HBO To Air Pee-Wee Herman Broadway Special

HBO will air a special presentation of comedian Paul Reubens’ Pee-Wee Herman Broadway stageplay next year.

The Emmy-winning cable network will tape a performance of Reubens’ production next month for broadcast later this winter, Deadline Hollywood scooped this week.

Reubens played Pee-Wee on the Saturday Morning smash Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and in two movies — Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Big Top Pee-Wee — before an arrest for indecent exposure in a Florida adult theater in 1991 toppled his career.

The stage comedy will premiere three decades after Reubens introduced his childline character — with a high-pitched voice and high-watered trousers — in an HBO special. Marty Callner, who directed Reubens’s 1981 special, will return to direct next year’s broadcast.

“Before his hit series and movies, HBO introduced Paul Reubens’ Pee-wee Herman to a national audience in the Young Comedians series, followed by the groundbreaking 1981 special,” Nancy Geller, HBO’s Special Vice-President of Original Programming, said of Reuben’s history with the network.

After nearly 20 years, Reubens resurrected Pee-Wee in The Pee-Wee Herman Show, a popular stageplay that opened at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles last January. Reubens premiered the production to critical acclaim at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in Manhattan on Nov. 11.