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Stanley Tucci is not new to Broadway. His acting debut is essentially forgotten — a bit part in the short-lived 1982 revival of The Queen and the Rebels — but his first starring role, while a long time coming, went much better: Tucci earned a Tony nomination for the 2002 production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.

"I was asked to do another play after that, but with three little kids it was too hard," Tucci recalls.

Still, Tucci is a rookie as a stage director — he's directed movies, but the current revival of Lend Me a Tenor is his first time directing a play anywhere, not just Broadway.

"I'd wanted to direct for a long time," he says. When his producers sent him several plays to choose from, Tucci was struck by this 1989 hit (which he never saw). Directing also allows him more time at home, which is vitally important to him because his wife Kate died from cancer last spring. While he subsequently had a banner year in movies — playing husband to Meryl Streep's Julia Child in "Julie & Julia" and earning an Oscar nomination as the villain in "The Lovely Bones" — directing this farce, he says, "is the first time in a long time I've looked forward to going to work."

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	David Bryan
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

No matter how loud the ovations are for Memphis, it won't match the love Broadway novice David Bryan gets at his day job. Of course, not many composers have a steady gig — actually a night job — like his: Bryan is the keyboardist for the rock group Bon Jovi.

"I tell the rest of the band I'm classing up the joint now," says Bryan, currently on tour.

Bryan, 48, stumbled into the world of musicals accidentally. In 1990, when the band took a break from touring, he got a publishing deal writing songs for other musicians to cover. Eventually his publisher suggested he write a musical.

Although he was initially brought in to just write music for Memphis, he developed a strong relationship with book writer Joe DiPietro, and they ended up with a "full-on writing partnership." The show, first produced in Massachusetts seven years ago, took a long and winding road to New York. Finally reaching Broadway in its fifth go-round "is like seeing your kid graduate from Harvard," he says. "It was an unbelievable honor. There's a picture of me kissing the sidewalk in front of the Shubert."

(Since the writing of this article, Bryan was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Score of a Musical.)

Bryan remains a rock-n-roller, but he and DiPietro are already working hard on their next show, with eight songs and 40 pages done. "I'm loving this new world," Bryan says.  Continued...