I can't say the same thing for The Ten Commandments, the epic musical extravaganza that is every bit as bad as I'd feared (hoped?) when it was first announced earlier this year. Actually, it may be the perfect theatrical venture for Los Angeles--where it is playing at the lush Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, home of the Academy Awards. At least the opening night crowd didn't seem to mind that most of the songs (featuring music by former Madonna collaborator Patrick Leonard) were missing endings, that the special effects were lame (a couple of fireballs and an anticlimactic Red Sea scene that looked more like "the parting of the Plexiglass panels") or that the lumbering leading man (some guy named Val Kilmer) was being fed all of his lines off of three huge teleprompters, two of which a good portion of the audience could read along with. The fact that the cast was blessed with high-reaching voices seemed to be enough for the theatergoers sitting near me, who oohed and ahhed at every over-amplified key change.

But let me accentuate the positive for a moment. The Broadway stars in the show--Kevin Earley (Thoroughly Modern Millie) as Moses' bad brother Ramses, Lauren Kennedy as Nefertari and Luba Mason as Bithia-- looked fabulous in their Biblical drag and sounded even better. Of the rest of the cast, I enjoyed Nita Whitaker's Act One song "The One," which would have been more at home on the next Beyonce CD. And I must give special mention to Alisan Porter, best known as the precocious moppet of the 1991 film Curly Sue, for blowing the roof off the theater with her Act Two opener "Light of a New Day," the only thing in Ten Commandments that comes close to earning the name "showstopper."

As is often the case with bad musicals, backstage is where the real drama can be found. At the post-show party on the rooftop ballroom of the theater, I found gossip in every corner, all of it on the subject of the show's leading man. Did Kilmer really make director Robert Iscove (who gave us From Justin to Kelly, bless his heart) give him notes via a third party? Did he really refuse to show up for rehearsals, telling the cast he would just be present for run-throughs? Did he really pay for all of those teleprompters himself after struggling to learn the script? Did he really need to be fed lines when the teleprompters broke during a preview? And most importantly-is he really earning $750,000 a week to star in this thing?!

Nobody was asking these questions on the red carpet, where Hollywood's finest showed up to welcome the bible back to the City of Angels. Spotted in the crowd: Flashbulb fixtures like Neve Campbell, Robert Downey, Jr., Alicia Silverstone, Bai Ling, Rosanna Arquette, Cris Judd, Melissa Rivers, J.C. Chasez, Donna Mills and Lindsay Wagner mingling with theater folk like Douglas Sills, Sam Harris, Alan Campbell (Mr. Lauren Kennedy), Marissa Jaret Winokur (with Grease! buddies Lucy Lawless and Adrian Zmed, of course), Movin' Out tour stars Holly Cruikshank and Ron Todorowski and recent Brigadoon co-stars Deborah Gibson and Sean McDermott. Max Azria, the fashion mogul who is writing out the checks for the show, was also making the rounds, saying creepy things like, "God is my co-producer."

I was excited to see Gary Coleman coming my way simply because I've been dying to ask him if he'd ever consider playing himself in Avenue Q. I mean sure, the show pokes fun at his career and, well, his family as well, but I assumed Coleman would see the value in taking control of the situation by actually appearing in the Tony-winning hit. It seems I assumed wrong. When I mentioned Q, Coleman went cold, barking: "They have absolutely no permission from me. I have not signed any paperwork and if they come to L.A., I have a lawyer waiting for them!" So I guess he doesn't want the job?! Paging Emmanuel Lewis!

Happily, the two leading ladies of The Ten Commandments seemed to have their heads on straight about the show when we chatted at the party. "It's a hybrid," Kennedy, looking stunning in a pastel creation from Max Azria's BCBG line, offered. "It's a little rock, a little theater and a little fashion!" For Mason, whose new CD Collage was just released on PS Classics, looking good is an important priority: "Give me a job where I get a great gown, a great wig and get to beat my face and I'm a happy girl!" Amen to that!