"People have been calling me up, asking, 'Are you okay? Are you alright?'" said Jim Norton, who played the title role in all 92 performances of the much-too-short-lived Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow. "It was a heart-breaker," he allowed. He appreciates the sympathy but can't milk it: Something has indeed turned up.
Come November, Norton said he will return to Broadway as Grandpa Vanderhof, patriarch of an exceedingly eccentric New York clan, in the fifth Broadway revival of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s classic, You Can’t Take It With You. It won a double whammy: the Pulitzer Prize in '37 and the Best Picture Oscar in '38.
This version will be directed by Anna D. Shapiro, the Tony-winning director of the also-Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County, and the producer has produced eight Tony-winning top plays: Liz McCann. Talk about great expectations!
— Harry Haun
