William Shatner in Beverly Hills, Calif., July 28, 2010.
William Shatner is set to return to Broadway after a 50-year absence, according to a report in the New York Post.
Gotham gossip Michael Riedel reports that the Canadian best known as Captain Kirk will bring a one-man show to the Music Box in February. (That particular theatre will be free because of the premature closing of Private Lives starring Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross.)
Shatner's World: We Just Live In It, an autobiographical show, will reportedly play a limited run of two or three weeks, then head off on tour.
If plans pan out, Shatner will be making his Broadway comeback just over half a century after his last appearance in New York's famed theatre district. He was last seen on the Great White Way in 1962 in the farce A Shot in the Dark, in a production that also starred Julie Harris and Walter Matthau.
That was the Shat's third appearance on Broadway. His first was in the Tyrone Guthrie's 1956 production of Tamburlaine the Great based on the one that had played at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Shatner was Usumcasane to Anthony Quayle's Tamburlaine – and the cast also included such great Canadian actors as Tony Van Bridge, Douglas Rain and William Hutt.
Stratford is, of course, back on Broadway as well this season with Des McAnuff's production of Jesus Christ Superstar. It's shaping up to be quite the Canadian-filled year down in New York.
J. Kelly Nestruck