Starting to work up this year’s high-school-musical coverage and got a note from Alex Malecki at Kennedy Catholic High School in Somers, who helps to run the Hope for Change Foundation, a cancer-fighting charity.

Since they’re show people, they fight cancer with entertainment and this week, HFC presents “Hope at Night,” its tribute to classic TV:

Alex writes: “Featuring memorable episodes from some of your favorite shows, along with two song-and-dance numbers to mix things up, Hope at Night goes up goes up January 4 – 5 at 8 p.m. in the auditorium at Kennedy Catholic High School.  Tickets can be purchased at the door for a suggested donation of $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and $10 for students with ID, and 100 percent of everything raised goes to benefit breast cancer research.  For more information, please call 914-206-9617, e-mail aboutus@hopeforchange.org or visit HFC online at www.hopeforchange.org.�

They’ll be  doing tributes to shows you know and an oldies medley to keep things lively.

A good cause and a good way to kick off the new year.

Actors Conservatory Theatre announces auditions for its Junior Troupe production of the “Barnum,” the circus musical.

Open auditions are Sunday, Jan. 6, from 6 to 9 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 9, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 10 from 7 to 9:30 p.m.

Auditioners must be in grades 5 through 12 and audition slots will be arranged in the order of arrival. Jennifer Langford will direct, with choreography by Janice Paganelli and musical direction by George Croom.

CAST OF CHARACTERS:
Phineas Taylor Barnum
Chairy Barnum (P.T. Barnum’s wife)
Joice Heth (The Oldest Woman Alive)
Tom Thumb (Smallest Man in the World)
Julius Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind’s manager)
Jenny Lind (Swedish Soprano)
Blues Singer (A black woman, same as Joice Heth)
James A. Bailey (Small Circus Owner)

Ringmaster (Circus performer, same as James A. Bailey)
Chester Lyman (Joice Heth’s manager)
Amos Scudder (Owner of the American Museum)
Sherwood Stratton (Tom Thumb’s father)
Mrs. Sherwood Stratton (Tom Thumb’s mother)
Wilton (Barnum’s assistant on the Jenny Lind tour)
Edgar Templeton (Political party boss)
Humbert Morrissey (Political party boss)

First Woman (“Women’s Emporium� Scene)
Second Woman (“Women’s Emporium� Scene)
Concertmaster (Jenny Lind concert scene)

Tumblers, Jugglers, Clowns, Aerialists, Acrobats, Gymnasts, Bricklayers, Passersby, Museum Patrons, Strongmen, Beefeaters, The “Mob� in general, The Bridgeport Pageant Choirs, and Bands of every size, shape and description.

Rehearsals will be Sundays at 4 p.m. and Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., with performances April 4 at 8 p.m., April 5 at 2 and 8 p.m. and April 6 at 2 p.m.

For more information, e-mail ACTShows2@aol.com or call 914.391.6558

Actors Conservatory Theatre is at 20 Buckingham Road in Yonkers. Directions to the theatre can be found at: www.actshows.org/directions.html

Francesca Zambello is accustomed to having her feet in several worlds at once.

A New Yorker by birth, Zambello has called Paris, Vienna, London and Moscow home.

She comes from the world of opera, where she has directed dozens of productions and has been lauded by the French and Russian governments for her contribution to culture.

She’s won three Olivier Awards (the British Tony Award) and two French Grand Prix des Critiques for her work at the Paris Opera. Her mantel holds honors from Japan, Germany, Russia and Australia.

And she taught Placido Domingo to sword-fight for the opera “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

When she meets a group of reporters, she sits for an interview in English and five minutes later, she’s giving one in Italian.

Who better, then, to bridge the several worlds presented in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” – a production that marks Zambello’s Broadway debut Jan. 10 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre?

Zambello talked about bringing the ultimate half-fish-out-of-water story to the stage.

Alan Menken has said that his job on ‘The Little Mermaid’ was easy: writing songs. He said yours was the tricky one – taking something that’s two-dimensional and making it three-dimensional.

That’s exactly right. Both of our jobs are tricky and both of them are exciting and different. For us – my collaborators, designers and choreographer – it was ‘How do we create this world underneath the sea?’

I really began by thinking about the central character, Ariel, and her journey, her flight, her desire to become something else, to journey to the world above. And I realized that that was a basic, human, archetypal, primal feeling, to be something else.

The grass is always greener.

Exactly. In a sense, I thought that we didn’t need to start by creating the other world. We need to start by understanding her. We need to connect to her humanness and the fact that she’s a fantastical creature but with very human emotions. Since it’s all, in a sense, a delicate story, I didn’t want the visuals to overwhelm the story, but to enhance and support it.

I began with my collaborator, set designer George Tsypin, by creating a world that uses a special plastic material to light in certain ways to create underwater. And when we light it in different ways, it looks like architecture above the earth. I wanted the parallel universes to be created by the same material. Underwater feels very sculptural and free-flowing and translucent and there’s a real luminosity to it, whereas the world above feels architectural and structural, but made out of the same things.

And there are things you didn’t want to see here. What was your credo at the outset, the marching orders you gave your design team?

No water. No wires.

Just mermaids and humans.

