News and Notes: Everybody Loves ‘Billy’

Lots of crossover news with a Brit hit coming to New York, an American musical heading across the Atlantic, and a TV star headed for Broadway.

• Critics raved across the board for Billy Elliot the Musical, the London hit with music by Elton John, uniformly praising its tug-at-the-heartstrings plot and exuberant dancing.
  
  
• Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg, who starred in the movie Sister Act, is teaming with European producer Joop van den Ende to produce Sister Act the musical at London’s Palladium. The show opens June 2, with previews starting May 6. It features music by Alan Menkin and lyrics by Glenn Slater.
  
  
• And speaking of Joop van den Ende. He’s also teaming up with Disney and Cameron Macintosh for a Netherlands production of Mary Poppins, another London hit that transferred to New York. The show is slated to open in April 2010 at the Circus Theatre near Amsterdam. This is not a new road. Tarzan, which had a fairly short Broadway, run found a whole new lease on life in Holland.
  
  
• And from TV to the stage, The Office’s Melora Hardin will join the cast of Chicago on Broadway as Roxie Hart for a six-week run starting December 29. Fans of the show know Hardin as Jan Levenson, the boss-love interest of Steve Carell’s character, Michael. It will be her Broadway debut.