THE last time Jane Krakowski appeared on a Broadway stage, she wore a sheet and dangled from a swing.
This time, she’ll be in tight leather pants and on roller skates.
Over the weekend, the sexy actress – whose stint on that swing won her a Tony Award in the 2003 revival of “Nine” – glided her way through two backers’ auditions of “Xanadu,” a musical based on the infamous 1980 roller-disco flick that nearly derailed Olivia Newton-John’s movie career.
Krakowski, my spies report, was terrific, whizzing around the stage of the Minetta Lane Theatre while belting out all those campy Electric Light Orchestra songs from the movie – “Magic,” “I’m Alive” and “Suddenly,” which contains that immortal mixed metaphor of a lyric: “The wheels are in motion / And I, I’m ready to sail any ocean.”
“She was a hoot,” one person says. “It was a guilty pleasure. But she was fun.”
Krakowski hasn’t signed up for the musical yet (the producers expect a decision from her this week), but if she does, “Xanadu” will open at the Helen Hayes in April.
“I don’t see how they can do it without her,” a production source says. “She’s the show.”
Even with Krakowski’s name above the title, “Xanadu,” which will cost $5 million to produce, will be one of the riskiest ventures of the spring season.
Broadway’s had some success turning good movies into shows – “Hairspray,” “The Producers,” “Nine” (from “81/2”) – but what, in the name of Zeus, will a musical based on what one critic called “the most dreadful, tasteless movie of all time” look like?
For starters, it will have a plot, which is something that pretty much eluded the film.
Douglas Carter Beane, a writer with a flair for camp (“The Little Dog Laughed”), beefed up the story of a struggling artist who falls in love with a muse by adding additional scenes and characters from Greek mythology.
Indeed, the actors were instructed to watch “Clash of the Titans” – a 1981 movie about the adventures of Perseus, son of Zeus and slayer of Medusa – to prepare themselves.
The “Xanadu” workshop cast Tony Roberts as Zeus and Cheyenne Jackson (“All Shook Up”) as the struggling artist. Both are likely reprise their roles on Broadway.
Chris Ashley directed them all in a light, jokey style.
“You have to go with the spirit of the thing,” a source says. “This is not grade-A material, obviously. It’s camp, but it could be fun.”
Well, we’ll let the gods of the theater decide that one.
NOT to be missed: Cady Huffman, who won a Tony as the blond bombshell in “The Producers,” is throwing herself a birthday bash Monday at Birdland.
“I’m going to be talking about me and telling it like it is,” says the popular Broadway performer.
Her set includes songs from Pete Townshend, Stephen Sondheim and Tin Pan Alley.
For more information, check out birdlandjazz.com.