Actually, there are three kinds of beings here. There are human beings. There are mer people who are fantastical creatures. And there are animals: a fish; Ursula the sea witch, who’s an octopus; there’s Scuttle the sea gull and Sebastian the crab.

We had to figure out how to connect these three worlds and it’s the emotional story that connects them. Each of them serves as a metaphor, as a storyteller, as an archetypal character. We had each of these non-real things being fantastical but never lose their humanness.

Sounds a lot deeper than the Disney film.

It’s tricky. You have to enter the world. Theater is a participation between the audience and the stage. You don’t have that in film.

It’s another world. It’s a theatricalization of the film, which itself was a big leap from the original short story. There’ve been a lot of ballets, operas and plays – a lot of ‘Little Mermaid’ incarnations – along the way.

The gold standard in transferring a Disney animated feature to the stage is Julie Taymor’s work on ‘The Lion King.’ She also came from the world of opera. Do you make a similar leap with ‘Little Mermaid’?

I think it’s a similar leap, but it’s a very different story. In ‘The Lion King,’ every character is an animal. We have people, animals and fantastical creatures. So for me, it was really about creating an environment that all of these things could co-exist in visually.

Opera is all about grand scale. Did this seem like a good fit?

‘The Little Mermaid,’ when people question it, they wonder if I’m going into children’s theater. All of this sense of the fantastical and the real commingle easily in an Internet video game and in Shakespeare. And they do here, too. But some people are too short-sighted to see that.

You run the risk, if it’s too grand, of Ariel getting lost on a big stage in a big set.

That’s why I didn’t want the scale of this to be epic. I really wanted to keep it like a jewel box. We’re in a small Broadway theater, the Lunt-Fontanne, and this environment really hones in, focuses in on Ariel and her journey … On a big opera stage, sometimes a character can get lost or be at sea.

Is the opera world as fluid, as changeable, as Broadway?

We don’t have as much time in opera. On Broadway, we have previews. But as a director, you’re always racing against the clock. You never have enough time. You never feel like it’s ready.

The Ellie Caulkins theater, where you had your Denver tryout, is actually bigger than the Lunt-Fontanne?

Yes, it was. There was a bigger audience, but it’s bigger backstage here. We actually brought that proscenium in a bit (in Denver). It looked beautiful there and 95,000 people saw it and stood up for it. The Lunt is going to be perfect, a real intimate space. It’s going to be wonderfully served there.

As a New Yorker – even one who has lived abroad for many years – you understand Broadway. Has anything surprised you about this show’s path to Broadway?

Not really. I think it’s understanding that we’re here to create a piece that speaks to a wide audience. That’s why I wanted to do this, to make theater for a new audience, for young audiences, for families, because I want live theater to be alive in the next generation. The wonderful thing about this piece, and about working with Disney, is that they’re willing to go the extra mile to hire a real diversity of artists and collaborators, from Broadway veterans to newcomers to foreign artists to create a unique vision on Broadway that is different from anything else.

What do you know now that you wish you had known at the outset of the project?

A theater piece is always evolving. It is never captured the way a film is or a painting. What I knew a year ago and what I learned along the way is fused into the piece and it’s constantly evolving.

People will come into the Lunt-Fontanne knowing the story, knowing some of the songs and wondering ‘OK, what’s she going to do with this?’

It’s funny. You’d think that, but you’d be surprised at the number of people who come to see it who either don’t know the movie at all or some people who know all of the movies, because there’s more than one ‘Little Mermaid.’ Some people just come like open books, but those who do know it come in and enter our world and accept it as a theatrical experience.

Hans Christian Andersen’s story ends much differently than the Disney film. Some people might sniff and look at the Disney version of Ariel as a girl who gets her man.

We tried to give her more substance – not only in what she gets but in her journey there. It was important for me to put onstage a positive role model of a young girl who is independent and chooses her own destiny and follows it and acts upon it. And later she does heroic things.

Yes, she gets her man, but he also accepted her when she wasn’t perfect, when she didn’t have a voice. There are all sorts of morals in this piece and I think people will embrace it, people will jump all over it. It makes you respond and react.

Prince Eric gets a makeover of sorts on Broadway.

Working with Doug (Wright), the book writer and Alan Menken, we’ve beefed up his character and given him a through-line and a stronger journey. He doesn’t want to be king, he wants to be connected to nature and Ariel represents nature and water. So they have much more of an interesting connection.

How close to your original vision for the show is what’s on stage now at the Lunt-Fontanne?

We’re very close, with the visual world and the movement world and the story. For me, it was important to develop the emotional core of the piece. I didn’t want to lose that. I wanted to enhance it.

I wanted that father-daughter relationship. I wanted that brother-sister. I wanted the dysfunctional family and the healing of the family. I wanted all of that to come alive. It’s mythological, this piece!

It’s a fusion of Shakespeare and children’s theater and Broadway. It’s many forms drawn together, and that’s what myth is. The Greeks!

PHOTO: Joan Marcus
Francesca Zambello makes a point with the creative team of “The Little Mermaid�during rehearsals in Denver. The team includes, from left: Glenn Slater, lyrics; Doug Wright, book; Alan Menken, composer; and Thomas Schumacher, producer. Zambello, a directorial star in the world of opera, makes her directorial debut on Broadway with “The Little Mermaid.� The musical opens Jan. 10.

