor is serious about their craft like starring in an Arthur Miller play, the superb cast could take the strain if Katie Holmes ended up blowing, and Katie would get a few hours away from Tom Cruise marching up and down in his little Nazi eyepatch every night.

However, Katie Holmes hadn’t accounted for one thing – the thousands and thousands of anti-Scientologist protesters who’d blight her every move. Anonymous had long threatened to protest outside the opening night of All My Sons last night and, boy oh boy, did they ever come out in force to pour scorn on the Scientologists.

No, really, did they? Hardly any protesters turned up, you see, and we’re not sure if that was enough to pour scorn on anything, really. Especially if they keep excusing themselves as feebly as E! Online reports that they did:

More than two dozen protesters from the anti-Scientology group Anonymous joined the throng Thursday outside New York’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. “We are not boycotting Katie, we are not boycotting the play, we are protesting Scientology,” a member of the group shouted. “It is evil. Scientology kills people. It follows you home at night. It is perverted.”

That’s it? A couple of people dressed up like Agent Smith in V For Vendetta comparing Scientology to Buffalo Bill from The Silence Of The Lambs? Why not go the whole hog and say that Scientology dances around to Goodbye Horses with its pecker tucked between its legs to make it look more like a lady? Huh? Huh, Anonymous? Why don’t you do that next time, yeah?

We’re just a little bitter because it seems like such a wasted opportunity for a protest. Diversify or die, that’s the way to go. Stand around with a couple of placards forever and you’ll end up like the bloke who stands outside the Houses Of Parliament with the display about the Iraq war that everyone pretends they can’t see. And what’s the point of that?

We just thought that the protest against Katie Holmes and Scientology was a bit artless. Why stand around outside shouting when you could gather everyone together, make them buy tickets for a performance of All My Sons and then silently sit in the theatre so that Katie Holmes has to perform to nothing but an unresponsive wall of V For Vendetta masks?

We’re just saying…

She did manage to escape to the other side of the US ‘to be in a Broadway show’, as the official story put it – we know that was just a cover, and we urged Katie to run for her Creeking life. But it would seem her cover of ‘I have a job over there’ didn’t hold water with hubby Tom Cruise, and the fat bald one from Tropic Thunder has re-stamped his authority on Katie Holmes.

We tried to save her, we really did, but for some people there’s just no way around it. She’s consigned herself to a lifetime of being lead around by a dwarf, as she allowed the Cruiser to fly all the way across the country just to walk her to work.

Why didn’t you run, Katie? Why?

Aside from the initial escape to New York City, Holmes got all of our hopes up by not turning up at the Scientology Celebrity Centre’s 39th Anniversary Gala in a move of what looked to be defiance. This turned out to be a letdown, as she then went on to walk arm in arm with Cruise at the premiere of Tropic Thunder, thus quashing our hopes that she was hiding from the tiny Sleeper-Scientology man.

Maybe she still is – maybe she sent a robot out to pose with him. It’s not like she needs it to look as if it has life behind those robo-eyes now, is it? Katie Holmes doesn’t exactly forge herself a career of public appearances looking happy and alive – more fearful and machine-like. In fact, we’ve just figured it out, right this very second: she’s a robot! We, hecklerspray, are excellent detectives.

But the plan seems to have backfired, and the Katiebot was such a perfect copy that Tom Cruise now feels the need to follow it all over the country, thus putting the real Katie Holmes‘ hiding place in jeopardy. You should have run away when we told you to – really, you should.

While walking robo-Katie to ‘work’, as she called it, Cruise was apparently accosted by some builders. While the official story is that they tried to ask for autographs, we find that hard to believe. Nevertheless, OK! magazine reported:

“Some construction workers asked for a picture, but Tom politely said, ‘Sorry guys, I can’t stop. I’m walking my wife to work. She’s got rehearsals to get to.’”

Rehearsals – or a recharge point?!

Maybe we have stretched the analogy/accusation a little bit too far now, but the fact remains that Katie Holmes – robot or no – failed to escape from Tom Cruise properly. She had the chance to leg it and she failed, allowing Tom to take a late night flight across the country to walk her to work/make sure she isn’t walking around wearing a sandwich board that says ‘Scientology Is For Tiny Idiots’.

She’s losing the game, frankly.

For the first time in what seems like an ice age, Katie has escaped the clutches of everybody’s favourite evil Nazi, Tom Cruise. Scampering away to New York City with daughter Suri in tow, Holmes was free to roam as she saw fit, without the watchful eye of the Cruiser looking over her shoulder.

