Broadway Show

One of the biggest box-office disappointments of last Christmas was Richard Attenborough's A Chorus Line, a failure that suggested Hollywood might be less likely to seek inspiration from Broadway in the future. But the fall-winter movie lineup has Broadway making its strongest showing in recent years. No fewer than five contemporary playwrights - Neil Simon (Brighton Beach Memoirs), Marsha Norman ('night Mother), Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart), Howard Ashman (Little Shop of Horrors)

Good Vibrations makes a compelling case for the argument that the next person who thinks it would be nice to cobble together a musical from the Beach Boys' beloved songbook should be run over by a little deuce coupe. Beyond the help of Rhonda (or anyone else), this latest stab at a jukebox musical clearly takes that cash cow Mamma Mia! as its template. But there is a crucial difference. Mamma Mia! is a fatuous and inane show that uses the songs of Abba, which are themselves mostly fatuous and inane.

Colman Domingo was around 35 when his second growth spurt began. He'd already weathered the awkward years of buck teeth and ballet lessons. Now the actor had to figure out a way to say goodbye to his parents and his childhood home at 52d and Chancellor Streets in West Philly. But rather than letting go, Domingo decided to archive his memories. The result is A Boy and His Soul, a one-man show - equal parts song, dance and storytelling - that captures the energy of the neighborhood, and the pervasiveness of R&B and soul in the 1970s and '80s.

Live Nation, the national media company that promised to reincarnate the sumptuous but shuttered Boyd movie palace as a first-class venue for big, traveling Broadway shows, has withdrawn its construction crews and is reconsidering the project, a company spokesman confirmed yesterday. Live Nation apparently decided to shut down the project because construction costs on the Chestnut Street theater have risen at an alarming pace, said Duane Bumb, deputy director of the city's Commerce Department.

Gerard Alessandrini is one of those lucky people who grew up and wound up making a living at what they had fun doing as kids. Alessandrini, a native of Boston, and his pals enjoyed spoofing movies and musicals they saw on television. Then when he was 27, trying to make it as a performer in New York but spending more time waiting on tables than entertaining, an idea came to him. He put together a little show that would become known as Forbidden Broadway, spoofing the big Broadway productions.

A new study envisions the Philadelphia Orchestra owning and operating both the Academy of Music and a proposed new concert hall - and expanding its mission to become a major impresario. Under the plan, by C.W. Shaver & Company of New York, the orchestra would continue to own the academy, and would present opera, ballet, Broadway shows and other orchestras. Its budget would balloon from $27 million to nearly $40 million by the year 2000. The Shaver plan would put the orchestra in a unique position: No other orchestra owns two halls, or presents other organizations on such a large scale.

Glen Campbell, in his autobio out next month, says fighting was such a force in his year-long "drinking and drugging" liaison with Tanya Tucker that: "We even fought during sex once or twice. " In Rhinestone Cowboy, the singer calls their thing 13 years ago - when he was 42 and she was 21 - "a poisoned relationship. " He calls Tucker "a crazy woman . . . (with) the nerve and strength to fight a chain saw. Too often, she viewed me as the saw. " Tucker called Campbell's "obligation to set the record straight . . . admirable," but added: "Should my memoirs ever be written, they will offer a different perspective.

The Boyd Theatre, the last of Philadelphia's grand movie and vaudeville palaces, could return to its theatrical roots under a plan that would stage Broadway-size productions within its art deco splendor. City Commerce Director James J. Cuorato confirmed yesterday that the theater at Chestnut and 19th Streets - built in 1928, known since 1971 as the Sameric, and threatened last summer with demolition - would be restored by the Goldenberg Group, which owns the building, and Clear Channel Entertainment at an estimated cost of $25 million.

Karla McFarlane and Phillip Bond of the Okra Dance Company perform the Yembala during the opening of their "American Dance from Africa to Broadway" show at Delaware County Community College on Wednesday. The dancers explained and demonstrated the evolution of different types of American dance and told about the influences of dances such as the minuet and the Irish Jig.