"I don't want to jinx it," says the book writer, Tony Award-winning Rupert Holmes of the world premiere production of Curtains, his and Kander and Ebb's musical comedy murder mystery, "but we have a 1,600-seat house, packed at every show, and audiences are howling from the start, and they never stop. There's more fun in this show than anything I've ever written. Oh, I know about standing ovations these days, but we're getting them at every performance. To say I'm thrilled would be a vast understatement."

There is nothing like a dame, goes that familiar refrain from Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, and certainly there's nothing like this dame: Dame Edna Everage, the wisteria-haired Aussie expatriate who claims to be British royalty. In appearances in venues around the globe, Dame Edna has always promised: "I will not disappoint." In her Broadway debut, Dame Edna: The Royal Tour, at the intimate Booth Theater, she never breaks that promise.

Golden Apple Dinner Theater of Sarasota city, which was forced to close a sister theater in Venice, south county, last year, will have a new one in 2005 to the north in Bradenton. Robert Ennis Turoff, owner of Coastal Productions, will also manage the indoor, cabaret-like theater in the Town Center of Lakewood Ranch, a mega-development. Along with an outdoor amphitheater, the Golden Apple will be at the center of an arts center styled after St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy.

Never before has a producer had so many successful shows playing simultaneously -- Ragtime, Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Show Boat, Sunset Boulevard, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. By the end of 1998 there will be four companies of Ragtime alone, playing simultaneously -- in New York, Chicago, Boston and Vancouver. And three of these four companies will be playing in theaters built and owned by that producer. This is in contrast to the normal practice of a producer renting theaters for each engagement.

The first major revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, at New Jersey's McCarter Theater (February 15-March 5, 2000), brings together a praised director-exponent of the Mamet style, and one of the most impressive all-male casts to ever appear at the high-profile, Tony award winning theater. For Scott Zigler, working with a top-notch ensemble is the key to the success of a play like Glengarry.

Linda Eder's career is full of contrasts. She's a farm girl from Minnesota who also loves opera. A soprano in her church choir, she ran off with a teenaged boyfriend to sing Top 40 duets in nightclubs. A statuesque Protestant beauty from the mid-west, Eder later fell in love with a shorter Jewish man with roots on the East Coast who was recently separated and the father of a one-year-old. He's gregarious; she's shy. He's a sports fan; she loves animals.

The first thing to remember about the Edinburgh Festival is that it's a misnomer. The annual August arts jamboree in Scotland's capital city should really be called the Edinburgh Festivals, if only because eight festivals take place concurrently. The prestigious one is the International Festival, which, being heavily subsidized by public and private donors, concentrates on the "high" arts -- symphonies, operas, dance, theater, chamber music and solo recitals, presented by reputable companies and performers. It was launched in 1947 as an impetus for peace and unity in Europe after WW II.

With the talent, versatility, excitement and strength he brings to his roles on stage and on TV, the part of the perennially excited and infatuated George Tesman, in the acclaimed Broadway production of Hedda Gabler, is perfect for Michael Emerson.

The opening of the Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon prompted my recent trip to Britain, but the journey branched into an exploration of more theatrical connections, from David Garrick to Basil Rathbone and Sherlock Holmes, from Ivor Novello to the latest productions on the London stage. As each experience intertwined with the next, I found some surprising links.

TACT, The Actors Company Theater, is a group of known professionals - including Kevin Conway, John Cunningham, Paul Hecht, Larry Keith, as well as celebrated guest stars -- stripping down the theatrical experience to its essence: the words, the actors, and the audience. The company was formed in 1992 by actors who wanted to perform without the stringent demands of Broadway. The first production was Twelfth Night. It soon became obvious that, though well-received, their plays were having the same problem that too often plagues Broadway -- lack of money.

The world's longest-running musical is back. And The Fantasticks is a show that all but the most hardened soul will love.

The story is schmaltzy -- the ageless one about boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl fall out of love, boy and girl fall back in love. Yet, for over four decades Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's musical, by far their best known, has entralled millions in over 12,000 productions worldwide. Not bad for a show that was considered quite avant garde for its time.

Tovah Feldshuh has made a career playing heroic women. She's portrayed Tallulah Bankhead, Sarah Bernhardt, Stella Adler, Sophie Tucker, Katharine Hepburn, Diana Vreeland (Full Gallop), Miss Jean Brodie, three queens of Henry VIII, (in a TV mini-series) a Czech freedom fighter, (in an Off-Broadway play) nine Jews who age from birth to death, a woman masquerading as a man, and (in a Broadway musical) a Brazilian bombshell fielding two husbands.

New York - The world of mathematics and science has found a welcoming host in Broadway. Witness the success of Copenhagen, and Proof. Now, it's composing team Joshua Rosenblum and Joanne Sydney Lessner's turn to get on the arithmetical track. Interestingly, they say "We actually had titled our show, `Proof,' before we even heard of the Manhattan Theater Club's Proof! Their own mathematics intoxicated musical, Fermat's Last Tango, has just opened Off Broadway at the York Theater.

David Henry Hwang's updated version of Flower Drum Song inaugurated its national tour on September 2, 2003 at the Music Hall at Fair Park as the closing production of the Dallas Summer Musicals. In a pre-show conversation with Hwang, who attended the first Sunday matinee, he said, "I saw the potential for this show that had been on the shelf for 45 years. I approached Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, and said I wanted to make a musical I hoped would reflect the values of the original creators but be more relevant to a modern audience.

Edwin Forrest, the 19th-century Philadelphia actor, was arguably the first American superstar. Critics praised him, politicians wanted him to run with them and working men fought -- even died -- defending him.

How many Broadway musicals have the audience going wild as soon as the curtain rises? And it doesn't stop there. At the revival of Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman's Little Shop of Horrors, there are standing ovations before the actors even take their bows and screaming fans at the stage door.

South Broad Street in Philadelphia, also known as the Avenue of the Arts, at one in the morning on October 11, 2005. Theater folks, fresh from the annual Barrymore Awards show, are partying in the Great Hall at the University of the Arts. A solitary figure leaves the party and treks up the quiet street. One block, then two, heading north past the Kimmel Center, the Wilma and the Merriam Theaters. A threesome on their way from the gala talk loudly to each other but they ignore the middle-aged man who walks alone.

He's the dean of Broadway conductors.

Paul Gemignani received a special Tony Award on June 3, 2001, for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater. And that isn't his first statuette. The Los Angeles Drama Critics gave him an award in 1994 that has the citation "in recognition of consistently outstanding musical direction and commitment to the theater."