John Stamos John Stamos: "Hey, baby, do you like a song-and-dance man?" Kevin Winter/Getty Images
 

by Linda Holmes

Sure, ER is ending tonight and bringing a close to one surprising chapter in the life of John "Uncle Jesse" Stamos. But he's moving on.

He's coming to the Broadway revival of Bye Bye Birdie set for this fall, where he will play Albert Peterson. If you have frequently had the thought, "Why, that John Stamos, I believe he is the Dick Van Dyke of our time," then this will make perfect sense to you.

And in yet another example of people with outside-Broadway fame coming to Broadway productions, Stamos' Rose Alvarez will be Gina Gershon, whose genuinely eclectic career has included quite the pile of episodic television appearances as well as two entirely different movies about relationships between girls and other girls: Showgirls and Bound. She's also, it's worth noting, been in Cabaret.

At the moment, you may be on the fence. You are wondering whether this revival will be any good or not. Gina Gershon is interesting, and John Stamos is...charismatic, at least, right? And he's been on Broadway before, in Cabaret and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.

I will now attempt to push you over the fence.

The best news about a Bye Bye Birdie revival...maybe ever, after the jump...

Kim MacAfee's father, Harry MacAfee, will be played by Bill Irwin, who is a clown and a genius and a heart-stoppingly talented dramatic actor recently seen as the broken father in Rachel Getting Married.

Given that the last high-profile opportunity to see Bye Bye Birdie revisited was the 1995 TV version that had entirely too much badly bewigged Jason Alexander (wearing the strangest M-shaped hairline you'll ever see) and unpleasantly grouchy George Wendt for my liking, this is welcome news, indeed.

As long as they don't cast anyone from Twilight or High School Musical to play Conrad Birdie, things look sunny.

categories: Theater

1:39 - April 2, 2009

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