Broadway Friday

- Monty Python's Spamalot had its 1000th performance yesterday.

- Chazz Palminteri's A Bronx Tale opens for a limited run at the Walter Kerr Theatre beginning October 4th and running through February 2008. Tony winner Jerry Zaks (Six Degrees Of Separation, Guys And Dolls) will direct. The Walter Kerr most recently hosted Grey Gardens, which closed July 29th.

-The revival of Grease is now in previews, officially opening next Friday. The leads, Max Crumm and Laura Osnes, were the viewers' choices on the reality show, Grease: You're The One That I Want.

-John Water's Cry-Baby: The Musical is headed for Broadway, due March 2008. The show will get its out-of-town tryout at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse in November.

-Tickets for this year's holiday production of Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical go on sale September 6th. The show, which broke box office records last year, begins November 1st at the St. James and will run up to 15 performances a week

-Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane will star in David Mamet's November, opening December 20th at the Barrymore and to be directed by Joe Montello. November is a five-character play about presidential politics. Mamet's last Broadway show, Glengarry Glen Ross, won a Pulitzer

- The number of commercial Off Broadway theaters has risen to 31 from 22 over the past decade. The rise is partially blamed for the recent closures of such venerable venues as the 62-year old Actors Playhouse. Other factors in the recent spate of closures are the rising cost of real estate and what some are calling a lack of "viable Off Broadway productions."

- Faith, 83, former exotic dancer and seven-time DC mayoral candidate, is in the hospital with pneumonia. Her husband says the illness was brought on by her rejected Broadway comeback bid in the Patti Lupone-starring revival of Gypsy. The former Faith Dane, who now goes only by her first name, created the role of the trumpet-playing stripper, Mazeppa, in the original 1959 production of Gypsy (starring Ethel Merman). She reprised the role in the 1962 movie version. She has filed an age discrimination complaint with the state. The producers say Faith could have attended open auditions, but demanded a private audition.