The official story behind her visit to NYC is that Katie Holmes is about to star in the Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons – but we know better. It’s an escape ploy from Katie – she’s clearly running back to the Creek: the one place she can feel truly safe from Maverick and his Scientology cronies.

Katie’s plan to flee from her Cruise-shaped captor had seen only two distinct steps: first she got the role in the aforementioned play, then she landed herself a cameo in some TV show that no one knows anything about.

By disguising herself to look like some kind of pixie-boy and finally escaping via helicopter to New York, Katie has enacted steps three and four of the epic plan of escape – sure to leave even someone with the keen magical senses of Tom Cruise (though he still can’t keep pizzas warm – the berk!) befuddled as to where she could have gone.

Though, to be fair, he will know where she is, as she’ll have set times to appear on stage. Hmm. Should have thought this through more carefully, Katie. And that’s not even taking into account the legions of Scientology spies that exist through the world – we all saw the Panorama documentary on it, we all know they exist.

But in what could well be the ultimate show of defiance in the face of her husband and his thetan chums, Katie decided against attending The Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre 39th Anniversary Gala – surely a massive slap in the face of the religion? And to make matters worse, what did she do instead of attending the annual shebang?

Katie Holmes took her daughter to see The Little Mermaid and Mary Poppins. That’s some textbook defiance right there.

Unfortunately it does look like Katie isn’t actually trying to escape any clutches – evil or otherwise – and is instead simply in another part of America to her husband. While we do like to both wildly speculate whilst at the same time encourage the poor girl to leg it as fast as she can, we can’t provide any actual facts backing up the claims that she is, in fact, doing a runner.

And, of course, you can prove anything with facts (copyright Stewart Lee).

We can, however, continue to encourage Katie Holmes to escape the clammy embrace of Tom Cruise and Scientology for her own good. Maybe then she’d get some life back into her eyes.

You know – those things on her face that look so, so dead.

He’s successfully divorced himself from a woman who at least temporarily thought she was the devil, he’s recently gained full custody of the children he helped make with fluid that just bursts out of him sometimes, and most importantly he’s no longer obligated to play the role of Elle Woods in the upcoming Legally Blonde musical that he only just got fired from.

We think he was an understudy.

We don’t really think that. He was going to be in the thing though – in three bit roles. But then he started making all sorts of lengthy demands and the producers just had it, so they told him to stick it where the sun don’t shine in three verses and a gorgeously-rhymed chorus.

To be clear, we have no idea if Kevin Federline’s firing included a song & dance number – but he did get fired. Apparently, you see, at some point someone thought he’d make a brilliant addition to the cast of Legally Blonde the Musical. He was given three small roles – including a UPS man, a ten-foot alligator and a resurrected Michael Landon. (Landon’s heavenly self pops in as a surprise witness to help Woods clinch her big case).

We don’t know that either. Technically, the only thing we really know is what we’ve read on Star:

“Kevin Federline’s dream of becoming a Broadway star has been shattered! Britney Spears’ ex, 30, thought he had it made when producers of Legally Blonde approached him about making his theater debut in September. But now he’s back to square one. “The producers gave Kevin his walking papers,” an insider tells Star. “Kevin was acting like a Broadway diva, and he hasn’t even stepped on to the stage yet!”

Financially speaking, you still don’t have to worry about the Fed. We’ve heard he has plans to return to his job of licking strawberry frosting off the necks of middle-aged women for money, and then applying glitter on the spots where his tongue made their skin wet.

He hasn’t sunken that far yet. It’s a shame Broadway didn’t work out for him though. He’s already stretched his acting chops on one of those CSI shows, and his one fast food commercial got him universal accolades from universalaccolades.com.

And to get one of those things it costs more than just the $7.99 fee. You also have to pay postage if you want the certificate.

We know because we’ve done business with them on several occassions.

And by a few people we mean everyone on planet Earth, and most of the aliens on planet Xenu.

But everyone should just shut up and leave them alone. Katie is a strong, free woman making brilliant career moves. She turned down the Batman sequel to do Mad Money with Queen Latifah, and now it looks as if she’s signed on for Broadway.

This is exciting news for Katie. Not only will she be able pursue new career venues, but the boundaries on her electric shock collar is said to include the Starbucks next to the theatre. Hello, Paul McCartney compilation CD!

