WABC Features BROADWAY BACKSTAGE Fall Preview

This weekend, ABC-7 will air a half-hour special on the best of the new Broadway season, including AN EVENING WITH Patti LuPone AND Mandy Patinkin, Hugh Jackman ON BROADWAY, MAN AND BOY, PRIVATE LIVES, RELATIVELY SPEAKING and VENUS IN FUR. The special will air tonight from 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM.

Airing in prime access, the show is hosted by Eyewitness News anchor, Michelle Charlesworth and Broadway royalty Patti LuPone, soon back on stage in AN EVENING WITH Patti LuPone AND Mandy Patinkin. ABC-7 will feature cast interviews and a special behind-the-scenes look at the following new Broadway shows:

· AN EVENING WITH Patti LuPone AND Mandy Patinkin
In addition to co-hosting the ABC-7 special, Patti LuPone will talk about returning to Broadway. Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, two Broadway legends who first appeared together giving Tony Award winning performances in Evita, reunite on Broadway in their critically acclaimed theatre concert, a funny, passionate, intimate and unique musical love story told entirely through a masterful selection of some of the greatest songs ever written for the stage.

· Hugh Jackman BACK ON BROADWAY
WABC talks with Hugh Jackman. The Tony Award-winner returns to the New York stage for a limited engagement of Hugh Jackman BACK ON BROADWAY. Accompanied by an 18-piece orchestra, Hugh Jackman performs a personal selection of his favorite musical numbers that reflect on the stage and film star's remarkable life and career, from The Boy from Oz to Hollywood.

· MAN AND BOY
Three-time Tony Award® winner Frank Langella returns to Broadway in Roundabout Theatre Company's new production of Terence Rattigan's MAN AND BOY. At the height of the Great Depression, ruthless financier Gregor Antonescu's (Langella) business is dangerously close to crumbling. In order to escape the wolves at his door, Gregor tracks down his estranged son Basil in the hopes of using his Greenwich Village apartment as a base to make a company-saving deal. Can this reunion help them reconcile? Or will this corrupt father use his only son as a pawn in one last power play? MAN AND BOY is a gripping story about family, success and what we're willing to sacrifice for both.

· PRIVATE LIVES
WABC speaks with Kim Cattrall, who comes to Broadway this fall in Noël Coward's PRIVATE LIVES, following critically acclaimed runs in London and Toronto. Glamorous, rich and reckless, Amanda (Cattrall) and Elyot (Paul Gross) have been divorced from each other for five years. Now both are honeymooning with their new spouses in the South of France. When, by chance, they meet again across adjoining hotel balconies, their insatiable feelings for each other are immediately rekindled... for a little while, anyway.

· RELATIVELY SPEAKING
WABC catches up with Marlo Thomas, Steve Guttenberg, Julie Kavner and director John Turturro of the Broadway production of RELATIVELY SPEAKING, an evening of three one act comedies by Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen. Featuring an ensemble cast of 16, RELATIVELY SPEAKING is comprised of three one-act comedies, each springing a different branch of the family tree. In Talking Cure, Ethan Coen uncovers the sort of insanity that can come only from family. In George is Dead, Elaine May explores the hilarity of death. And in Honeymoon Motel, Woody Allen invites you to the sort of wedding day you won't forget.

· VENUS IN FUR
WABC catches up with stars Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy of the Broadway production of Manhattan Theatre Club's VENUS IN FUR. Critically acclaimed as "90 minutes of good, kinky, fun!" by The New York Times, VENUS IN FUR makes its Broadway premiere at MTC. Vanda (Arianda) is a preternaturally talented young actress determined to land the lead in Thomas' (Dancy) new play based on the classic erotic novel, Venus in Fur. Her emotionally charged audition for the gifted but demanding playwright/director becomes an electrifying game of cat and mouse, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, seduction and power, love and sex. This dazzling new play is written by theatrical mastermind David Ives, and directed by Tony Award winner Walter Bobbie.

ABC-7's Broadway Backstage Fall Preview continues to focus the spotlight on the remarkable, one of a kind, institution that is Broadway. If you can't make it to every show or just want to be in the know, this is the program to see for a complete rundown of all that the Great White Way is offering this season. The program can also be seen following the broadcast at http://www.7online.com/broadway.