You also know it when you connect his husky, still-boyish voice with the lucrative Mercedes-Benz commercials on TV. “I know. Isn’t it cool?” he says, at a loss for explaining how he has come to this, from TV-drama stardom in the ’70s. “Well, y’know, it’s a long road in a crazy business, so anything can happen. It’s a wonderful thing for a theatre actor to have. I think all people who work in the theatre should have a voiceover.”

— Harry Haun

After making headlines with his risqué performance on the American Musical Awards, Lambert faced a slew of backlash from ABC television, which cancelled numerous appearances with the “American Idol” contestant, including “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.”

Lambert is now set to perform a 40-minute set at midnight as part of the Gridlock New Year’s Eve event located at the Paramount Pictures Studio. Pamela Anderson (”Baywatch”) will host the event, which will include a fireworks display. Also scheduled to perform throughout the night are Kevin Rudolf, Wonderland, Qwes, Dakota Lamas, Far East Movement and ten different DJ’s.

The evening is open to the public, with tickets priced $150. Visit GridlockLA.

The play is in the form of theatre exercises in which a drama class teacher puts students through acting games that, unexpectedly, reveal who they are as people.

How she got to this point even surprises the author, Annie Baker. “I never know what I’m writing,” the playwright insisted. “I really have no idea. It just goes.”

Audiences and critics were especially surprised by a moment late in the play, in which the rehearsal-room setting transforms.

Baker said, “I actually didn’t know the ending was coming. It sorta happened. I hadn’t planned it. It was a very weird, magical thing.” Nor did she have a theatre background that would help her through this unchartered terrain. “I’ve never been an acting student. I’m dating an actor [Michael Chernus from Hunting and Gathering], and he was helpful — and I took acting classes as a kid, but I was never a professional actor.”

— Harry Haun

Rachel York stars as Cruella de Vil, the villainess with a taste for fur, in the new family-friendly touring show with a score by BT McNicholl and STYX founder Dennis DeYoung.

Jerry Zaks directs a cast featuring James Ludwig as Pongo, Catia Ojeda as Missus and Julie Foldesi as family nurse Perdita.

In Dallas through Dec. 20, subsequent touring stops include Boston, Miami, Birmingham and Atlanta.

During “The Money Song” in Act Two of Avenue Q, the cast collects donations ostensibly for The Monsterssori School, a school for Monsters that is the dream project of one of the characters. Work Light Productions announced that any and all dough collected will be donated to the foundation.

Stephen Gabriel, founding partner and president of Work Light Productions, said in a statement, “One of the most surprising, and delightful things about the show is the sense of community that it engenders between the actors and the audience. Although ‘The Money Song’ is collecting funds for a fake charity, audiences have been quick to throw their pennies, dollars, bus cards and more into the hat to help out the show’s characters.”

The donation to the medical center “is in honor of our goddaughter, Ms. Tori Lee, a six-year old patient at the center. We were inspired by seeing the difference that the center has made in Tori and her family’s lives, as well as the community at large.”

For more information on Avenue Q on tour, visit www.AvenueQonTour.com. For more information about Monmouth Medical Center Foundation/Valerie Center, visit www.MMCValerieCenter.org.

(Warning to the reader: The rest of this blog item contains spoilers about the new film version of the Tony-winning musical.) The 54-year-old Minghella, who won an Oscar for directing “The English Patient” and an Oscar nomination for adapting “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” was famous for shepherding other people’s projects into finished films — Marshall’s “Memoirs of a Geisha,” among them — so he was tapped to polish screenwriter Michael Tolkin’s first draft of “Nine.”

In Tolkin’s version, the film ended — as did Fellini’s original, “8½” — with its movie director being encircled by the people of his past in a merry saraband on the beach.

“It was Anthony’s really brilliant idea,” said Tolkin, “to take the scene we had outside and move it inside back to the soundstage so that it could be the movie. The last line in the film — the last word Anthony wrote — was ‘Action!’ If you have to go, there’s no better way to end for a director and writer as talented as Anthony was.”

— Harry Haun

Emilio Sagi stages the production that offers a glimpse into the foothills of the Austrian Alps. Grammy-nominated baritone Rod Gilfry, who is taking a leave from the U.S. national tour of South Pacific, stars as Captain Von Trapp in the English-language production that runs through Jan. 3, 2010.

A rotating trio of actresses share the role of Maria Rainer, including Sylvia Schwartz, Julie Fuchs and Christine Arand. The production also features Gilfry’s daughter, Carin Gilfry, as Liesl Von Trapp and Kim Criswell as Mother Abbess.

Ticketmaster.com has revealed a new interactive seating map that will allow ticket buyers the ability to choose their seats in a manner similar to booking an airline ticket. This means that if you prefer aisle seating, all you have to do is click.

The Ticketmaster map shows the entire floor plan of the respective venue and which tickets are available for purchase. Individuals click on each ticket they wish to purchase and proceed to checkout. Features include the ability to show premium seats, limited price range and specific sections all from one window.

The new model, which is currently only available for sporting events, puts the customer in control and expedites the online purchasing process by bypassing numerous questions that individuals must field prior to having seats selected for them at random.

Ticketmaster notes that certain high-profile events will not utilize the interactive menu in order to avoid having several parties attempting to purchase the same seats.

Test-drive the new map here.

On Sunday night, the same evening that UK’s ITV1 network broadcast “Susan Boyle: I Dreamed a Dream,” an account of the reality TV star’s meteoric rise to fame, the TV Guide Network also broadcast the one-hour special in the US. The program garnered the network its highest ever viewership: 4.8 million people watched the broadcast and its immediate encore.

For those of you who missed the initial airings of “I Dreamed a Dream,” TV Guide Network will rebroadcast the special Thursday, Dec. 17 at 8PM and 11PM ET, Friday, Dec. 18 at 8PM ET and Saturday, Dec. 19 at 7PM ET.

Hosted by “Britain’s Got Talent” judge Piers Morgan, the telecast included a duet between the 48-year-old Scottish singer and theatre star Elaine Paige, whom Boyle has cited as an inspiration.

The vampire-filled series created by Alan Ball (”Six Feet Under”, All That I Will Ever Be) and based on Charlaine Harris’ “Southern Vampire” book series centers on a young waitress, Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin), who can hear people’s thoughts.

Woodard (Drowning Crow) will reportedly appear as mother of cook Lafayette Reynolds (Nelsan Ellis). Frain (The Homecoming) will join the cast as a vampire who connects with Sookie’s friend Tara (Rutina Wesley). And Smith-Cameron (The Starry Messenger) will take on the role of mother to Sookie’s shape-shifting boss Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell).

For more information on “True Blood,” visit http://www.hbo.com/trueblood.