The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 37

COMICS 2 DEAR ABBY 3 TELEVISION 3 1 Hi THE LIliE Holiday Film Preview We break down everything from blockbusters to new Oscar contenders. unuu (The Journal NtUIS Friday, November 10, 2006 WP For more things to do, check out the calendar LoHud.com rV REVIEW A new 'Les Miz' Vive la difference? Theater Buzz Download theater critic Jacques le Sourd's Broadway podcasts at lohud.com podcast Read Ali Ewoldt's Broadway Baby blog at lesmiz. lohudblogs. com Jacques le Sourd The Journal News "Les Miz" is, well, "Les Miz." It opened again last night on Broadway, just three years after it ended a 17-year run there. If you liked it the first time, you'll probably like it again.

That's what producer Cameron Mackintosh hopes, anyway, as this show comes onto Broadway just in time for the holidays. The engagement is for six months, he says. This "Les Miz" official name, "Les Miserables," a show based on Victor Hugo's 19th-century French populist potboiler has been downsized a bit for the Broadhurst Theatre. But it's not so much smaller that the minus column. No one could fairly ask Gemignani to reach the tear-inducing heights of the original Valjean, Colm Wilkinson.

But his lack of affect lowers the show's temperature. Valjean is the ultimate symbol of redemption, a man who stole a loaf of bread but gets a second chance from a forgiving priest Valjean's rescue of other needy souls along his way, and his unshakable moral strength, is supposed to be moving. Gemignani doesn't really make it so. On the other hand, Daphne Rubin-Vega (of "Rent" fame) is quite fine as Fantine, the hapless girl who dies ear-Please see 'LES 40 you'd really notice, or mind. The difference, for this multiple-time viewer over many years, is the tears.

There weren't any for me, this time, even at the end. You find yourself instead coolly checking out the different performances, and finding huge differences in that ineffable Broadway thing called talent The production, directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn, is less a unified whole than a collage of actors' efforts. Some are wonderful, some are not so wonderful. So here is Gary Beach, who became a star in "The Producers," almost stealing the entire show as Thenardier, the thieving innkeeper. Even when the stage is full of peo ple, you don't want to miss one gesture of Beach's cheerfully over-the-top performance.

Same goes for his wife, Madame Thenardier, an English actress named Jenny Galloway who can bring down the house with one sideways glance at the audience. And there's Norm Lewis, commanding and elegant if not quite sinister enough, perhaps as Javert, the police inspector who spend the whole show in hot pursuit of the ex-con Jean Valjean. This brings us to Alexander Gemignani (son of the admired Broadway conductor Paul), who plays the hero Jean Valjean as a rather cool customer. His performance, for me, went into riiaT Th i irurf hi urn iniiirii Michael LePoer Trench Pleasantville's Ali Ewoldt as Cosette in the new Broadway production of "Les Miserables." LoHud.com REVIEW Fine cast anchors 'Dames at Sea' r't 1 (W if ft HI tv I.I 3 REVIEW Peter D. Kramer The Journal News On one of those nights where the rain fell in sheets and any Westchester highway named for a river became a river, the umbrellas even came out on stage at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck.

Of course, because the current production, opening tomorrow night, is the bubbly "Dames at Sea," the umbrellas had silver linings, silver handles and silver glitter all over them. The little, six-person musical that could, "Dames at Sea" with book and lyrics by George Haim-sohn and Robin Miller and music by Jim Wise put Bernadette Peters on the map as Ruby, the tapper with a TO heart of gold right out of Centerville, U.SA Sound familiar? If you've ever seen a Busby Berkeley musical with a paper-thin showbiz plot, lavish costumes, intricate kaleidoscopic choreography and Moxie to spare you know what you're in for. If not just go and enjoy: The Emelin production, directed by Brett Smock, features a fine cast of pros who serve it all up with a wink and a nod and talent to burn. The characters are right out of central cast- 'Dames at Sea' Where: Emelin Theatre, 153 Li- brary Lane, Mamaroneck. When: Previews tonight at 8, tomorrow at 3 i p.m.: $28; tomorrow and Nov.

18 at 8 p.m.: $35; Sun-' day, Nov. 19 and 26 at 3 p.m.: $35; I Thursday and i Friday at 8 p.m.: $32; Nov. 18 at 3 p.m.: $32; Nov. 24 at 2 and 7 p.m., $32; Nov. 25 at 2 p.m.: $32; Nov.

