Arts

J. Robert Spencer of Jersey Boys, Kathleen Chalfant, Marva Hicks, E. Faye Butler, Ellen McLaughlin and more are expected to be part of Arena Stage's 2008-09 season, the Washington, DC company announced in a ticket offer.

Don't expect Harry Connick Jr. to sing the Gershwins' "Do-Do-Do" anytime soon. The Boston Globe reported that the Boston launch of the musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, borrowing songs and plot elements from the Gershwin musical Oh, Kay!, has been postponed.

Bruce Adler, the scion of Yiddish theatre family who went on to have much success on the Broadway stage, winning two Tony Award nominations, died in the early hours of July 25, said his close friend, actor Mike Burstyn. Mr. Adler had been battling liver cancer for several years. He was 63.

The devil's sexy assistant, a long-running Off-Broadway revue, and a tale of a family milestone all disappear July 27. What follows is Playbill.com's weekly "Last Chance" reminder to catch Broadway and Off-Broadway productions before they close.

Morris Panych's new stage production of Moby Dick, adapted from the novel by Herman Melville, opens Aug. 17 at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's intimate Studio Theatre.

Dixie's Tupperware Party, the Off-Broadway comedy that is part interactive play and part Tupperware party, starring 2008 Drama Desk nominee Dixie Longate, will be seen on a 20-city national tour starting Sept. 16 at Tucson's Invisible Theatre.

Packawallop Productions will present Alejandro Morales' the october crisis (to laura), a new play about a sultry singer's past, directed by Scott Ebersold, Aug. 8-18 at the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival.

Chicago playwrights Jason Wells and Ellen Fairey will be represented in the 20th anniversary season of Profiles Theatre in Chicago, artistic directors Joe Jahraus and Darrell W. Cox announced.

Naomi Jacobson, Sarah Marshall, Meghan Grady, Eli James, Amy McWilliams and Emily Townley will be featured in the world premiere of Jason Grote's Maria/Stuart, an eccentric tale of strong women, opening the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's new season Aug. 18.

Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, the founder of the National Black Theatre Inc., died at her home July 21. She was 71. No cause was given.

Meet Second Stage's executive director Ellen Richard, whose troupe will buy Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre.

Scott Barrow, Caralyn Kozlowski, Robert Gomes and Charlotte Parry are the four newlyweds in the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's August production of Noel Coward's Private Lives.

Bailiwick Repertory's Jeff Award-nominated production of rocker Dennis DeYoung's new musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, now extended by the Chicago troupe, welcomes Broadway veteran Evan D'Angeles as Quasimodo beginning July 24.

Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton, FL, will spike its 2008-2009 mainstage season with the world premiere of Florida writer Michael McKeever's Dangerous, inspired by the novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."

Philadelphia Music Theater Works will present a staged reading of Philly composer Charles Gilbert's Watch the Birdie, a musical revue about contemporary family life, Aug. 8-9 at the Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5.

Larry Haines, a stage and television actor who gave a Tony Award-nominated performance as the humane Dr. Dreyfuss in Promises, Promises, a 1968 musical version of the Billy Wilder film "The Apartment," died July 17 in Delray Beach, FL. He was 89.

Stage and screen veteran Richard Kind has replaced Tony-nominated actor Lou Diamond Phillips in the Casa Mañana's upcoming staging of the Tony-winning musical Damn Yankees.

The Shaw Festival's remounting of the 2005 world premiere, Belle Moral: A Natural History, by Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald, opens July 19 at the Court House Theatre, one of three venues run by the fest in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

Casting has been announced for the Arena Stage's production of Daniel Beaty's Resurrection, a music, dance and poetry-filled new work introducing us to a handful of varied African-American men.