Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Cincinnati has announced its 2011-2012 season, one that offers a few new choices but also represents what Broadway musicals are all about. (The series seldom includes plays, which don't sell all that well, and this season is no different.) Up first will be Disney's Beauty and the Beast (Sept. 27-Oct. 9), a tried and true hit that ran for 5,461 performances between 1994 and 2007. It's followed by a month-long visit by another long-running hit, Wicked (Nov. 2-26).

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The title of the show currently onstage at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati might be Next Fall, but it's only running for another week. That's longer than expected — it was originally set to close this weekend, but despite several added performances within the show's original three-week period, there was enough demand to add another weekend. That means you can actually buy tickets through Feb. 19. But you really shouldn't wait, because those will be scooped up before you know it.

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Cincinnati Art Museum has just released attendance figures for the recently closed Wedded Perfection: Two Centuries of the Wedding Gown, and it was a blockbuster. The exhibit, which ran Oct. 9-Jan. 30, drew 63,176 visitors, making it the biggest CAM exhibit since Petra: The Lost City of Stone drew 62,203 people in the 2004-2005 season.

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I like books, magazines and movies. I, as you might have guessed by now, like newspapers, too. It should then come as no surprise that the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is one of my favorite places on planet Earth and that it continues to offer a smorgasbord of information, almost all of it available for the bargain basement price of $0 across its 40 branches.

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Two shows that opened last week have been recommended by the Acclaim Awards: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati’s production of Next Fall by Geoffrey Nauffts and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s revival of Over the Tavern by Tom Dudzick, which was a popular work in its 1998-1999 season. A show earns a recommended designation when the panel members evaluating it for Acclaim nominations determine that it’s a show that audiences should make a special effort to see.

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Quite a few local theaters are opening new productions this week, but if I were to point you to just one for this weekend, it would be Next Fall, a new play by Geoffrey Nauffts, at Ensemble Theatre.

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Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park Producing Artistic Director Ed Stern has shared some news about his health with the theater’s patrons, using a letter in the program book for Over the Tavern, which opens this Thursday. (It’s had preview performances this weekend.)

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If we can shovel the snow away from the stage door, there should be several shows to check out this weekend.

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It's taken 17 years for Cincinnati Shakespeare Company to get around to staging King John. With only four more beyond this one to complete the cycle of producing all 37 of Shakespeare's plays, CSC is headed to a position that few theater companies can boast about.

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Marsha Hanna, artistic director of Dayton's Human Race Theatre Company, died on Monday. I was saddened to learn of her passing — especially at age 59 — because she was a passionate advocate for theater, not just in Dayton but throughout the region.

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