A spokesperson for Noll confirmed that the actress will play the role originated on Broadway by Bernadette Peters. As previously announced, Scott Waara, a 1992 Tony Award-winner for The Most Happy Fella, will play the other title character, Mack Sennett. The revival of Jerry Herman, Michael Stewart and Francine Pascal's musical will also feature Donna McKechnie as Lottie Ames, an actress-pal to the silent-screen figures.

Christiane Noll made her Broadway debut as Emma Carew in Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde. She later joined the Broadway company of It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues and starred in the City Center Encores! production of Out of This World. Noll appeared in the national tours of Grease!, Miss Saigon and City of Angels, and she has recorded three solo albums: "Christiane Noll — A Broadway Love Story" (Varese Sarabande Records), "Live at the Westbank Café," (Car-Jam Records) and "The Ira Gershwin Album" (Fynsworth Alley).

Robert Preston created the role of director Sennett in the 1974 biographical musical that flopped but lived on in the hearts of fans via a cast album that preserved and promoted such tunes as "I Won't Send Roses," "Time Heals Everything," "Big Time," "Tap Your Troubles Away," "Hundreds of Girls" and "When Mabel Comes in the Room."

Herman's showbiz musical fable, Mack & Mabel, came a step closer to a long-talked-about commercial revival with the early 2004 announcement of a planned staging by Connecticut's Goodspeed Musicals for October 2004. Herman will be in East Haddam to be a part of the development of the first major American production using the revised script by Francine Pascal, the sister of the late original librettist, Michael Stewart.

For Goodspeed Musicals information, call (860) 873-8668 or visit www.goodspeed.org.