Oscar Winner Catherine Zeta-Jones Eyes Broadway Bow in A Little Night Music

Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones is eyeing a Broadway turn opposite five-time Tony winner Angela Lansbury, according to The New York Post. As previously reported, Lansbury has been tapped to play Madame Armfeldt in the Trevor Nunn-directed production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music. Now it seems that Zeta-Jones will take on the juicy part of Desiree in the production, which is headed for a Broadway bow in December at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

Zeta-Jones began her professional stage career at age 11 in a production of Annie. Two years later she was on the West End stage in the musical Bugsy Malone. She also appeared in a tour of The Pajama Game, before landing her big break playing Peggy Sawyer in a West End revival of 42nd Street. Soon after that, Zeta-Jones left the stage to embark on a film career. Her film credits include Out of the Blue, The Phantom, The Mask of Zorro, Entrapment, The Haunting, High Fidelity, Traffic, America's Sweethearts, Ocean’s Twelve, No Reservations, Death Defying Acts and The Rebound. She won an Academy Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for portraying Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of Chicago.

A Little Night Music is based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. Set in Sweden at the turn of the century, it follows three lovestruck couples as they lose, and find, each other during a long midsummer night on a country estate. The original production, which starred Len Cariou, Glynis Johns, Patricia Elliot, Hermione Gingold and Laurence Guittard, opened at the Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973, later transferred to the Majestic Theatre and played a total of 601 performances, before closing on August 3, 1974. It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. A benefit concert version of the show was presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company in January 2009, starring Vanessa Redgrave, the late Natasha Richardson, Victor Garber, Christine Baranski, Jill Paice and Marc Kudisch. Nunn directed A Little Night Music at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory in December 2008, transferring it to the West End in early April 2009.

No official casting for the Broadway production has been confirmed.