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At some schools, drama continues past graduation. Stepinac Alumni Theatre is presenting its 4th annual “Evening of  Cabaret & Musicâ€? — with alums from the ‘60s through to this day — on Jan. 5 at 7:30 p.m.

Frank Portanova, the drama whiz at Stepinac, tells me featured performers will include Westchester theatre notables, including Jeff “The Dancing Dentist” Schlotmann, Dick Nagle, and Nellie O’Brien. I’ve been in shows with Nellie and Jeff and met Dick when he was honored with a Cab Calloway award this year. There’s talent to spare there. Sounds like a great night.

Tickets, which may be purchased at the door, are $25, $15 for students and cover hors d’ouvres, dessert, coffee, tea, beer, wine and soda. And the show, of course.

Proceeds help the Drama Club, Alumni Theater and the Bob Fitzsimmons’ Memorial Scholarship.

For more information, go to www.stepinac.org or call 914-946-4800  x. 385.

Good cause. Good night. Good show.

Here’s a look at my picks for the top moments on local stages across the Lower Hudson Valley in 2007.

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These are my top moments from 2007. If you’d like to catch their next great moments, check out their Web sites, listed below.

At the Schoolhouse in Croton Falls, Todd Susman and Reed Birney contemplated death and the quality of life in one of the strangest hotel rooms you’ll ever see – in Susman’s play “Locked and Loaded.” (www.schoolhousetheater.org)

At Hudson Stage, Matthew Arkin was an urbane killer in “Murderers,” playing dozens of different people – without changing makeup or costumes – on sheer talent alone. (www.hudsonstage.com)

At the White Plains Performing Arts Center, Broadway star Robert Cuccioli leaned on his lance and turned a senile old man into a noble knight in “Man of La Mancha.” (www.wppac.com)

Penguin Rep marked its 30th year with “Orphans.” It was a joy to watch John Magaro and P.J. Sosko as brothers whose relationship became more equal and yet more complicated. (www.penguinrep.org)

And there was Karen Mason, a Broadway star, who put her own spin on one of the great moments in theater history – the song “Rose’s Turn” in “Gypsy” – at Westchester Broadway Theater. (www.broadwaytheatre.com)

I’ll never forget Chris Edwards as the hunchbacked villain in “Richard III” – scheming, conniving and charming – at the sparkling Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison. (www.hvshakespeare. org)

But one of my top moments this year was in a theater few could get to. It was deep inside Sing Sing prison in Ossining, where dozens of inmates performed “West Side Story” for an invited audience. When Johnny Hincapie, as Tony, lay dying, the audience sat rapt, many with tears in their eyes. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. (www.p-c-i.org/rta.php)

When he was cast as George in a Sing Sing prison production of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Jermaine Archer had his doubts. “I was like, ‘Do these people doing the casting know what they’re doing?’ the 34-year-old Brooklynite says with a laugh.

He also scratched his head when he learned that Mosi Eagle, a tall, soft-spoken fellow prisoner, was to play Lenny, the gentle giant.

Archer says he knew they could act. They’d been in previous prison productions – under the auspices of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, an 11-year-old program designed to turn hardened criminals into thinking actors and teach them how to communicate.

And people who break the law are born actors, he says.

Still, his doubts persisted for months – time he spent rehearsing wherever and whenever he could.

Archer and Eagle worked each day in their RTA sessions – and when they were in their cells, which are diagonally across from each other.

“We’d look at each other through the bars, trying to see each other while we’re rehearsing,” he says. “I kept on asking him if he was looking at his script.”

Soon enough, neither man needed a script. But the confidence still wasn’t there until the day before their first performance.

Eagle had the part down when he began to take on Lenny’s physical traits, acting with his body, Archer says. “When I saw him do it, he convinced me he was Lenny and I said, ‘You know what? We’re gonna be all right.’”

But George was a tough nut to crack.

“George is frustrated, loving and strong,” Archer says. “It’s hard to balance all those emotions at the same time.”

Director Brent Buell and a couple of RTA veterans helped.

“They told me ‘Everyone’s been in a situation like this, so draw on that experience,’” he says. But that was easier said than done.

“I’ve been in prison so many years that I’ve learned to mask my feelings, and I’ve become great at it,” he says with a chuckle. “They said ‘Don’t be afraid. Let go. You have to let go.’ ”

Archer – whose nickname is “Panama,” owing to his Panamanian roots – wasn’t able to do that until he got some advice from Katherine Vockins, the Katonah volunteer who runs Rehabilitation Through the Arts.

“Katherine said ‘Panama, don’t be afraid.’ ” Archer recalls. ’ “You’re not going to cross over a ledge where you can’t come back. Don’t worry about that. Let it go and you’ll reach that limit and you’ll be able to come back.’ ”

The first audience was B block, Sing Sing’s youngest prisoners.

“They’re notorious,” Archer says. ”… They curse. They talk. But last night, they were like a Broadway crowd. There was a hush. They were respectful.”

