New York's Public Theater is kicking off its 2009-2010 season with something it does pretty well: Shakespeare. More specifically, Hollywood stars performing in Shakespeare.

Coming off of the excellent Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night, starring Anne Hathaway, the Public heads over to the darker side of the Bard's spectrum with a production of Othello, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The play is a co-production with LAByrinth Theater Company. Hoffman, an artistic director at LAByrinth, will star alongside fellow artistic director, John Ortiz.

It should be fun to see Hoffman sinking his teeth into the role of Iago, a slimy sidekick considered by some to be the prototypical villain. And because of the connection to LAByrinth, the production is likely to be a labor of love for the actors.

Tickets for Othello go on sale beginning August 3rd. With just 23 performances planned for the run, seats should go pretty quickly.

Broadway continues to stump the recession, with people heading to shows in droves last week, according to Broadway.com. Not surprisingly,  perennial favorites Wicked and The Lion King continue to rake in the most bucks. More interesting: the play God of Carnage brought in over $1 million and was packing in audiences beyond capacity.

Of course, anyone who has seen God of Carnage shouldn't be surprised. The 2009 Tony winner for Best Play Tony is excellent. The writing is funny and mean, and if you like your theater in small doses, the 90-minute running time is a perfect quick-fix.

Best of all are the performances of the Oscar-caliber Hollywood stars. The amazing Jeff Daniels is inspired. He chews all kinds of scenery. Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden, two wonderful actresses, are perfectly cast and hit all the right notes (Harden also won a Tony for Best Actress). And James Gandolfini is so good as a Brooklyn yuppie, you almost forget the Jersey thug. The show goes on summer hiatus beginning this week and will be back beginning September 8 -- and it appears the cast won't change. That's a good thing.  Another cast may be able to handle the material, but it's hard to imagine any other group of actors recreating such maniacal magic.

With the long lines at the TKTS booth in Times Square, it's pretty easy to spot that discount opportunity. (By the way, no matter how long that line looks, your wait time is 30 to 40 minutes. A small price to save 45 percent or so on a couple of Broadway tickets.) But there are less obvious discounts at most Broadway theater box offices.

The list of box office discounts includes $25 lottery tickets to shows, less-than-$40 general rush tickets, student rush tickets and standing room only tickets.

Not every show has them, The Lion King for instance, is a roaring success and doesn't offer any discounts. But even mega-hits like Billy Elliot and Jersey Boys offer fans a way to get cheaper seats.

My list is updated with all the Broadway musicals now, and I'll have the plays updated soon. Check it out.

Even though overall sales were down on Broadway for the week ended July 5, there were still 15 of 24 shows with more than 90 percent of seats sold, according to the The Broadway League's weekly recap.

Obviously, the July 4 holiday weekend - with world-class fireworks on the Hudson River - explains the drop. So, it's not a big deal.

Despite that, The Norman Conquests continued its conquest of Broadway, jumping over 9 percent in attendance. I guess it could have been Anglophiles boycotting the Fourth in favor of seeing Stephen Mangan (photo, right).

Photo by Joan Marcus