Jackson came closest to that figure when he raised $612,000 during his Boy From Oz run. “There have been several shows that have come close to that — Rent, Hairspray, The Producers,” said a jubilant Tom Viola, BC/EFA’s executive director. “Basically, when a show — it’s usually a musical — raises $250,000, that’s a tremendous success. The fact that Hugh and Daniel, in the fourth of six weeks of fund-raising, have raised a million dollars is incredible and really speaks to their extraordinary generosity and great good will.”

Among the items being hustled are posters for $300 and Playbills for $60 — both signed — that you can only get at the theatre. “They’re gracious enough to say, ‘Since we’re selling these here, we will not be signing autographs at the stage door,’ because they don’t want somebody to buy a Playbill for $60 and then have somebody else put a Playbill in front of them for nothing.” Also, Craig and Jackson will pose with members of the audience for photos backstage for $2,000 a piece.

But the piece de resistance is a variation on the sweat towels that Jackman peddle during The Boy From Oz: He and Craig literally sell the sleeveless t-shirts right off their backs that they wear under their shirts during the performance — “wife-beaters,” they’re called, after Stanley Kowalski. “They start the bidding at $1,000, saying each will sign their own t-shirt, and the winner will get both. What they have done literally at every performance is sell the t-shirt twice so if the final bid is, say, $4,500, they will ask the underbidder if he will match that, they will both sign each T-shirt. And then Broadway Cares gets twice the donation. They’ve gone for anywhere from $3,500 to, literally one night, $15,000 twice!”

Stars have been sweating for your money since Dec. 16, 1939. The day after “Gone With the Wind” world-premiere in Atlanta, a woman plopped down a pretty penny at the front desk of the Georgian Terrace Hotel for the room just vacated by Clark Gable. Her only stipulation was that the sheets not be changed.

— Harry Haun

Lambert, the former musical theatre performer who placed second in the most recent edition of “American Idol,” will sing the title song from his upcoming debut CD, which hits stores Nov. 23.

There’s no word from the network about what will constitute the touted “first look” of the movie “Nine.” We’ll wager, however, that it will be comparable to the extended trailer that ran during the finale of “Project Runway” on Thursday night, perhaps introduced by some of the movie’s high-profile stars.

The American Music Awards airs tonight – Sunday, Nov. 22 – on ABC at 8PM ET.

After two weeks of release, the TV show’s first soundtrack — “Glee: The Music, Volume 1″ — has been residing near the top of Billboard’s sales charts, coming fourth its opening week with sales of 113,000 copies and hanging tough in ninth place its second week with sales of 56,000 units.

Digital song downloads from the show remain hot, with the show placing 17 songs on iTunes’ Top 300 song list at press time: “Lean On Me” (20th), “Don’t Stand So Close to Me/Young Girl” (24th), “I’ll Stand By You” (33th), “Endless Love” (37th), “Defying Gravity” (60th), “Crush” (113th), “Dancing With Myself” (135th), “Proud Mary” (162nd), “Halo/Walking On Sunshine” (171th), “It’s My Life/Confessions, Pt. 2″ (173rd), “Defying Gravity” – Lea Michele Solo version (183rd), “You’re Having My Baby” (198th), “Don’t Stop Believin’” (212nd), “Sweet Caroline” (217th), “Somebody to Love” (248th), “Don’t Stop Believin’” – single version (252nd) and “I Say a Little Prayer” (263rd).

The show’s Nov. 25 episode, entitled “Hairography,” will feature the songs “Don’t Make Me Over,” “Imagine” and “True Colors.”

You can find the holiday schedules here:

Thanksgiving 2009 (Nov. 23-29)
Christmas 2009 (Dec. 21-27)
New Year’s 2009 (Dec. 28-Jan. 3)

– Matt Blank

Gore Verbinski, who helmed the first three installments, has sailed off in another direction.

Director Marshall sidestepped the subject of his next project at the mass press conference for “Nine,” but he confirmed to a few reporters that it would be, as rumored, “Pirates 4.”

“I’ve always wanted to do an all-stops-out adventure film like this because I loved them so much as a kid,” he said. “When this opportunity presented itself, I pounced.”

Two things he will not bring to the Depp romp — as he did to “Nine” — are more plot and characters. The two previous “Pirates” movies were criticized for being densely complicated. “If I don’t understand it, I can’t direct it,” Marshall said.

In the meantime, Marshall’s “Nine” hits theatres in a limited release starting Dec. 18.

— Harry Haun

The first 200 ticket holders to enter the Golden Theatre for the Nov. 27 matinee of Oleanna will receive a copy of the new paperback release of Mamet’s “The Wicked Son.” The provocative 2006 book is fully titled “The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews.”

Mamet’s divisive play Oleanna, starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, centers on a college professor locked in a power struggle with one of his female students. The Broadway engagement will conclude Jan. 3, 2010.