Eagle says he could sense the audience changing, from thinking the show was a comedy – because Lenny is simple and slow – to worrying for his safety and warning him that he was in danger.

John Steinbeck’s story of two drifters – George Milton and Lenny Small – traces a love story of sorts, as the strong and domineering George looks after the hulking but dim Lenny, through several brushes with the law.

In the final scene, after Lenny has accidentally killed the boss’s wife, George shoots Lenny rather than have the mob get to him. It is an act of love, a sacrifice.

The scene profoundly affected Archer, who is in Sing Sing for second-degree murder.

“Last night, I got so into it, that I cried my first tear in 10 years, maybe more than 10 years,” he says. “When I was looking over Lenny, and he was dead on the floor, I was George. I wasn’t Panama. I wasn’t Jermaine Archer. I was really George.”

Archer says he drew on his life, on a relationship he had with his girlfriend’s brother, a “problematic” man who needed Archer’s protection. “I can identify with taking someone else’s welfare as your own responsibility.”

“I’ve tried to cry for years. I think about my children, about the victim’s family,” says Archer.

“I used to think to myself, maybe if I cry, God would let me go home. Maybe if he knows I’m really sorry.

“It sounds crazy, but I would sit in my cell and try to cry, try to get one tear out. Last night brought a tear out – and it felt good. I felt like a whole new person after that. Maybe I do have those emotions that I’ve suppressed for so many years. Maybe I just have to dig them back out – and it’s OK to show them.”

After that first performance, Archer took some heat from the audience for what George had done.

“A lot of people cursed at me last night and said ‘You’re foul. How could you kill your best friend?’ ”

“Ghetto loyalty isn’t the same as Hollywood loyalty,” he explains. “They look at it as ‘That’s your best friend. You took the gun. You and him should have taken on the world together.’ ”

Even between scenes, when he stood in the wings, Archer says he felt entirely in the moment, using an actor’s phrase. He even spoke with a drawl, something he hadn’t done in rehearsal.

“It just came outta me,” he says with an air of disbelief.

Director Buell is sold on the program’s worth.

“This is why I love RTA,” he says. “I think actors are the most courageous people in the world because they go places inside themselves that other people don’t go. Here, it’s even more so.”

Buell had wanted to do a play about a strike in an English tin-plate factory in the 1800s, but the RTA steering committee – the prisoners – chose “Of Mice and Men.”

“They said, ‘You told us you wanted us to do an actor’s piece. This is an actor’s piece,’ ” Buell recalls.

“As they talked, it completely reshaped my thinking about the play,” he says. “It was amazing to think what they brought to it.”

“Nobody could toss money at me to get me away from here. Hands-down, it’s the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.”

Buell says he is in awe of the transformation the men go through as they learn their lines and become the characters.

“It happens before your eyes – and it’s really something we get to see that no one else sees,” he says. “Men who are buried in themselves become leaders in the program.

“That,” he adds, “bodes well for society, because most are going to be back home one day. I’d rather have someone (next door) who has vastly improved himself than someone who has spent 20 years reading the only comic books they provide and plotting how to have revenge when he comes home.”

There are challenges, too: When Buell staged the attack that drives George and Lenny to that final scene. Sing Sing is a maximum-security prison for men, so the director had to find an actress to play Curley’s wife.

He found Rosie DeSanctis.

Staging the death “had to be choreographed down to the slightest move,” Buell says.

When Lenny puts his hands in her hair, petting her in the same way he had earlier petted a puppy, DeSanctis puts her hands on top of Eagle’s and takes control of the scene.

“It looks violent and terrifying,” Buell says, “but it puts her in complete control so she doesn’t get hurt.”

Buell gives credit to the prison administration for allowing this type of scene to be shown.

“In prison, to enact a scene of violence against a woman on stage is extraordinary,” he says. “It’s instructive to the audience to see something horrible look horrible. Murder is never pretty.”

That scene was difficult for Eagle, who says he has many women in his family.

“The violence of it was hard to play and I had to get into Lenny.” Eagle says. “The shock of it – that she’s dead – I can play.”

There were times when Buell saw Eagle thinking too much.

“Very often he’d give a very intelligent facial expression and I’d tell him ‘You have to wipe that out. You look too smart,’ ” Buell says with a laugh.

“He’s not smart, but he’s not dumb all the time,” Eagle says. “I’m like ‘OK, when do I look smart and when do I look dumb?’ There’s so much to him.”

There’s no guile to Lenny. He is all genuine, says Eagle.

“What I discovered about Lenny – in one of those aha moments – is that he has all the same emotions we all have. It’s just that we learn to hide them when we get older. Lenny never reached that point.”

See a show at Sing Sing
Volunteer Katherine Vockins says interested members of the public may attend productions of Rehabilitation Through the Arts after a rigorous screening procedure. If you are interested, go to www.p-c-i.org/rta_register.php.

Photo by Ricky Flores/The Journal News: Jermaine Archer, 34, left, of Brooklyn and Mosi Eagle, 37, of Long Island, inmates at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, rehearse their roles in the prison’s production of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

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Apparently, it takes awhile for angels to get used to their wings.