25 at 7 p.m.: $35. Tickets: As noted above. $26 for all performances for those age 12 and younger. Information: 914-698-0098, emelin.org. I 'Hudson River at FishkHT headlines Yonkers museum shows Georgette Gouveia The Journal News Bring back the naked guys.

Sylvia Sleigh became celebrated during the feminist movement of the 1970s for painting male nudes that regarded men the way male artists have traditionally seen women. Her 14-panel painting "Invitation to a Voyage: The Hudson River at Fishkill" (1979-99), which she recently donated to The Hudson River Museum in Yonkers is one of a trio of new shows at the museum. It's not that "Invitation to a Voyage" is ever less than accomplished in terms of craftsmanship. And it's certainly a generous gift But Sleigh's pedestrian study of a group of friends on a summer jaunt near Bannerman's Castle a onetime arsenal on an island in the Hudson lacks the intellectual excitement of her other work. Nor does it have the mystery of "Invitation's" most natural antecedent, Antoine Watteau's "L'Embarque-ment pour Cythere" (1717-19) Embarkation for Please see MUSEUM, 40.

Mona, diva ing the (Christy Morton); Joan, the wisecracking redhead (Kyrst Hogan); Hennesey, the hard-charging director (John Salvatore, who also plays the captain) Lucky, the dashing best friend who sure loves to dance (Matthew LaBanca); Dick, the gee-whiz songwriting sailor (Josh Walden), and Ruby, just hitting New York with nothing but tap shoes and a dream (Krista Kurtzberg). The plot takes a page from those wonderful 1930s musicals, when movie houses doled out dreams to those in the throes of the Great Depression. Ruby, fresh off the bus from Utah, wanders into a 42nd Street theater with just such a dream. This girl may be a graduate of Madame Melba's Tap, Ballet and Ballroom Top, Sylvia Sleigh: "Bannerman's Island 1979. Top right, Guy Gillette: "Second 1958, Yonkers.

Above, Neil Welliver: "Flotsam 1995 Woodcut. Broadway Bebe going from Velma to Roxie Neuwirth to heb Peter D. Kramer Is part of the E-Team blog 1 homeopathic medicine to stave off a cold. Neuwirth wears a thick chocolate-brown turtleneck sweater over snug Brand jeans with knee-high black leather boots. A Brand exec spots her across the restaurant and interrupts the interview to ask her size.

He returns a few minutes later with a new pair of jeans. "That has never happened before," says Neuwirth. Such are the occasional perks of her fame. An accomplished Broadway dancer (who won Tonys for "Chicago" and "Sweet Neuwirth is probably better know for playing Dr. Lilith Sternin And on Dec.

31, Neuwirth will do something even more interesting. Shell switch roles, going on as Roxie Hart opposite Brenda Braxton's Velma Kelly. Shell appear as Roxie through March 25, notoriously a slow period for the Broadway business. Doing Roxie for a change was all her idea, says Neuwirth in an interview at a coffee shop near her home in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "This past May, I had hip replacement surgery.

I went into (producer) Barry Weissler's office, with my cane, a month after my operation, and told him I wanted to do it" She gulps down some Japanese fame suddenly supplanted by that of the killer Roxie Hart Neuwirth's Roxie will be played by her longtime partner in the revival, Ann Reinking. Reinking, a one-time paramour of the late, legendary "Chicago" choreographer Bob Fosse, staged the dances for the revival in 1996. Starting as a three-night City Center "Encores!" concert gig that moved to Broadway that fall, it has by far outlasted the 1975 original, which had a run of only 14 months. This pared-down production even outlived the movie, which won an Oscar in 2002. Neuwirth and Reinking didn't quite eclipse the original Roxie and Velma, Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera, but they came close.

on LoHud.com. Send him reports on high school arts activities at eteam. lohudblogs. celebrate anniversary of 'Chicago' revival Jacques le Sourd The Journal News Bebe Neuwirth is coming back to Broadway next week. She'll be part of the 10th anniversary gala celebration of the revival of the musical "Chicago," on Tuesday night In what is sure to be a climax of this "Chicago" retrospective collage assembled by director Walter Bobbie, Neuwirth will go on once more as Velma Kelly, the desperate convict who sees her prison Academy, but she's got Broadway in her blood.

Yes, Broadway, did ya hear? In minutes, she's cast in a Broadway musical see how easy that was? and com LoHud.com File photoThe Associated Press Bebe Neuwirth, starring in the musical "Chicago," takes a bow at New York's Richard Rodgers Theater in thisyL996 photo. Please see DAMES, 4D Please see BEBE, 4D.