Whoopi Goldberg Joins Xanadu for Six-Week Summer Run

Whoopi Goldberg will join the cast of Broadway's Xanadu on July 29. The co-host of TV's The View will play the role of Caliope through September 7 while original star Jackie Hoffman is on leave. Hoffman will be releasing her new CD Jackie Hoffman Live from Joe's Pub and will return to the Helen Hayes Theatre on September 9.

An Oscar-winning screen star for Ghost, Goldberg was last seen on Broadway in her solo show Whoopi, which was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event in 2005. She made her Broadway debut, and a career splash, in the highly-celebrated one-woman show Whoopi Goldberg, which opened at the Lyceum Theatre in 1984 and was also seen as Broadway's only female Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and in a revival of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. As a producer, Goldberg won a Best Musical Tony for Thoroughly Modern Millie. She hosted the 2008 Tony Awards telecast on June 15.

Xanadu currently also stars Kerry Butler as Kira, Curtis Holbrook as Sonny, Tony Roberts as Danny McGuire and Mary Testa as Melpomene. Cheyenne Jackson, who is on leave from the show to star in Damn Yankees, returns to the role of Sonny on July 29.