Celebrities

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 […]

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.


Trending