Gorgeously gowned in vintage Galanose, Spelling was reveling in her maiden voyage into the theatre world. “It’s a fabulous experience. I’ve been here all along. I’ve watched it grow in rehearsals to the first night of previews to other previews.”

And the widow of TV mogul Aaron Spelling vowed to keep it up, too. “I’m looking forward to doing this again,” she said. “In 2011, I’m doing How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Daniel Radcliffe. . . . Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are also producing it, and Rob Ashford is going to direct and choreograph it. We’re another year away from it. The last Harry Potter film has to come out first, and then we’ll open How To Succeed about then.”

Zadan and Meron, who are doing their darnedest to bring movie musicals back in vogue via their Oscar-winning “Chicago” and their blockbuster “Hairspray,” plan to keep up the good work but are planning, with the How To Succeed revival, to shift operations back to theatre, where they began with Joe Papp in the 1970s.

“We’re going to continue to do movie musicals, but we’re going to do some originals,” said Zadan. “We wanted to get started by doing revivals, then start developing and workshopping original musicals over the next two or three years.”

— Harry Haun