UPDATE: Bullets Over Broadway will play its last performance on 8/24.

When Marin Mazzie saw Woody Allen’s 1994 Prohibition-era film Bullets Over Broadway, she thought to herself: this would make a great musical and I would love to play Helen Sinclair — the role that won Dianne Wiest an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Her reverie is now reality: Mazzie is playing Sinclair in the new Broadway musical version of Bullets Over Broadway, officially opening April 10th at the St. James Theatre. The show’s book is by Allen himself and Tony winner Susan Stroman (The Producers) does double duty as both director and choreographer. The score is comprised of period songs, including some with rewritten lyrics (to fit the show) courtesy of Glenn Kelly.

“It’s such a great theatrical scene: the New York theatre, gangsters and the Jazz Age right before the [stock market] crash — at the height of everything being crazy,” Mazzie says.

The cast of Bullets Over Broadway, including Marin Mazzie (center). Photo: Jason Bell

The comic story revolves around a young writer, David Shayne (Zach Braff), who is forced to cast Olive (Heléne Yorke), the untalented girlfriend of a mobster (Vincent Pastore), in order to get backing for his show. Along the way, it becomes clear that Olive’s appointed bodyguard (Nick Cordero) is a more talented writer than Shayne. Meanwhile, Helen, a once-prominent leading lady, finds herself forced to take on a role well below her indignant hauteur.

If you ask Mazzie about Helen, she drops her voice a register to suggest her over-the-top, grande dame character. “She’s an aging diva, the center of her own universe,” Mazzie says. “In the first act, she compromises to play a frump — and she’s just horrified that this piece has come her way. By this time, she’s known as a drunk and an adulteress and tries to manipulate David for a better part… but she doesn’t realize that he’s not really writing it.”

Bullets marks Allen’s first musical script, but he is no stranger to Broadway, with credits like Don’t Drink the Water (1966), Play It Again, Sam (1969), and The Floating Light Bulb (1981).

“It has been pretty much smooth sailing as far as the script is concerned,” Mazzie says. “It’s an amazing book and a couple of times we’ve asked him if we can tweak a joke. He has come in to look at a couple of numbers. He is quiet but very happy with the show.”

A Broadway veteran (Next to Normal, Enron, Monty Python’s Spamalot, and Ragtime), Mazzie also has a thriving concert and cabaret career. But at the moment, she’s clearly concentrating on Bullets, reveling in the collaborative spirit fostered by Stroman and costume designer William Ivey Long.

“[Stroman] creates a womb of safety and creativity so we’re all able to have a good time and try anything,” she says. As for Long, she observes, “It’s not that he says Helen has to look like this — he asks me how we want her to look.”

Mazzie also pointed out that while Bullets the musical greatly resembles its cinematic inspiration, the singing and dancing create a new experience.

Plus, she notes, there’s another bonus: Pastore, who played Big Pussy on The Sopranos, hoofs it a bit — something that Joe Viterelli, who created the Nick Valenti role in the film, did not. “Yes, Big Pussy does a little dancing,” she discloses. “He’s very game.”

Bullets Over Broadway is playing at the St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St. For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or click here.