So let's call the Broadway-to-Off-Broadway transfer a trend of the 2009 theatre world. Last summer, Avenue Q announced it would close in September. Then, right after closing, producers said the show was actually relocating — blocks away, to New World Stages Off-Broadway. Call it a back-to-the-future, recession-survival tactic. Critics returned and loved the show all over again, giving it a new bushel of press it wouldn't have gotten if it had stayed put.

Producer Bob Boyett was, perhaps, paying attention. The lead producer of the hit Broadway comedy The 39 Steps, he told the New York Times on Nov. 10 that conversations have begun to possibly move the four-actor show to an Off-Broadway venue. This, after having announced that the long-running show would close Jan. 10, 2010. I sense a pattern. "We're closing. We're opening." Why get one set of headlines when you can get two? "We think the show still has life in it," Boyett said. And what destination is Boyett eyeing? New World Stages, of course.

Hmm. What other shows could this work for? Say, do we know for sure that Shrek is closing?

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The movie star created a sensation, both inside and outside the theatre, when he did Julius Caesar in 2005. Now he will star in the 2010 Broadway revival of late playwright August Wilson's Fences, playing the James Earl Jones role of a former Negro League baseball player who now finds himself working as a garbage collector.

The New York Times reported that Kenny Leon is in negotiations to direct. The project is produced by Carol Shorenstein Hays, who produced the original production, and Scott Rudin, who reportedly has a film of the play in mind.

Fences is August Wilson's A Little Night Music — that is to say, the only one of his original Broadway productions to have made money. With Washington in the lead, here's betting that it will again make money, and probably a lot more than it did the first time around.

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Director Francesca Zambello has departed the Broadway-aimed musical The First Wives Club due to "prior scheduling commitments," producers of the project announced.

Opera and theatre director Zambello helmed the world premiere of the musical at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre this past summer, which was pelted with some unkind words by critics and bloggers. While Zambello is the only member of the creative team confirmed to depart, the latest announcement also reveals that a "new artistic team" will join the production.

Zambello, who has numerous opera credits, has not fared well in the theatre. Her previous major stage credit was The Little Mermaid, which closed after two years — a nanosecond in the world of Disney.

Tony Award winner Rupert Holmes penned the libretto for The First Wives Club, which featured a score by Motown hit-makers Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland.

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	Harvey Fierstein as Tevye
	photo by Joan Marcus

Here's a classic "When Two Worlds Meet" story.

For decades, Topol was the benchmark Tevye. He starred in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway in 1990, in London, in tours and on film. When Fiddler was revived in 2004, Alfred Molina and, especially, his replacement Harvey Fierstein cast the classic character in a whole new light. Some liked the new interpretations, some didn't.

This week, Topol informed the producers of a new Fiddler tour he would have to leave the production due to a shoulder injury requiring emergency long-term treatment. So, who'd the producers call? Harvey Fierstein. Toronto will be Fierstein's launch city. Could this be the start of a new Tevye era? In 30 years, will the only Tevye that people have heard of be the classic interpretation of Harvey Fierstein?

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If her daughter can do it, so can she.

Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds is to bring her one-woman show, Debbie Reynolds Alive and Fabulous (such a different title form Wishful Drinking, isn't it?), to the U.K, launching a 15-date regional tour at Theatre Royal, Norwich on April 7, 2010, prior to a run at the West End's Apollo Theatre, beginning performances April 28.

In the show, Reynolds, the M-G-M legend and star of such films as "Singin' in the Rain," "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "That's Entertainment!," talks about over 50 years in show business, showing movie clips as she reminisces about her career, her many husbands and her life of song and dance. In a press statement, she has said, "It's a variety show. I get to do impressions of Barbra Steisand, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn — even Jimmy Stewart!"

What? No stories about waking up next to a dead man?

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Who knows how the theatrical mind works? For years, the massive flop musical Carrie, based on the Stephen King novel, was the show that was so awful itt would never be presented in polite company again.

Now, we're going to have an industry presentation, and one starring the likes of Tony Award winner Sutton Foster and Tony nominee Marin Mazzie. Uhhhhh huh. Stafford Arima will direct the 29-hour Equity reading that will take place in Manhattan Nov. 20.

29 hours. That's almost as much time as it spent on the stage of the Virginia Theatre in 1988.