The Friday production of the show was deranged, raw, raunchy and crude, but oh so much fun.

Would you expect anything else from this preposterous 1975 cult classic by Richard O’Brien?

Phil Ruttenburg, Chico Cabaret artistic director, skillfully guided a tip-top cast in the theater’s fourth revival of this rock musical and science fiction-horror spoof.

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The hubbub surrounded a performance of the one-man musical, Charles Darwin: Live & in Concert, in New York City. Anthropologist and songwriter Richard Milner created the show as a tribute to the legendary naturalist, born February 12, 1809. He has performed it across the country and in Australia, Germany and Darwin’s native England.

Milner draws on historic photographs, illustrations and thousands of letters between Darwin and his contemporaries, punched up with Gilbert and Sullivan parodies. He performed the show, wrote the lyrics and co-wrote most of the music.

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“It’s a Broadway institution,” Matthew Broderick, starring a block away in The Odd Couple, said while having a recent post-show drink at the establishment. Sweeney Todd star Patti LuPone liked the place so much she is immortalizing it in the art for her upcoming Ghostlight Records recording The Lady With The Torch (to be released April 25)—the cover and inside of the CD booklet will be filled with pictures of LuPone at the pub. “It’s a working class bar,” LuPone explained to Broadway.com on the chilly Tuesday night of her photo shoot. “And we are all working class stiffs, however much we pretend to be something else. This is a home.”

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Already running at the Lyric, there’s his fine account of Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, starring Woody Harrelson. This has now been joined, next door at the Apollo, by the London transfer of his superb Broadway production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Kathleen Turner, which opened in triumph last night. All we need is an Arthur Miller drama at the Queen’s and a Eugene O’Neill epic at the Gielgud to complete the full presidential quartet.

Virginia Woolf is, of course, Albee’s “long night’s journey into day”. This booze-fuelled marital slug-fest on a New England campus harks back to Strindberg and Coward in its savagely comic take on love-hate co-dependency and on the coded, blithely conscienceless war-games that bamboozle and blister the scandalised, dullard civilians who are forced into participation.

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UPDATE 1/31/06 - Guys & Dolls is in full swing with three more weeks to go! Get your tickets ASAP ’cause it has been selling out.

Tickets for the Dec. 17-Jan. 29, 2006, San Francisco run went on sale 10 AM Oct. 30. The production at the Curran Theatre is presented as part of the 2005-2006 Best of Broadway season, under the direction of Carole Shorenstein Hays and Scott E. Nederlander.

Lestat will arrive on Broadway in spring 2006 at the Palace Theatre following the California engagement.

Inspired by novelist Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles,” Lestat is the first theatrical score from the legendary pop songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and has a book by Linda Woolverton.

Directed by Robert Jess Roth with musical staging by Matt West, Lestat stars Hugh Panaro in the title role, Carolee Carmello as Gabrielle, Jack Noseworthy as Armand, Jim Stanek as Louis, Roderick Hill as Nicolas, Michael Genet as Marius and Allison Fischer as Claudia.

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Hot Feet features a book by Heru Ptah, music and lyrics by Earth, Wind and Fire founder Maurice White and will be directed and choreographed by Maurice Hines.

White has written original music and lyrics, along with his past hits, “Shining Star,” “September,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “After the Love Has Gone.” Maurice Hines said in a statement “The music of Maurice White inspires me. It’s an honor for me to be collaborating with him.” White said “Working with Maurice Hines has been a blast. He makes my music and lyrics come alive in ways I never would have imagined.”

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