Theater

Singer Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, who helped bridge '50s doo-wop and '60s rock 'n' roll, are celebrated in a new four-CD box set called Jersey Beat. The group released two dozen Top 40 hits, including "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like a Man." Jersey Boys, the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, is based on the lives of the Four Seasons.

As artistic director of the Encores series at New York's City Center, Jack Viertel is the go-to guy for one of New York's hottest musical-theater tickets. It's just the latest phase, though, in an impressive theatrical career.

Victor Garber will star in the upcoming ABC drama Eli Stone. He has just finished a short run of Stephen Sondheim's Follies for the New York City Center's Encores! series. Viewers may remember him best as Jack Bristow on the hit TV show Alias. Broadway credits include Death Trap, Noises Off and Sweeney Todd.

Writer Stefan Kanfer. His new book is “Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America.” It’s about the glory days of Yiddish theater in the late 19th and early 20th century. Kanfer was a writer and editor at Time magazine for 20 years and is the author of many books including biographies of Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx.

Richard Gilman, who died Saturday at age 83, was a writer and professor at the Yale School of Drama. Ben Brantley of The New York Times writes, "Mr. Gilman was one of a breed of philosopher-critics... who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. They located in modern drama the elements of abstraction, alienation and absurdity that had long been at the core of discussions of other forms of art and literature." In this archive interview from 1987, Gilman recounts his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism and then to atheism.

Playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute has earned a reputation for writing characters who are selfish, mean, misanthropic and misogynistic. His films include In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors. His plays include "The Mercy Seat", "Some Girls" and "Fat Pig". The New Yorker's John Lahr says his plays are "complex and unnerving," and that "there's no playwright on the planet who is writing better." "Wrecks" is LaBute's new one-man play starring Ed Harris.

Actress Diane Lane co-stars with Adrian Brody, Ben Affleck and Bob Hoskins in the new film Hollywoodland. The film is based on the real-life mystery surrounding the death of actor George Reeves, who played Superman on TV.

We rebroadcast an interview with late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt. She had been called the "reigning Handel diva of our day." She appeared in Peter Sellars' productions of Handel and Mozart. This interview originally aired on April 8, 1996.

On Sunday, Harry Connick Jr. will be among the nominees attending the Tony Awards. Connick received a Tony nod for best actor in a musical for his Broadway debut in the revival of The Pajama Game.

Connick has released a disc of his Broadway endeavors. The triple CD features not only recordings of the 2006 Pajama Game cast, but those from the 2001 musical he wrote, Thou Shalt Not. The latter feature duets with his Pajama Game co-star, Kelli O'Hara.

Director and choreographer Busby Berkeley was noted for Hollywood musicals featuring lots of scantily clad show girls filmed from overhead in intricate kaleidoscopic patterns. After seeing some of these films again in a new DVD collection, our critic notices a connection between Berkeley and the avant-garde artists of an earlier generation.

Our film critic reviews Mission: Impossible III, starring Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Jeff Goldblum recently returned to his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pa., to star alongside his new girlfriend in a two-week run of The Music Man. Directors Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache filmed Goldblum's escape from celebrity, resulting in a genre-bending documentary with appearances by Ed Begley, Jr., Illeana Douglas and Moby. Goldblum talks about Pittsburgh, which he produced.

American opera visionary Sarah Caldwell founded the Opera Company of Boston in 1958. The company's principal prima donna was Beverly Sills, and Placido Domingo was an unknown young tenor when he first sang with the company. Caldwell died on March 23 at the age of 82.

The music of Frank Loesser has been celebrated and extended by his wife, Jo Sullivan Loesser, since his death in 1969. But her musical relationship with him began earlier, as she starred in the original production of Loesser's The Most Happy Fella.

V for Vendetta stars Natalie Portman as Evey, a wallflower who teams up with a superhero to resist an oppressive futuristic government. The movie's producers include the Wachowski brothers, of The Matrix fame.

A hardened young South African gang leader steals a woman's car -– then finds out her baby is in the back seat. So starts the South African film Tsotsi, which is up for an Academy Award for best foreign film.

Actor, comedian, composer and musician Michael McKean is best known for co-starring in the spoofs This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. He is currently co-starring in the Broadway revival of The Pajama Game.

Critic at large John Powers reviews the two-DVD edition of the 1939 classic film Young Mr. Lincoln, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda.

The idea that priests, like all men, are not perfect might seem like a tame one. But NBC's effort to translate the premise into a TV series has brought protests that the show is anti-Christian. Jack Kenny is the creator and executive producer of The Book of Daniel.

The 1951 film version of the Offenbach opera The Tales of Hoffmann, now on DVD, is recognized as a masterpiece of dark storytelling from the British team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.