At a recent rehearsal for this weekend’s performances of “Joy to the World,” one tiny member of the heavenly host walked gingerly between rows of auditorium seats at Pelham’s charming Manor Club Theater, one cardboard wing behind her, the other dipping into the row to her left.

She then took her place alongside robed choir members, Irish stepdancers, wild-feather-headed clowns and a toy soldier in a sequined red uniform with a white “X” across the front.

The Ballet Arts of Pelham production, running today through Sunday, features a cast of 80, including 30 children from the Pelhams and 18 professional singers and dancers.

“Joy to the World” was first presented in 2002, when Ballet Arts director Sheran Daniele and her husband, Chris, decided that the attacks of 9/11 had made the world global, that the boundaries had been lost, and that it was time to celebrate the world’s cultures through dance.

That show was a success, so they repeated the sounding joy the following the year. Then they put the show on the shelf after that, until this year, when Sheran decided to revisit it and make it more challenging for her corps.

The message of the piece is that it’s all right to believe in magic, particularly the magic of the season. On stage are dances from Ireland, Italy, Africa, Arabia, Russia, China and the Americas.

Sheran Daniele had a willing and eager accomplice in bringing “Joy” to Pelham: Her daughter, Lia, studied at the Hartt School of Fine Arts, the Joffrey and The New School.

But Lia started dancing long before that.

Sheran, who goes by “Sherry,” tells of teaching a dance class when she was pregnant and having her students point to her shaking, bouncing belly: Lia was working on her dance moves in utero.

In rehearsal, Lia is stern but thoughtful, overtaken by emotion at one point as she gives those assembled a pep talk about how blessed they are to have the love and support of their families.

And there are plenty of families here, with no fewer than nine sets of siblings in the cast and some parents – like Lincoln Schleifer – lending their talents to the production.

Of course, when Schleifer volunteered to help he had no idea it’d mean donning an impossibly large and colorful dress to appear as the impossibly well-endowed Mother Ginger, matron of the Pochinelle clowns.

But there he is, in all her glory.

It’s not all about dancing. There is an adult choir and a children’s choir to sing holiday favorites.

And there’s plenty of magic to go around.

‘Joy to the World’
Where: Manor Club Theater, 1023 Esplanade, Pelham Manor.
When: 7 p.m. today; 5 p.m. tomorrow; 2 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $25, $15 for children 8 years and younger.
Call: 914-693-1488 or 914-738-8300.
Email: Showmethejoy@aol.com
With: Tiffany Corbett, Chanel Mobley, Tammy Kohlschmidt, Curtis Etheridge, Lucy Caracappa, Lia Daniele, Judeth DeMott, Nikki Jenkins, Wendy Zaros, Danielle Dragoni, John Evans, Curtis Chase, Lincoln Schleifer, Heidi Stiel, Stephen Loftus, Ursula Mencini, Amanda Nord, Juliarae Sansone, Elizabeth Parisi, Audra Parisi, Jane Parisi, Ava Ravitz, Morgan Tolan, Samantha Keleman, Kiera Mallinson, Kerry Mallinson, Emma Angiolucci, Molly Fields, Mary Lee Kenney, Abigail Young, Gabriella Bhrio, Amber Corbett, Olivia Brewer, Elspeth Leckie, Catriona Leckie, Meike Bovbjerg, Britt Bovbjerg, Pilar Vigil, Manisha Asokumar, Helen Robertson, Emma Angiolucci, Kate Warren, Kira Chase, Emma Chase, Athena Woodfin, Julia Fratpietro, Olivia Imperato, Sofia Imperato, Mariah Ippolito, Amanda Andrade, Melissa DiMopulo, Gabriella Spielberg, Cheyenne Valenzuela, Camille N’Diaye, Ella N’Diaye, Hulda Zheng, Monica Pfeiffer, Siena Callegari, Briana Ciardullo, Claire Gilman, Elizabeth Hasfal, Brianna Klein, Nicole Miller, Metika Ngbokoli, Viara Radoulova, Gianna Ray, Zeke Scarborough, Amber Scarborough, Ruby Schleifer, Krystina Steck, Melissa Steck, Savannah Sundheim, Angela Woltmann, Kelly Ann Nichols, Madison Young, Sedari Young, Joanna Shkoza.

(PHOTOS by Tania Savayan/The Journal News)

Top: Lia Daniele, left, and her mother, Sheran, help cast members with their costumes before dress rehearsal for “Joy to the World,” a holiday revue presented by the Ballet Arts of Pelham at The Manor Club.

Bottom: The cast rehearses for “Joy to the World,” a holiday revue presented by the Ballet Arts of Pelham at The Manor Club. The cast includes 18 professional dancers and 60 children and was written, directed and choreographed by Sheran and Lia Daniele, a mother-and-daughter team.)

Last week, Mrs. Cratchit opened her White Plains home to the Fezziwigs, Scrooge, Marley and all those ghosts for chicken, sushi and pasta.

Last night, The Ghost of Christmas Past was set to serve Italian favorites.

Next week, it’s Mrs. Fezziwig’s turn and she’s thinking of whipping up a homemade Chinese feast and wondering if there might be a non-alcoholic wassail recipe on the Internet somewhere.

