Don’t pinch the Grinch.
That was the blunt message from Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Helen Freedman yesterday as she ordered the reopening of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” despite the Broadway stagehands strike.
Agreeing that the show’s producers would suffer irreparable harm if the production remained shut, Freedman declared, “One Grinch in town is enough.”
The show will reopen at 11 a.m. tomorrow and continue at least through the weekend – and, boy, was there joy in Whoville!
The standing-room only crowd in the courtroom – including “Grinch” child actors filling the first row – burst into wild cheers and applause.
“We got our miracle on 44th Street,” declared James Sanna, executive producer of the show playing at the St. James on West 44th Street.
Caroline London, 9, who plays Cindy Lou Who in the show, said, “This is actually like a Thanksgiving present because I can’t wait to go back and see all the Christmas spirit. I feel like screaming, but I won’t.”
The ruling means the show will go at least through Thanksgiving weekend – and hopefully through Jan. 6, the end of its planned run.
There will be four performances tomorrow, four Saturday and three Sunday. None is scheduled Monday or Tuesday.
Jujamcyn Theaters, owner of the St. James, plans to appeal the ruling. But the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, the first step in the appeals process, can’t hear the case until Tuesday.
The St. James and 26 other theaters have been dark since Nov. 10, when Local One of the stagehands union went out on strike in a dispute over management attempts to update long-entrenched rules in an era of computerized stagecraft.
Interviewed by The Post, Local One President James Claffey Jr. said, “I can’t talk. I really can’t. I’ve been picketing every night.”
He declined to say where he has been picketing, but insisted, “I’ve done a lot of streets on Broadway. I’ve been out every night since the strike began. I just don’t wear my suit. I am a stagehand.
Despite his insistence that he had been picketing, the captains of the picket lines at “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “Spamalot” said they had not seen Claffey.
“He has never been down here with us. We have yet to see him,” said one of the captains.
Claffey works full-time for the union and makes about $200,000 a year.
After talks to end the stagehands’ walkout broke down Sunday, Local One said it would remove its picket line at the theater because “Grinch” producers had negotiated a separate contract for the limited-run production.
But Jujamcyn, showing solidarity with other theater owners, refused to allow the show to go on.
So the producers went to court seeking an injunction to stop Jujamcyn from locking out the show.
At a hearing yesterday, Jujamcyn lawyer Neil Abramson insisted that Freedman lacked authority under state labor laws to end the lockout.
But the judge said the matter was a contract squabble rather than a labor dispute because the producers leased the theater. And a contract fight, she said, she could rule on.
Additional reporting by Michael Riedel