Entertainment

GREAT BLACK WAY

HE’S white, he’s 61 and he recently came out as an NPR-hating conservative.

But if David Mamet is trying to be labeled “a square,” he’s failing miserably.

The celebrated writer is still the coolest cat on Broadway, his old plays magnets for today’s hippest headliners.

John Leguizamo‘s doing “American Buffalo” on Broadway in the fall, while “Entourage” star Jeremy Piven will be tackling “Speed-the-Plow” in the spring.

Now comes word that Cedric the Entertainer, one of the “Original Kings of Comedy,” will be joining Leguizamo in “American Buffalo,” Mamet’s 1976 scorcher about a group of small-time hoods conspiring to steal a rare-coin collection.

Cedric will be making his theatrical debut in the show as Don, a junk shop owner whose criminal plans go hopelessly awry.

The production will be directed by Robert Falls, who staged the acclaimed revivals of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

Leguizamo has long been a draw on Broadway, attracting hordes of young people to his one-man shows “Freak” and Sexaholix.” And Cedric the Entertainer could tap into the African-American audience, which has suddenly become a very lucrative slice of the Broadway pie.

For years, white producers said African-Americans don’t go to Broadway shows, citing the commercial failure of a string of critically acclaimed plays by August Wilson.

But when you put a big celebrity in a play, African-Americans turn out in droves – even if the star and the show aren’t very good.

While Sean Combs got generally tepid reviews in “A Raisin in the Sun,” the 2004 revival was a big hit.

And though Terrence Howard turned in a negligible performance in the critically abused, all-black “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” earlier this year, the production made a profit of a couple of million dollars.

(Right after “Cat” was snubbed by the Tonys, a production source snapped: “We’re not in the business of winning awards. We’re in the business of making money.”)

Cederic the Entertainer may well turn out to be in their league. And with Falls at the helm, it’s safe to say this revival of “American Buffalo” is going to crackle.

I can’t confidently predict the same for “Speed-the-Plow.”

Jeremy Piven is fun in “Entourage,” but TV stars usually don’t draw as well on Broadway as movie stars and comedians (the wonderful David Hyde Pierce, who kept “Curtains” going well beyond its expiration date, is the exception that proves the rule).

In addition, the director, Neil Pepe, certainly doesn’t have Falls’ track record; indeed, he’s making his Broadway debut with “Speed-the-Plow.”

He’ll be working in the long shadow of the recent London revival, which starred Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum as a couple of sleazy Hollywood producers. That dynamic duo was such a draw at the Old Vic, London newspapers regularly published the names of VIPs who couldn’t get tickets.

Their “Speed-the-Plow” should have come to New York (Spacey lobbied hard for it). But Mamet and producer Jeffrey Richards promised the directing job to Pepe, who’s slaved long and hard running Mamet’s off-Broadway fiefdom, the Atlantic Theater Company.

Pepe and Pivan are on dangerous ground here because if their revival falls short of the Spacey-Goldblum show, they’re going to be, in Mamet

patois, “f – – -ed.”

LONDON’S West End is in the grip of Reality TV Show Fever. Three of its biggest hits – “Grease,” “The Sound of Music” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” – began as television casting shows with feature leads who were picked by viewers.

Legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh (“The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables,” “Miss Saigon”) recently got in on the act with “I’d Do Anything,” a BBC show in which judges and viewers selected the leads in his upcoming revival of “Oliver.”

But from what I hear, Mackintosh hated the experience.

For one thing, he was annoyed that his arch rival, Andrew Lloyd Webber, one of the judges, kept voting down his choices for Nancy.

“Everybody thinks Andrew did it deliberately just to piss off Cameron,” snickers a London theater insider. “It was fun to watch.”

Sources say Lloyd Webber and Mackintosh repeatedly clashed off camera, but since Mackintosh opted not to be a judge on his own show, his hands were tied.

To make matters worse, the viewers eventually chose a Nancy whom Mackintosh couldn’t abide (she’s said to be too fat for his tastes).

Nick Hytner, the head of the National Theatre and the director of “Miss Saigon,” caught the final installment of “I’d Do Anything” and remarked: “For the first time, somebody said no to Cameron. And it was the public. Which proves that democracy does work.”

michael.riedel@nypost.com