Actor Todd Alan Johnson and director-choreographer Stephen Nachamie spoke eloquently about “Camelot” for my new OnStage article in Weekend. The show opens Nov. 18 at Olney. Break a leg, all!

I enjoyed chatting with Jim Brochu, the creator and star of “Zero Hour,” and Piper Laurie, the show’s director, for an OnStage article in Weekend. “Zero Hour,” about the colorful and complex life of Zero Mostel, opens today at Theater J, and the play is New York-bound in the fall. Break a leg, all!

Anthony Johnson and Shayna Albertson in “The Blue Lagoon: A Musical,” opening July 22 at the Producers’ Club Grand Theater in New York.

Photo by Tony Spinosa

“The Blue Lagoon: A Musical,” a subversively funny take on the classic tale of shipwrecked teen cousins in lust, will open on July 22 at the Producers’ Club Grand Theater in Manhattan. The show is slated for four performances as part of International CringeFest, a three-week celebration of naughtily bad plays, musicals and films.

“The Blue Lagoon: A Musical” is based on Henry de Vere Stacpoole’s 1908 novel “The Blue Lagoon: A Romance,” which has inspired several stage and screen adaptations over the years, including the infamous 1980 film starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. The latest incarnation — featuring book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Padget — premiered at the 2007 Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C., where it enjoyed a sold-out run and an enthusiastic response from audiences and critics. Nelson Pressley of The Washington Post praised the show for its “lovely melodic themes” and its playful, alternative style: “two goofy performances and an inflatable baby pool as the lagoon in question — how Fringe is that?”

The New York premiere of “The Blue Lagoon: A Musical” features Shayna Albertson (2008 graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts) as Emmeline and Anthony Johnson (recently on the NETworks North American and Asian tour of “Hairspray”) as Richard. The production is directed by Kenny Howard, who is also helming the CringeFest show “Dragness of God and the Naked Holy Ghost,” among other off-off-Broadway projects this summer.

“The Blue Lagoon: A Musical” — anchoring Act 2 of CringeFest’s “Dames at Sea” theme night — will be performed on July 22, July 27, Aug. 1 and Aug. 6 at the Producers’ Club Grand Theater, 358 West 44th Street. Curtain is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 ($15 for students) and are available by phone at 212-242-6036 or online at TheaterMania.com.

For more information about International CringeFest, produced by NY Artists Unlimited, visit NYArtists.org.

I enjoyed the New York Times obituary for Gale Storm, the actress whose career peaked in the 1950s on sitcoms “My Little Margie” and “The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna.” The title character of the latter, writes Anita Gates, “was a social director on a cruise ship who, with her beautician sidekick (ZaSu Pitts), regularly confounded the ship’s stuffy captain and, every third episode, burst into song (a condition of Ms. Storm’s contract).”

More contracts should have such a provision.

Other fun facts: Her screen name (so great, by the way) was “preordained” as part of the prize package she won in the 1939 Gateway to Hollywood talent contest. (Ultimately, I suppose, “The Josephine Cottle Show” wouldn’t have had quite the same ring to it.) Also, she did a 1979 episode of “The Love Boat,” “considered something of an ‘Oh! Susanna’ copycat.”

Words of wisdom: “I’d get tired, but I’d wake up every morning looking forward to the day’s work,” Storm once wrote, referring to the challenges of her first weekly TV series. “I think that the secret to happiness is being surrounded by people you love and having work that you look forward to doing.”

Copy editor’s nitpick: I would have chosen a different phrase than Gates did to describe Storm’s widowed mother, who “became a seamstress to make ends meet.”

So, after 18 months of getting my weight under control, there are five pounds that stand between me and a 100% normal weight for my height. I’m not terribly worried about this last stretch; after dropping 115 pounds and 12 inches from my waist, five pounds is a piece of cake. (Hmmm, wait — maybe I should rephrase that.) Here’s a new photo, for those keeping track.

In anticipation of the New York premiere of “The Blue Lagoon: A Musical,” I’ve replaced complete footage on YouTube with a three-minute compilation of highlights from the original production in Washington. Check it out, and if you’ll be in Manhattan during CringeFest, July 20-Aug. 9, I hope you’ll see the show!

I’m terribly tickled that “The Blue Lagoon: A Musical” will be produced in New York this summer as part of International CringeFest, a celebration of bad plays, musicals and films, with “bad” defined by the festival as “irreverent, politically incorrect, naughty and utterly zany.” I somehow suspected that a musical about incestuous teen lovers and their three-eyed baby — the show in which my favorite number is “(Even Though We’re Related) My Heart Palpitates When I See You” — might fit the bill.

What’s the best way to get to “Witch Mountain”? I’ll take the flying Winnebago.