BROADWAY CATCH-UP.

Now is the time of year for trial balloons, entertainments not yet entertained except in someone's hopes. Often these pipe dreams are leaked to theater scribes, who print them as really being in the pipe and not just a gleam in a producer's eye. What, one wonders, became of such mooted productions as a musical based on the late Pamela Harriman (The Life of the Party, as her biography was titled), the high-bred beauty whose many affairs, marriages, and political fund-raising eventually propelled her to become the U.S. ambassador to Prance? And what about Tommy Tune's Easter Parade,' based on the 1948 MGM musical? While nothing's been heard of the Harriman show lately, Easter Parade, costarring Sandy Duncan, is targeted for a Broadway opening this fall after a road tryout, according to one usually reliable source, the Theatrical Index.

Of the new pieces already in production, literary works are being dramatized, particularly off-Broadway. Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous, which was given the MGM film treatment in 1937 with Freddie Bartholomew and Spencer Tracy (who won an Oscar for it) was recently resurrected by the Manhattan Theater Club as a musical, for a limited run. Hoping to enjoy a longer existence, the design team of the highly successful Rent has put together a musical based on Jay McInemy's Bright Lights, Big City about the downward spiral of a young man involved in drugs. It opened in February off-Broadway. The Dead, a musical play based on James Joyce's great short story, is now alive and kicking in previews. On a more epic scale, Jekyll and Hyde's Frank Wildhorn has come up with The Civil War, which uses contemporary accounts of that conflict for a musical that premiered in Houston last September and opens on Broadway this month. It's sad, however, to note that there's no mention of choreographers for any of these shows, indicating slim pickings for dancers this season, although Luis Perez is providing the musical staging for The Civil War.

Meanwhile, what of the musicals already opened? More slim pickings: two revivals and one "celebration" of a dead man's dances (Fosse). Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun has been revised by playwright Peter Stone into a politically correct musical without the original's derogatory attitudes toward Native Americans. I hope they kept Chief Sitting Bull's line "Me no put money in show business"--as astute a piece of theater advice as ever, given the indifferent reviews of Little Me and Parade, which closed a few months after opening. You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, the revival of the 1967 show based on Charles Schulz's Peanuts, at least has the advantage of Kristin Chenoweth in the cast. I've enjoyed watching her everytime I've seen her, beginning with Bill Irwin's Scapin. This diminutive blonde soprano was a Metropolitan Opera Auditions winner but opted for Broadway instead and has worked steadily ever since, with featured roles in Steel Pier, A New Brain, and now as Sally, Charlie Brown's kid sister.

Off-Broadway has been staging its irresistible "Encores!" series at City Center, starting with Babes in Arms, the Rodgers and Hart show that in 1937 gave us such splendid songs as "My Funny Valentine," "Johnny One Note," "Where or When," and "The Lady Is a Tramp." Among the youthful talent in the cast, Cartier Anthony Williams, a nine-year-old whose accomplished tap dancing suggests a miniature Savion Glover, is obviously destined to become a Broadway Kid. To say that he stole the show would be an exaggeration, with newcomers like Errin Dilly and Melissa Rain Anderson on view, but young Williams with his fancy footwork was a particular asset to this enjoyable revival, ingenuously directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall.

The fact that Fosse has actually made it into the Broadhurst Theatre after so many years in development is as much a testament to Chet Walker, Fosse's assistant, who originally thought up the idea, as to the many people, including Ann Reinking, Gwen Verdon, Richard Maltby, Jr., and, yes, producer and now financial fugitive Garth Drabinsky, who became involved. Walker told me recently that he originally conceived the show with Fosse's blessing as a TV special in five acts. Slick and lively as the show is, I frankly found a whole evening of Fosse a bit wearing; incessant struts, hip swivels, finger flicks, kicks, and bumps and grinds become choreographic tics bordering on the gimmicky when severed from their original musicals. Even so, I admired the excellent, hard-working cast, particularly Desmond Richardson, whose truly dynamic presence will be missed in ballet.

If we dwell rather frequently on Susan Stroman's activities, it's because this Broadway choreographer is on a roll. She won an Olivier award (the British equivalent of a Tony) for her work on the London revival of Oklahoma!, which should come to Broadway this year, providing British and American Equity can sort out their differences. She's undertaken her first directing-and-choreographingassignment--yes, another revival, Meredith Willson's The Music Man for Broadway this fall--and will choreograph The Night They Raided Minsky's, a new show with words and music by Susan Birkenhead and Charles Strouse, for next spring; her husband, Mike Okrent, will direct.

I've saved for last what sounds like the most intriguing project to bow this month. Dancing in the Dark is inspired, we're told, by the spirit of Fred Astaire. Michael Berresse and Crista Moore are featured in an off-Broadway musical, set in a rehearsal studio once rented by Astaire. Jeffry Denman, either filled with extraordinary hubris or outrageous bravery, plays Astaire. I'm dancing in the dark here, as I've yet to see it. But I'll report on it soon, you can bet.

Hilary Ostlere, a senior editor of Dance Magazine, is a member of the Dance Magazine Awards '99 selection committee.