The leap from screen to stage

For stars looking for a new lease of life, Broadway is the place to make Hollywood take note

For stars looking for a new lease of life, Broadway is the place to make Hollywood take note
In 1998, when Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman took her first step onto a Broadway stage and starred in The Blue Room, David Hare8217;s adaptation of La Ronde, her professional life was kicked into a new, loftier orbit. Before that, her film parts had leaned toward the decorative category of The Girl including one in a Batman movie. Within a few years, Kidman picked up an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours.

A decade later, another Mrs. Tom Cruise the third is making her Broadway debut. That8217;s Katie Holmes, whose supporting role in the revival of Arthur Miller8217;s All My Sons also starring John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest and Patrick Wilson, scheduled to open on October 16 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater is modest compared with the five lustful characters embodied by Kidman in The Blue Room. But Holmes who also appeared as The Girl in a Batman movie is probably hoping that at least some of the career-rejuvenating fairy dust Broadway sprinkled on Kidman will fall upon her, too. Broadway, it seems, has eclipsed Playboy as the place to make Hollywood pay attention.

Daniel Radcliffe, who achieved celebrity as the title character in the Harry Potter movie franchise, bids fair to pull a Nicole this season. Radcliffe will be doing the full monty in the revival of Peter Shaffer8217;s Equus also starring Richard Griffiths and set to open on September 25 at the Broadhurst Theater, a psychological melodrama with a certain literary heft. The timing is most auspicious for Radcliffe. The Potter series is nearing its end.

Another familiar movie face, Kristin Scott Thomas, seems right at home in Ian Rickson8217;s production of Chekhov8217;s Seagull to open on October 1 at the Walter Kerr. Scott Thomas, known for looking enigmatic and patrician in films like The English Patient, has already proved her classic stage mettle in London with arresting turns in Chekhov The Three Sisters as well as The Seagull and Pirandello As You Desire Me.

I am not nervous about the first Broadway outings of Scott Thomas, Sarsgaard or, for that matter, Jeremy Piven, who will be appearing as a foulmouthed studio executive in a revival of David Mamet8217;s Speed-the-Plow to open on October 23 at the Ethel Barrymore. No, the Hollywood celebrity I8217;m really worried about is that big green lug named Shrek, the animated movie hero who will be trying to effect the transition from two to three dimensions and from speech to song when he appears in the eponymously titled musical scheduled to open on December 14 at the Broadway Theater, to be channelled by the fine flesh-and-blood actor Brian d8217;Arcy James.
_BEN BRANTLEY,NYT