Danny Moloshok / AP Photo
The secret word is "comeback." Paul Reubens, better known as Pee-wee Herman, is reviving the beloved 1980s character as part of a new stage show. Reubens has had a tough couple of decades between the end of his show in 1990, a charge of indecent exposure at an adult movie theater in 1991 to which he pleaded no contest, and a charge of possessing child pornography in 2001 that was dropped when he pleaded to a lesser offense. Why revive Pee-wee now? As Reubens put it, "I just woke up one day and felt like, yeah, it's time." And so, Pee-wee's talking chair, googly eyed window, and boxed genie head will be back—some of them played by the same actors—when his new show opens at Club Nokia in New York this week. On stage, Pee-wee will hew closer to Reubens' original vision for the character, making more adult jokes while still delivering the seventh-grade lesson of "championing diversity and saying it's OK to be different in any way that you're different, period."