After all, they all have to be back for the evening curtain.

This holiday season, the cast of Westchester Broadway Theatre’s production of “A Christmas Carol” includes a handful of local actors who picked Christmas plum roles and are opening their homes to their fellow cast mates.

– Paulette Oliva, of White Plains, plays Mrs. Cratchit and Mrs. Brownlow; – Christine DiTota, who grew up in Yonkers and now lives in Harrison, plays the Ghost of Christmas Past, Fred’s wife, and a homeless woman; – Ann-Ngaire Martin, who is known to her theater students at Pleasantville High School as Ann Shankman, lives in Chappaqua. She nearly stole this season’s WBT production of “Gypsy” as the balletic stripper Tessie Tura. Here, she plays Mrs. Fezziwig, Old Sally and a party guest; – Michael J. Farina of Port Chester is in his 12th show at WBT, playing Mr. Fezziwig, the Ghost of Christmas Present, a charity gentleman, a merchant and a poulterer.

For DiTota, it’s her first go-round at the Elmsford dinner theater. For the others, it’s like going home, close to home.

Farina loves the commute.

“Living in Port Chester, zipping over and zipping back, it’s not always that case when you’re in a show,” Farina says. He recalls playing Fezziwig in Syracuse several Christmases past and driving home through the snow to make it home for the holidays.

Martin says doing a show during the holidays puts her in the spirit, especially “A Christmas Carol,” which gets a dancing, singing rewrite by WBT regular George Puello.

This is the first time Martin, Oliva and DiTota have performed the Dickens classic, but it’s not the first time some of these folks have shared the stage.

Oliva played Grace, opposite Martin’s Hannigan, in a production of “Annie” at Yorktown Stage.

Martin and Farina, who appear to be having too much fun playing the fun-loving Fezziwigs, were in a production of “42nd Street” at the Gateway Playhouse on Long Island.

“We just instantly jumped into this with an ease and a comfort to be opposite each other,” Farina says.

Oliva is a fixture in community theater in Westchester, appearing at Yorktown Stage, Irvington Town Hall Theatre and the now-defunct Asbury Summer Theatre.

By day, DiTota plays a princess and a pirate, and a long list of other parts, for the children’s entertainment company Dave’s Cast of Characters.

But it’s unlikely she plays a character as sparkly as her Ghost of Christmas Past, who appears with a glittering, lighted umbrella to help Scrooge change his wicked ways. She also sings the show’s first notes, as a homeless woman clutching her babe in the snow.

The Purchase College graduate is working toward earning her Equity card – which will make her a full-fledged professional actor – a rite of passage that Farina achieved in 1989 when he did “Camelot” at the dinner theater and Oliva did when she went from waitress to actress in “Meet Me in St. Louis” in Elmsford in 1982. DiTota won’t get her card for this show – the run is too short – but if she were to land another role, she could.

“It’s a family tradition to be here,” says Oliva, whose daughter, Caitlin, is a hostess at the theater.

“This place is old home,” says Farina, who played Al/God in the Broadway production of “In My Life” and was in the original production of “Seussical” and revivals of “My Fair Lady” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“I grew up here. I got lots of experience here. I’ve been lucky enough to do Broadway shows and be there and back and there and back. It’s always here. And it’s always nice to come back.”

He also met his wife, Heidi Giarlo, in Elmsford. She’s now in charge of the theater’s group sales.

“It’s just heavenly to do a show this close to home,” says Martin, a veteran of Broadway and national tours. “We went to Paulette’s for dinner between shows today.”

“She set a bad precedent, feeding us so well,” Martin continued, with a laugh. “I was going to order pizzas.”

A professional acting job at Christmas means a paycheck on the day before Christmas Eve.

“Then it’s mad crazy shopping, one day,” Martin says.

“Oh my God, one day,” agrees Oliva.

“We’ll be those last-minute ones,” Martin concludes.

And those Cratchits can spend it.

‘A Christmas Carol’
What: A musical adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic with book, music and lyrics by George Puello.
Where: Westchester Broadway Theatre, 1 Broadway Plaza, Elmsford.
When: Through Dec. 23. Wednesdays and Thursdays: lunch, 11:30 a.m., show at 1 p.m.; Thursdays through Saturdays: dinner at 6 p.m., show at 8 p.m.; Sundays: lunch at noon, show at 1:30; and dinner at 5 and show at 7 p.m.
Tickets: $60 to $73, including a served meal and a show. Discounts for children, students and senior citizens at selected performances.
Call: 914-592-2222.

(PHOTO by Dave Kennedy/The Journal News: Local actors in Westchester Broadway Theatre’s musical “A Christmas Carol,” from left, Christine DiTota, Harrison, Paulette Oliva, White Plains, Michael Farina, Port Chester and Ann Martin, Chappaqua.)

Just got the word that when “Phantom” resumes at Westchester Broadway Theatre on Dec. 27, the lead role will be played by … Robert Cuccioli.

Cuccioli—as you’ve read here, often—just finished a successful run as Cervantes/Quijana/Quixote in the White Plains Performing Arts Center’s “Man of La Mancha.â€? He was riveting.

