Stanley Tucci will direct ‘Lend Me a Tenor’ on Broadway

Tucci to direct on Broadway

Stanley Tucci’s movie career has officially shifted into high gear. He is racking up acting nominations for his role in the film adaptation of “The Lovely Bones,” including nods this week from the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild. But his next big job will be on stage.

Or more accurately, behind the scenes. Tucci is set to direct the Broadway revival of “Lend Me a Tenor,” which will open April 4 at the Music Box Theater in New York. The production will star frequent Tucci collaborator Tony Shalhoub as well as Anthony LaPaglia, Brooke Adams and Jan Maxwell.

The play, written by Ken Ludwig, is a farce about an Italian opera star who goes missing while in Cleveland making his debut with the local opera company. The opera’s presenter must juggle irate fans, the tenor’s wife and more as opening night approaches.

-- David Ng Jackson tribute concert off again

A Michael Jackson tribute concert that was scrapped in Vienna and moved to London after top acts dropped out has been canceled after the event’s organizer closed down, the company’s liquidator said Friday.

Organizers, led by Michael’s brother Jermaine Jackson, canceled the Vienna concert in September after struggling to get stars to perform at short notice in the Alpine nation.

They had planned a replacement concert in London next summer but that is off the table now too because the company behind it, World Awards Media GmbH, shut down.

-- reuters Brooks wants his donation back

Garth Brooks wants a hospital in his hometown of Yukon, Okla., to return a $500,000 donation he made because he says the facility failed to name a building after his late mother under terms of his gift.

Brooks’ lawsuit, which was filed in September but got wide attention only this week, says that Integris Canadian Valley Regional Hospital courted the donation and even showed him representations of the planned building bearing his mother’s name, Colleen Brooks, in lights. Brooks made the donation about four years ago, but after a reported $27 million in renovations to the hospital, a building with her name still has not materialized.

“While we can’t comment on pending litigations, we are optimistic this will come to a swift and amicable resolution,” hospital spokeswoman Brooke Cayot told the Oklahoman newspaper, which also quoted Yukon City Councilman John Tipps saying, “Yukon has done a lot to help promote Garth Brooks over the years, and this is what he does to return the favor, sue our hospital over a misunderstanding.”

A spokeswoman for Brooks told the paper that the singer “has nothing to add to the petition. This deals with his mother, the hometown and the people he grew up with and is deeply personal.”

-- Randy Lewis Jon and Kate’s divorce finalized

Jon and Kate Gosselin officially divorced Friday after 10 years of marriage, eight children and a year of tabloid headlines.

Kate Gosselin gets the family home in eastern Pennsylvania in the no-fault divorce agreement, according to her lawyer, Mark Momjian. She will also continue as the primary caretaker of the reality TV couple’s 9-year-old twins and 5-year-old sextuplets.

The Gosselins -- he is 32, she is 34 -- filed for divorce in June, the same month they told viewers of TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8” about the split in an episode seen by more than 10 million people.

At the time, the Gosselins said the series had been a good thing for both them and their children, and they denied it played a role in their divorce. However, Jon Gosselin later insisted that the network stop filming his children, thwarting plans to segue the show into “Kate Plus Eight” and focus on her role as a single parent.

-- associated press Poet’s burial site is not found

A high-profile dig aimed at locating the body of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was executed at the start of the Spanish Civil War, has yielded nothing, officials said Friday.

The announcement means that one of the 1936-39 war’s greatest mysteries -- the whereabouts of the remains of Spain’s most acclaimed 20th century poet and playwright -- will remain unresolved for now.

The two-month excavation on a hillside outside the southern city of Granada produced “not one bone, item of clothing or bullet shell,” said Begona Alvarez, the Andalusia region’s justice minister.

-- associated press Finally

Moving on: After 13 years as an entertainment reporter for “Access Hollywood,” Nancy O’Dell departed this week to pursue what her publicist described as a new opportunity.