TVSquad

If you had DVR'd the Tony Awards on CBS last night, or switched off the set after Elton John's Billy Elliot, The Musical won the final big award of the night -- Best Musical -- you missed the best thing in the entire show. In a word, Neil Patrick Harris.

At a few minutes after 11 o'clock, Tony host Neil Patrick Harris wrapped up the broadcast, but instead of just saying goodnight and urging viewers to go see a Broadway show, Neil did a musical number and it was the high point of the night. In true Barney Stinson style, the How I Met Your Mother star (and sure bet Emmy nominee), performed a song that was as good as any Billy Crystal Oscar opening. Funny, snarky and pointed, it really skewered the Tonys, almost like a Mad magazine parody.

Here's some news that I'm ready to sing about! One of my favorite TV actresses is heading to Broadway. Gilmore Girls' Lauren Graham will star in the revival of Guys and Dolls that opens in New York next March. She's not only going to be making her Broadway debut, she'll be doing it in one of the greatest musicals of all time. And she'll be playing not the ingenue role (Salvation Army missionary doll Miss Sarah Brown). No, she's smartly taking the very funny, very distinctive comic role as Miss Adelaide, lead singer/tootsie at the Hot Box nightclub!

For fans like me who always lamented the fact that Lauren never got the Emmy recognition she most definitely deserved for Gilmore Girls, the prospect of her doing Guys and Dolls could also mean she's got a shot at a Tony award.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, let alone a forensic specialist, to detect that the CSI franchise is hot. CBS currently boasts three shows with CSI in the title -- CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York -- four if you include the non-Jerry Bruckheimer produced military procedural NCIS. So, then, it shouldn't come as a surprise that CSI is expanding. No, there's not a new CSI TV show happening, but there is an amusement park variation on CSI coming to life at Magic Mountain, the Valencia, California tourist attraction. (By the way, isn't it nice that Valencia didn't get nuked for real like it did on 24 last season?)

All those girls living in one house for so long. You knew they were up to nothing good. In Jamie Morris' stage version of The Facts of Life: The Lost Episode, Eastland is short on funds and looking to axe Mrs. Garrett. Natalie, Tootie, Jo and Blair will do anything to raise enough money to keep her on staff. Anything.

This campy stage production, making its New York City debut later this Spring, features five drag performers enacting Facts' fictional lost episode "The Best Little Whorehouse in Peekskill." If you're visiting New York this Spring, skip Broadway and head downtown. It's just a hunch, but I'm betting you won't see Eastland the same way again. (Not that you thought Natalie or Jo were 100% straight anyway.)

[Via Lady Bunny's Blog]

Back in July, Richard gave you the scoop on comedian Brian Froud's theater show Swiss Family Guy Robinson. Froud's one-man act is essentially a staged mash-up of Johann Rudolf Wyss' 1812 novel and Seth MacFarlane's animated series. Froud's show was a hit at Toronto's Fringe Festival, but his chances of ever staging the show again are slim to none. Fox has slapped Froud with a cease-and-desist order for unauthorized use of Family Guy characters.

If you're over 30, you may remember the halcyon days of Studio 54 when, in the late 70s and early 80s, you couldn't snort a line in the ladies room without tripping over a wasted Drew Barrymore and a gaggle of those Annie orphans. Those Broadway babies were the toast of the town back in the day, and a new Showtime documentary - Life After Tomorrow - tracks down those former orphans to find out what happened to their showbiz aspirations. The most famous member of the cast - Sarah Jessica Parker - is on hand for the reminiscences, but so are the 39 other girls that didn't live the dream after their Annie success had come and gone.

The documentary promises some real ugly - eight shows a week, cat-fighting stage moms, salacious stagehands and a Menudo-style dismissal when puberty set-in. There's no business like show business when it comes to robbing childhoods and crushing dreams. Have your children watch this cautionary tale beginning on December 24th.

If for some reason you find yourself at the Northwestern University Homecoming Parade in Chicago this Friday, keep an eye out for Stephen Colbert, who will be leading the parade. The Chicago Sun-Times spoke with Colbert about his college years, a time during which he describes himself as a poet and a jerk, not to mention pretentious. Yeah, well, everyone's pretentious in college, that's why we don't allow college students to mingle with the outside world. Not surprisingly, Colbert was in theater, along with David Schwimmer (note the picture on the right).

What might be surprising is that he aspired to be a dramatic actor, a story not unheard of among comedians. Jon Lovitz also set out to be a dramatic actor, but fell into comedy much like Colbert did. Reading the article, I remembered something Lovitz once said in an interview about a mentor who told him the key to comedic acting was to say absurd things but act as if what you're saying is completely sane. Watching the Colbert Report, it's pretty clear Stephen understands this as well.

[via CC Insider]

This fall, the Fox Reality Channel will be airing a three-episode series titled My Bare Lady, which will take four female porn stars out of their usual element and place them on the London theater stage, where they will perform "legitimate" theater. The ladies will have only a short time to get their acting chops together for the performance in London's West End, where an audience will decide if they have what it takes.

Now, this seems interesting and all, but also just a tad condescending. The implication seems to be that porn is easy and real acting is difficult. In the interest of fairness, I think the "real" actors who train these women should themselves have to act in a porn movie. Memorizing your lines is one thing, maintaining an expression of eternal ecstasy while coated in honey and hanging upside down from a set of indoor monkey bars is something else entirely. And I speak from experience.

[via Chroma]

Jacob Young, who plays JR Chandler on the daytime soap, All My Children, will make his Broadway debut this spring in Beauty and the Beast. He'll play Beauty. Just kidding. But seriously, look at the kid. He's gorgeous.

Actually, Young will be playing the candlestick, Lumiere, in a 10-week run starting May 9. Don't worry AMC fans, he'll still be on the soap too. Young will be doing double-duty on stage and on television. His only conflict is the Wednesday matinee, which gives his Broadway understudy a little stage time.

Before it even hits the theaters, Paramount Pictures will premiere the new trailer for Mission: Impossible-3 on all of the MTV networks. Some time during the 10-11 pm hour this Thursday night (March 16), Tom Cruise will introduce the new movie trailer. It will play simultaneously on MTV, MTV2, VH1, CMT, BET, and Spike.

Mission: Impossible-3, by the way, was directed by Lost and Alias creator, J.J. Abrams. That, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the bad guy, will be my official excuse for plunking down nine bucks when the movie hits theaters this May. It also co-stars former Felicity star, Keri Russell.