Broadway Rewind: LES MISERABLES Brings the Barricade Back to Broadway in 2006

As Broadway remains dark, BroadwayWorld wants to make sure that you still get your theatre fix each and every day until it's back. In our daily series Broadway Rewind, we're uncovering footage from the depths of our archives so that you can relive magical moments of Broadway past!

This episode of Broadway Rewind is a great show because Richard Ridge dropped by Barnes and Noble for a very special book signing for the Tony award winning star of A Chorus Line, Donna McKechnie, and her memoir, 'Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life '. Many of her friends were there to perform, including Priscilla Lopez, Harvey Evans and Kurt Peterson. McKechnie told Ridge how the mind helps you heal and those are the people she wanted to reach with the book. "I was interested in the psychology of a girl, me, who was raised in the fifties to be a dancer."

We also dropped by a rehearsal for Cameron Mackintosh's new production of the landmark musical Les Misérables, directed by John Caird. It starred Alexander Gemignani, Aaron Lazar, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Gary Beach and Norm Lewis. Mackintosh told Ridge, "I'm delighted to have the opportunity. The only thing I never expected or dreamt of was getting such a wonderful cast as this. Everybody we ever dreamt of wanted to be in it. We found some marvelously talented people that we didn't know, and I think it's one of the strongest casts of Les Miz that's ever been anywhere.'

The episode kicks off with Ridge visiting with ventriloquist, Jay Johnson and his Tony Award-winning show The Two and Only. Johnson told Ridge why he wanted to do the show in a theater, "This is something I always wanted to do. As a performer and an actor, a theater is where you want to be. You can paint with so many more colors."