Generally when we go to Broadway, it's to savor the work of stage stars, escape into the world of lavish musicals, maybe take in the odd pithy British play. But sometimes, when the celestial stars align just right, we get a bonus, as a Hollywood hunk or two decides it's time to try theater again. In the case of the 2009-2010 Broadway season, three of People magazine's former Sexiest Man Alive hotties have taken the bait.

Jude Law is already emoting away in one of William Shakespeare's greatest tests for a young leading man as the title character in Hamlet, a Donmar Warehouse production that earned the actor raves in London last season. Likewise, a James Bond-vs.-Wolverine matchup has already begun, as Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman play at-odds Chicago cops in Keith Huff's play A Steady Rain. Sigh.

Of course, there is much more to the new Broadway and Off-Broadway seasons than a convergence of strapping leading men.

A pair of very different American playwrights, Neil Simon and David Mamet, will be represented with two plays each on Broadway this season. For Simon, it's in-repertory productions of two-thirds of his coming-of-age Brighton Beach trilogy, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound. For Mamet, it's a revival of his hot-button play Oleanna starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, plus a new (and sure-to-be-incendiary) play titled Race. (The busy Mr. Mamet also has a pair of new one-acts, Keep Your Pantheon and School, running through Nov. 1 at Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theatre Company.)

Off-Broadway, two other so-different playwrights are getting the marathon treatment. Miami's own Tarell Alvin McCraney will see his three related Brother/Sister Plays done at the Public Theater. And nine plays (grouped into three programs and dubbed The Orphans' Home Cycle) by the late Horton Foote will be presented in repertory at the Signature Theatre.

The season's most-anticipated (and costliest) new musical -- the Julie Taymor-directed Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark, with a score by U2's Bono and The Edge -- has run into financial problems but is still listed as beginning previews Feb. 25.

Definitely happening are the new Addams Family musical, Memphis (about a white DJ and black singer in the '50s) and Bill T. Jones' Fela!, a show that earned raves when it ran Off-Broadway last season.

Another Broadway staple, the glossy musical revival, will pop up in multiple places during the season. Look for new productions of Ragtime, Bye Bye Birdie, Finian's Rainbow, La Cage aux Folles and Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Former American Idol contestant (and ex-Florida International University student) Syesha Mercado will play Harlem's Apollo Theater in a short run of the touring revival of Dreamgirls. And word is that the revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury will wind up on Broadway this season at a still-unknown theater.

Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett isn't coming to Broadway, but she'll be close enough when she offers up her interpretation of Blanche DuBois in the Sydney Theater Company's revival of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Nov. 27-Dec. 20. Two actors named Miller -- Sienna and Jonny Lee -- star in British playwright Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie, an update of August Strindberg's play.