CURTAIN up! The new theater season is here, so let's shine the spotlight on a few of the big names trying to conquer the Great White Way. * HELLO, DOLLY! Country music hasn't fared very well on Broadway, but if anybody can break the hick...

DON'T expect to sit on your butt or your hands at "Fela!" This rousing new bio-musical - full of the pulsating, rhythmic Afrobeat music for which its subject was famous - threatens to tear the roof off the intimate confines of the 37 Arts...

Plenty of activity afoot this season on off-Broadway - and there's no doubt about its most eagerly anticipated production: "Road Show," the first new musical by Stephen Sondheim since his 1994 "Passion." The show, co-written by John Weidman, is...

TWO giants get their due in the weeks ahead as the opera and classical worlds hail Luciano Pavarotti and Leonard Bernstein. The Lenny love-in - a citywide festival marking what would have been the 90th birthday of the conductor, composer, pianist...

THERE is no "Godspell" - but a raft of other revivals are headed our way. Virtually everything old is new again this fall, thanks to some starry casting. And there's probably no brighter prospect than "Equus," helmed by Harry Potter, a k a Daniel...

IT'S got heart, passion, killer choreography - and the best Elton John score ever. When all is said and sung, "Billy Elliot: The Musical" promises to be the biggest London import since Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh started minting...

HAL Prince was watching the Screen Actors Guild awards on TV last January when he turned to his wife and started babbling. "Get dressed," she said. "We're going to the hospital." "I wasn't in any pain, but when the doctor asked me what my name...

THE fun of covering Broadway is that, just when you think you've got the lay of the land, out of no where comes a show to shake up the terrain. A year ago, the buzz was all about "Young Frankenstein." And then big Stew ("Passing Strange") and...

CASTING is complete for the starry Broadway revival of "American Buffalo." Joining John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer in David Mamet's crackling drama will be sweet-faced Haley Joel Osment of "I see dead people" fame. The actor, who was...

IT'S a pretty bold move for a modern author to feature William Shakespeare as a central character. Tom Stoppard pulled it off successfully with "Shakespeare in Love," but the late Canadian playwright Timothy Findley was unable to work similar magic...