I’ve heard plenty about how great he was as Erik, the Phantom, in the Yeston-Kopit musical that put the dinner theater on the map back in 1992. He played the role again in a 1996 revival.

But I didn’t, for a second, think he’d come back for a third time to play the role. I didn’t think it because Cuccioli had told me as much, point blank, when we spoke in a Midtown rehearsal hall last month.

I asked him if he would have returned to Phantom if WBT producers Bill Funking and Bob Stutler had called him before WPPAC’s Jack Batman had, and he flat-out said No. He said he’d done the role and was ready to move on.

Never say never, I guess.

The happiest guys on the planet? Funking and Stutler. Sounds like they should be planning to extend “Phantom” beyond its planned early-February closing.

Santa came early.

“Phantom” resumes Dec. 27. The box office is at 914-592-2222.

Here’s this week’s installment of “In the Wings,” which you can see on RNN TV (Channel 19 or 20 or 6, depending on your cable provider) Friday night at 5 p.m. But why wait? Here it is today. Just realize that when I say “tonight,” I mean Friday night, OK?

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I spoke with Pelham’s Phylicia Rashad backstage at “Cymbeline” at Lincoln Center recently and kidded her about whether her kid sister, Debbie Allen, would cast her as Big Mama in Allen’s upcoming all-African-American version of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” (Read the story here.)
Today, it’s official.

TERRENCE HOWARD, PHYLICIA RASHAD, ANIKA NONI ROSE and JAMES EARL JONES will star in “Cat,” which begins its limited run Feb. 12, opens March 6 and continues through April at at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre, where “Les Miz” is currently ensconced.

Tickets go on sale December 29, 2007.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” has been revived on Broadway four times before, this production marks the first African-American production approved by Williams’ estate for the Broadway stage.

It will mark the Broadway debut of Academy Award nominee TERRENCE HOWARD (Hustle & Flow, Crash) and will include:

• Tony and Drama Desk Award winner PHYLICIA RASHAD (Gem of the Ocean, Raisin in the Sun, TV’s “Cosby Showâ€?),

• Tony Award winner ANIKA NONI ROSE (Film: Dreamgirls, Broadway’s Caroline or Change), and


• Tony-time Tony winner, four-time Emmy winner and National Medal of Arts winner JAMES EARL JONES (Fences, The Great White Hope).

Tickets can be purchased at www.telecharge.com or by calling 212-239- 6200.

The Schoolhouse Theater celebrates the holidays with a musical mix. The event is Friday at 7:30 p.m., and will feature traditional holiday songs such as “White Christmas� and “Let It Snow� spun into reggae and rockabilly.

The show will also blend hits from The Temptations, The Beatles and Harry  Bellafonte, among others.

The festivities begin at 7:30 p.m. with cookies and juice, then there’s the hour-long concert and sing-along, followed by an after-party with wine, coffee and cake.

Tickets are $15 for adults. Free for kids under ten. The Schoolhouse Theater is at 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls.

Call (914) 277-8477 or www.schoolhousetheater.org for tickets and information.

In a room one flight up from Marble Avenue in Pleasantville, 10 young women chat giddily, practicing snippets of song and dance.

Except for the fact that they’re dressed all in black, this could be a study hall or a school cafeteria.

When director Adam David Cohen calls “Places,” the chatter stops, the smiles evaporate and they stand ramrod straight.

They are no longer in Pleasantville. They are in Spain, in an anything-but-pleasant villa. They are in the home of Bernarda Alba.

The transformation is complete when Aleah Papes, as Bernarda, scowls her way onto stage, followed dutifully by a line of nine others.

This is the world of John Michael LaChiusa’s “Bernarda Alba,” a dark story of the overbearing title character, her five daughters, her servants and her mother. It is a world uncharted by most high-school actresses.

“Bernarda Alba” – to be presented Saturday and Sunday at the Armonk Library’s Whippoorwill Hall – is the latest production of Little Village Playhouse. The 8-year-old youth theater is committed to presenting challenging, cutting-edge and contemporary works few regional theaters would dare to tackle, much less groups with actors still in high school.

LVP is the brainchild of Cohen and his wife and co-artistic director, Stephanie Kovacs. The Inwood residents – he’s a Tisch School graduate, she’s a working actress – use the Armonk Library and Irvington Town Hall Theater as venues, with casts drawn from Chappaqua, Briarcliff Manor, Mount Kisco and Pleasantville.

“We try to choose shows that have something to say and are poignant in some way,” Cohen says. “And that aren’t done either a lot or correctly. We also write new musicals, sometimes with the kids, sometimes for them.”

Also on the staff are assistant director Patrick Gallagher, musical directors Amy Schneider and Marcus Baker, choreographer Jocelyn Jones and director Galit Sperling.

Kovacs and Cohen say that LVP goes beyond what young actors get with their high-school musicals.

Those choices might differ within a family.

“One of the parents said that her daughter doesn’t really want to do LVP,” Kovacs says. “She wants to do the entertainment shows, where she can be a Hot Box Girl (in ‘Guys & Dolls’).