Visit Oleanna.

The musical, which played a tryout in London, arrived on Broadway at the Virginia Theatre in April 1988. Tony Award winner Betty Buckley, who had been seen in the 1976 film “Carrie,” took over the role of Margaret White, which had been played in London by veteran singer-actress Barbara Cook. The title role was played on both sides of the Atlantic by newcomer Linzi Hateley.

The $7 million Carrie closed on Broadway after playing only 16 previews and 5 performances.

(Click on each image below to enlarge.)

1988 Playbill

The title page

The cast list

Stars' headshots

Act I songlist

Act II songlist

It is no wonder the Public Theater (which co-produces the run with the McCarter Theater) has extended the engagement for an additional week. “The sales have been extraordinary,” Public Theater executive director Andrew D. Hamingson told Playbill.com. “Between incredible word of mouth and stellar notices, we are thrilled with the recognition that Tarell has received.”

McCraney’s collaborators, directors Tina Landau (who helms In the Red and Brown Water) and Robert O’Hara (who staged The Brothers Size and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet) also had praise for the ambitious writer who, incorporates his childhood experiences with myths passed down by family members.

Landau described working with McCraney as a radical new experience. “He possesses a well of wisdom that belies his age. He also has a clarity of vision, a confidence, which allows him to be utterly open and collaborative, contradictory as that sounds. Some playwrights are so attached to their one notion of how a thing should be – so afraid of other possibilities – that they close themselves to the wonderful chaos of the rehearsal room. Tarell embraces it.”

“I thought it was a bold and fresh and audacious voice,” O’Hara said of his first experience reading McCraney’s work. “The idea of putting characters we don’t usually see in the theatre, not only front and center but to form a trilogy of it was so ambitious and glorious on my first hearing of the entire piece.”

In addition to bringing his singular voice to the stage, McCraney also participated in the rehearsals of his plays in unique ways. Landau explains: “He gets up on the stage with the actors and becomes one of the ensemble. Until we get to run throughs, he can usually be found not behind a table taking notes but up on the floor with the actors, creating movement, and helping me define the play-world by being in it. In Red and Brown, which uses only buckets on stage, Tarell had his own dedicated bucket he worked with. The stage managers put a big piece of tape on it reading, ‘Tarell’s Bucket.’ When we did Wig Out!, there were three female characters called the Fates – a kind of Greek Chorus meets Girl Group – and in rehearsal Tarell would often be found on stage as the ‘Fourth Fate’ – and I mean, wearing his stiletto heels and all. I love working with Tarell because we’re not bound by any rigid roles; we simply go into a room and play together.”

The Brother/Sister Plays Part 1 & Part 2 run through Dec. 20 at the Public Theater.

For plays: A Steady Rain centers on two hardened Chicago cops who deal with issues of racism and tolerance on the beat and in their own lives. Superior Donuts finds a white donut shop owner suddenly confronted with letting his new African-American hire into his personal life. And, in In the Next Room, a new mother is tentative about letting a woman of color nurse her newborn baby.

On the musical front, the issue also arises: Bye Bye Birdie sees songwriter Albert Peterson’s overbearing mother disapproving of his relationship with his Latina secretary Rose Alvarez. The 1950s-set musical Memphis is filled with racial tension as one of the first white DJs to play black music falls in love with a black songstress. The revival of the musical Finian’s Rainbow features a bull-headed white man who is turned black and finds himself on the opposite end of bigotry. Ragtime, set in the early 1900s, centers on three major groups: upper class WASPS, African-Americans and Eastern European Jewish immigrants.

And now Mamet’s work (currently in previews) focuses on the issue, setting his tale at a mixed ethnicity law firm that takes on a case of a white man who is charged with a crime against a black young woman.

In past lives, it had been the Colonial Music Hall where Fred and Adele Astaire danced and Charles Chaplin was introduced to American audiences, the New Colonial where “The Charleston” bowed in a 1923 show called Runnin’ Wild, the Harkness Theatre where The Acting Company performed and So Long, 174th Street premiered, and the Harmony Atrium which boasted a rock-climbing wall.

Now, as part of Lincoln Center’s 50th anniversary flourish, it is the Rubenstein Atrium where it will be possible to purchase day-of discount tickets to any of the 12 resident organizations that comprise the Lincoln Center complex and where, every Thursday, free classical and pop concerts will be provided, courtesy of Target stores.

Lincoln Center president Reynold Levy announced that the new civic space and urban arts oasis will officially open Dec. 17, followed on Jan. 7 by the kickoff of an unprecedented discount ticket program designed to fill 2,200 seats in the complex.

Bernadette Peters, a resident of the area for some 20 years, stepped up to the podium and figuratively sang the praises of the arts complex where she has liberally sampled the theatre and the opera and the dance that it has provided. “Virtually, Lincoln Center has been inspiring me my whole career,” she declared.

— Harry Haun