We’ve just heard the exciting news about Katie Holmes signing on for the Broadway adaptation of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons for the role of Ann Deever, and we’re just tickled pink for several reasons:

1) It broadens her career base.

2) She may get to wear an eye patch and old timey pants with saddle bag looking pouches like her husband Tom Cruise does in the upcoming film Valkyrie.

3) It keeps her away from making any other utterly craptastic movies like Mad Money, with tag lines like “they’re having the crime of their lives”. Oh, wait… we get it! They’re put crime of their lives as opposed to time of their lives. Oh, that is rich!

But we can’t claim all of the excitement for Katie’s stage debut. The play’s producer, Eric Falkenstein, said some stuff about it, too:

“Katie is very well suited for the role of Ann. There is an additional layer of soul to Ann and from the work I’ve seen of Katie, she has always impressed with multi-faceted characters. She would nail it.”

Spot on, producer Eric Falkenstein. Spot on. As everyone knows, ‘multi-faceted’ is synonymous in showbusiness with ‘starring in blockbuster movies like Batman Begins and managing to not totally ruin the bloody thing’.

Plus, that additional layer of soul will come in handy for scene two in the second act of the play when the lights dim, a disco ball is lowered and the cast gathers on a rotating round bed for a soulful rendition of Sexual Healing.

We wish Katie the best of luck with the play, which is scheduled to preview in September. Stage performance requires overstated facial expressions and over-the-top displays of emotion.

Perhaps she could refer to every single photograph, video, and audio clip of every public appearance of herself and her husband over the past two years for a smidgen of inspiration.

Read more:

Katie Holmes Heads To Broadway – OK

So today should be like Christmas for them, because Daniel Radcliffe – who, as Harry Potter, is basically King Child Star – has announced that he’s taking his production of Equus to America, where it will play in Broadway from September.

Equus. You know. Equus. The play that explores the ethical ambiguity of free will versus the enforced conventions of societal normality as laid out by the Bible and psychiatric practices. The play that, through the unique on-stage seating plan, forces the audience to confront notions of voyeurism and artifice for themselves. Oh, alright – the play where Harry Potter gets his penis out, waggles it around and then stabs a bunch of horses in the eye. Happy now?

Look out New York, Harry Potter’s naked penis is coming to enslave your city. Sure, you think the idea of looking at Harry Potter’s penis is kind of fun and silly now, but just you wait – after 15 seconds of watching Harry Potter’s gently-undulating ballsack you’ll be hypnotised and completely under his power. So don’t come running to us when you wake up the following morning and can’t work out why one of your eye sockets smells like wizard testicle.

Which we suppose is the most graceful way we could think of to tell you that Daniel Radcliffe is taking his hugely successful Equus run to Broadway later this year. Yes, soon even Americans will be able to experience the disquieting psychological onslaught of a play about a boy who stabs horses in the eye and makes a doctor dream that he’s ripping the hearts out of hundreds of crying children while dressed in a golden priest’s mask.

But let’s dispense with any talk of the actual play, because Equus will be a draw for one thing only – Harry Potter’s naked penis. It was Harry Potter’s naked penis that made Equus a success in Britain and it’s what’ll make Americans go and see it too. The Associated Press reports:

Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the “Harry Potter” movies, will make his Broadway debut on Sept. 5, playing the disturbed stable boy in a revival of Peter Shaffer’s play, “Equus,” it was announced Tuesday. “Equus” begins previews Sept. 5 for a limited 22-week run at the Broadhurst Theatre. The play opens Sept. 25-Feb. 8, 2009. Thea Sharrock directs.

Already plans are afoot to make everyone in New York sure that they know all about Harry Potter’s naked penis. There’ll the be obligatory late night talk show interviews, plus heavy coverage in the press and – if all goes according to plan – Daniel Radcliffe will announce his entrance into New York by smacking the head off the Statue Of Liberty like the Cloverfield monster. With one of his bollocks.

And we’re sure that Harry Potter’s naked penis will be quickly accepted into the New York theatrical community. Let’s not forget that New York is a city that loves public nudity – Lindsay Lohan didn’t get naked in New York magazine for nothing, you know – and there’s nothing more erotic than a young man stripping off at the behest of a non-existent equine deity, as the city’s cavalcade of Hot Teen Boy & Berserk Imaginary Horse God cock bars will attest.

Yes, Harry Potter’s naked penis, you will do well there.

Read more:

Radcliffe to Make B’way Debut in Fall – AP