“Her son does LVP all the time. It’s his life. He would rather do LVP than any of the other things, because he’s found a place where he can express himself and feel safe because no one’s going to mock him for his ideas and creativity. He likes discussing the philosophy behind the show.”

During a recent “Bernarda” rehearsal, Cohen says, the cast talked about what they wanted the audience to learn from the show.

“It’s about not holding back and communicating how you feel,” Cohen says they concluded. “About different types of love and about – what was the phrase they came up with? – ‘covered longing.’ ”

The cast are sophomores, juniors and seniors in high school, and the poster for the show suggests it might not be suitable for children younger than 13.

Papes, 16, from Chappaqua, is a junior at Horace Greeley High School. Her Alba is a bitter, angry and, frankly, mean woman.

Papes says the group’s choice of shows tends to raise eyebrows.

“There is sort of that reaction of ‘You’re doing that?’ My father is a little bit like that,” she says.

“I’ve done other theater companies where we’ve done shows that are simpler and are done more often,” she says. “I don’t find it to be as interesting. There’s a value in that, and I enjoy it, but I don’t want it to be the only experience I have.”

The troupe is not about “children’s theater,” Kovacs says. “The difference is that children’s theater is all about ‘we’re so proud’ and there’s nothing truthful underneath it. Whereas, if you take material that will be challenging and something that the kids can aspire to and it can lift them, the better writers do that.

“And that’s what we want them to be working on,” she says. “Why wouldn’t you choose Shakespeare? Why wouldn’t you choose Sondheim?”

Each summer, the group works up an original musical from scratch. In 2003, Cohen and lyricist Kevin Laub wrote “The Hadleyburg Project,” which got its premiere at LVP.

Kovacs says Cohen’s compositions are difficult to sing, but not beyond the ability of the young artists.

“The kids can sing this music,” she says. “It’s quite a challenge, but they can sing it.

“We did a staged reading of ‘Hadleyburg’ recently in the city and we gave the adults who were learning this music a CD with the kids singing it. They couldn’t believe that the kids knew the music so well and could do it – because they were having so much trouble with it.”

When they’re not doing original works, the students tackle Broadway shows, many of them from the fertile mind of Stephen Sondheim, including “A Little Night Music,” “Anyone Can Whistle” and “Sunday in the Park with George.”

Not “Annie.” And not “High School Musical.”

“I wouldn’t do ‘Annie,’ ” Cohen says. “I don’t even want to see it anymore. But at least the people who wrote that knew what they were writing. The people who wrote ‘High School Musical,’ there’s just no craft behind anything in that show.”

Still, those shows fill seats. In an increasingly competitive arts market, Kovacs says, other groups have learned that they have to do more commercial fare to keep their doors open.

“We live on the edge a lot financially,” Kovacs says, “because we don’t choose to do things that aren’t what our passion is.”

If that means building a pool on the stage of the Irvington Town Hall Theater to put on a production of “Metamorphoses,” so be it.

“I built the pool,” Cohen says with more than a little pride. “They now have a new policy at Irvington Town Hall Theatre: No pools on stage.”

That show, in which mythology is brought to life, is among Papes’ favorites.

“The element of having the water as sort of a member of the cast almost and how it affected our acting and how powerful it was and how it had an effect on everything we did was really interesting,” she says. “We did a lot of intense character work on that show.”

The current show is proving an uphill climb, too, she says.

“Bernarda scares me,” she says. “I’m not a very angry person. I have some trouble connecting with that – and the pain she causes other people. To make it real and to really feel that is hard.”

The difficulty level, Cohen says, suggests they’re on the right track.

Phaedra Nowak, 17, from Chappaqua, is a senior at Greeley. She plays Poncia, one of Bernarda’s servants.

“We do a lot of the shows that a lot of other groups don’t dare to do,” she says. “It’s a unique perspective on how to act, how to sing and how to interpret things. We’re a really close group and that’s always appealed to me.”

LVP is a Nowak family tradition: Phaedra’s older sister, Mandie, now a sophomore at Columbia University, was in the group, and her younger sister; Dillie, a freshman at Greeley, is in her first show.

After the performance weekend, there’s the inevitable letdown, something Nowak’s preparing herself for already.

“Today, I was thinking ‘Wow! Our show ends in a week and a half. What am I going to do with my life after ‘Bernarda Alba’?”

“Bernarda Alba”
What: A Little Village Playhouse production of the Michael John LaChiusa musical.
Where: Whippoorwill Hall, Armonk Library, 19 Whippoorwill Road East, Armonk.
When: Dec. 15 at 8 p.m.; Dec. 16 at 7 p.m.
Tickets: $15; $12 for students and seniors.
Call: 914-747-6206.
Web: www.littlevillageplayhouse.com.
Note: This show has adult content and may not be suitable for children under 13.
With: Christine Rae Haggerty, Kathryn Krull, Aleah Papes, Maile Hamilton, Sammi Leroy, Ali Ross, Georgy Kronfeld, Phaedra Nowak, Debbie Sachare, Elsa Obus.

Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News
The cast of Little Village Playhouse rehearses “Bernarda Alba,� by Michael John LaChuisa. Adam Cohen, artistic director, and wife Steph Kovacs, co-artistic director, founded the youth theater group in 2000.