Broadway Friday

- This week the soundtrack for Hairspray enters the Billboard 200 at #20. Over on Hot Dance Club Play, Idina Menzel's remix of Defying Gravity climbs to #7. The cast album for Wicked has been #1 for 73 weeks on Billboard's Top Cast Albums chart.

- A Broadway adaptation of the the classic Sidney Poitier film, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, is expected in the fall of 2008. Direction to be by Kenny Leon.

- Lone Star Love, a musical comedy starring Randy Quaid, opens at the Belasco on December 3rd, previews begin November 11. It will be Quaid's Broadway debut.

- Last week's Broadway grosses are topped by Wicked for the 19th consecutive week, at $1.4M, followed by Jersey Boys and the three Disney shows: Lion King, Mary Poppins, Beauty & The Beast.

- Cheyenne Jackson reports that he will appear in Xanadu until the end of September, when James Carpinello will return from his foot injury.

- Margaret Cho will headline the off-Broadway burlesque show The Sensuous Woman at the Zipper Theatre. The show opens September 26th.

- Jo Anne Worley on the rigors of joining the cast of hit show in mid-run: "It's like jumping on a freight train that's going full speed a couple hundred miles an hour." Worley recently replaced Georgia Engel in The Drowsy Chaperone.

- Andrew Lloyd Webber has inked a deal for an American reality show that will follow the casting search for Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Webber has had success in the UK with a similar reality series for Joseph and with a show called How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria, which followed the casting search for a production of The Sound Of Music.

- A new Harvey Fierstein-John Buccino musical, A Catered Affair, begins previews on March 28th, 2008. Starring Fierstein, Tom Wopat, and Faith Prince, Affair will be directed by John Doyle, who won the 2006 Tony for directing Sweeney Todd. The show begins a pre-Broadway run in San Diego in September.