Shirley Bassey to Make Broadway Return in AFTER MIDNIGHT?

Music legend Shirley Bassey, perhaps best known in the U.S. for recording the theme songs to the James Bond films Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Moonraker (1979), may be making a return to Broadway in the new musical AFTER MIDNIGHT.

According to the New York Post's Michael Riedel, producers of the show are currently "wooing" the Welsh entertainer to take over the role currently filled by k.d. lang, who will depart this March.

Last seen on Broadway in a one-woman show at the Marquis Theatre in 1996, Bassey most recently appeared in New York in a 2010 Carnegie Hall concert to benefit the Rainforest Foundation Fund. At last year's Academy Awards, she brought the live audience to its feet with a stunning medley of James Bond songs.

Following that appearance, Jujamcyn Theaters owner Jordan Roth approached the artist about performing a solo show at the St.James. In the end, Bassey turned down the offer because she did not want to commit to the grueling eight-performance-a-week schedule.

Should she take on the role in After Midnight, the 77-year-old would most probably find the workload a bit more laid back, with just three solos, including "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "Stormy Weather" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street."

While Bassey's trademark Bond theme songs were of course not written during the heydey of the Cotton Club, which serves as the setting for 'After Midnight', Reidel has learned that producers would be willing to give the singer an encore at the end of the night, in which she could treat the audience to such hits as "Goldfinger," "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Moonraker," arranged by Wynton Marsalis.

According to the report, producer Scott Sanders is determined to sign up the star and even plans to fly to Bassey's home in Monaco to woo her back to Broadway.

The evocative After Midnight takes the sexy, smoky glamour of the original Jazz Age and catapult it into a whole new era of heart-pounding, mind-blowing entertainment for modern Broadway audiences. Refracted through a contemporary lens, After Midnight celebrates Duke Ellington's years at the Cotton Club using his original arrangements and performed by a world-class big band of 17 musicians hand-picked by living jazz legend, Wynton Marsalis. The timeless tunes set against a narrative of Langston Hughes poetry provide an authentic backdrop for an array of cutting-edge performances by 25 sensational vocalists and dancers, including special guest stars, whose interpretations shatter everything you think you know about music, nightlife and Broadway.