Josh Grisetti

Josh Grisetti, the Franklin County native who played a nerdy college student on the short-lived ABC sitcom "The Knights of Prosperity" a few years back, is headed to Broadway.

Grisetti will play the Neil Simon character in an upcoming Broadway revival of Simon's autobiographical "Broadway Bound."

"It's huge for me," said Grisetti, who currently is performing in the musical comedy "Lucky Guy" at Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut.

"Broadway Bound" is the third play in a Simon trilogy that also includes "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Biloxi Blues." The original "Broadway Bound," starring Jonathan Silverman and Linda Lavin, debuted on Broadway in 1986. Lavin won a Tony award for her work in the play.

Grisetti had several auditions, and Simon was present for most of them, he said.

Was he terrified?

"A little bit," said Grisetti, 27, who will play the 23-year-old Simon character, named Eugene in the play. "I heard he was very demanding of the actors."

On the other hand, "I knew that casting was interested in me from the get-go," he said. "This role is something that suits me very well."

The revival is expected to preview Nov. 18, acording to The New York Times, and will co-star former "Roseanne" sister Laurie Metcalf as the mother, Kate. There will also be a revival of "Brighton Beach Memoirs," with Noah Robbins as a younger Simon. The two plays will be performed in repertory.

Grisetti attended Franklin County High School before heading to the North Carolina School of the Arts for his senior year, said his mother, Patricia Grisetti of Boones Mill. She said he's been constantly busy acting since "Knights" was canceled in 2007. "He really hasn't stopped."

Grisetti was recently nominated for several awards for his starring role in the Off-Broadway musical "Enter Laughing."

For more information about Grisetti's career, visit www.joshgrisetti.com.

Bova directs 'Honk!'

Roanoke Children's Theatre artistic director Pat Wilhelms has turned over the director's seat to Mary Best Bova for the theater's new musical, "Honk!"

Bova is a former Mill Mountain Theatre resident director who helped adapt Mill Mountain's 2006 play "The North Star -- A Musical Journey," from a children's book of the same name.

"I think it's nice when other people have the opportunity to direct," said Wilhelms, who directed the first two Roanoke Children's Theatre plays, "Charlotte's Web" and "Madeline." "It's good to see someone else's take on life."

Bova is Roanoke Children's Theatre's associate director.

"Honk!," which is based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling," runs through June 7 and is being performed at the Taubman Museum of Art. For more information, call 309-6802 or visit roanokechildrenstheatre.org.

'Ant Farm' ends today

Studio Roanoke, Roanoke's newest live theater, concludes its second full-length production, "Ant Farm," with two performances today. Tickets are $10.

The play by Roanoke College graduate and No Shame Theatre veteran Ben Williams is a "darkly comic play about a handful of small town survivors of a mysterious cataclysm who are holed up in a bomb shelter under a gun store," according to the theater's Web site.

Studio Roanoke's next production will be Maura Campbell's "Rosalee Was Here," the true story of a young Hispanic girl convicted of sexual crimes. "Rosalee" will run from June 23-28.

For more information, call 343-3054 or visit studioroanoke.org.

Matisse in Winchester

Can't afford a trip to Paris this summer?

How about a day trip to the Shenandoah Valley instead? Mark your calendars for Aug. 15, when "Matisse, Picasso, and Modern Art in Paris" opens at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester.

You'll see not only works by legendary French modernists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, but also the new Winchester museum designed by Michael Graves, which opened in 2005.

The exhibit, which runs through Nov. 29, will feature works purchased by Virginia-reared T. Catesby Jones in the 1920s and 1930s. They have not been exhibited together in decades.

The exhibit was put together by the University of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and will travel to Richmond and Abingdon, too.

So why isn't it coming to Roanoke?

David Brown, director of art at the Taubman Museum of Art, said it would be overkill for a show bound for Winchester and Abingdon to come here, too. But the Roanoke museum has its own treat in store for those who love art by European masters, he noted: "Sordid and Sacred," a collection of 35 rare etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn, will open at the Taubman on Nov. 20.