Hey, Rosie, Let's Put on a (Broadway) Show! O'Donnell Eyeing Babes in Arms

Media mogul, cruise-line queen and Broadway lover Rosie O’Donnell could be on her way back to the Great White Way. According to Variety, plans are afoot to bring back Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s Babes in Arms with O’Donnell above the title. No dates have been set.

Broadway.com confirmed that O’Donnell and Tony winner Shuler Hensley (Oklahoma!) participated in a series of successful readings of the Depression-era tuner during the week of May 18, directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner (White Christmas), who worked with O’Donnell in 2008’s No, No, Nanette at Encores! (Rodgers’ daughter Mary and Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization president Ted Chapin attended one of the readings and were “very excited,” reports RHO spokesperson Bert Fink.) O’Donnell played a character that didn’t exist in the 1937 version, “the world’s oldest chorine,” who helps local teens put on a show to avoid the wrath of Hensley’s sheriff. The updated book is by Joe DiPietro (The Toxic Avenger, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change), based on a version he wrote for a 2002 Goodspeed Opera House production.

The O’Donnell production would be the first-ever Broadway comeback for Babes in Arms, which debuted on Broadway in 1937 and features such Rodgers and Hart songs as “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Kathleen Marshall directed and choreographed a hit Encores! production in 1999 with Erin Dilly, David Campbell, Christopher Fitzgerald and Jessica Stone. Babes is best known for its 1939 big-screen adaptation, a Busby Berkeley-directed spectacle starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

O’Donnell last appeared on Broadway in 2005 in Fiddler on the Roof, when she played Golde to Harvey Fierstein’s Tevye. She also did a short stint in Seussical (as The Cat in the Hat), and was the first Rizzo in the Weisslers’ long-running Grease! revival.