Katie’s stage debut a success

KATIE HOLMES made her Broadway debut in All My Sons on Thursday night, and despite the Scientology protests outside, her husband Tom Cruise thought it was a knockout.

When asked for his verdict on Holmes’s performance, Cruise stopped for a moment while moving through the crowd at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, telling The Associated Press: “Did you see it? ... It was extraordinary.”

Hundreds of people bought tickets to see Holmes act on Broadway for the first time in a preview performance for the revival of All My Sons, co-starring John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest and Patrick Wilson.

The audience collectively gasped when Cruise entered the theatre moments before the curtain went up. While anti-Scientology protesters demonstrated outside, the movie star — and Hollywood’s most famous Scientologist — mingled and shook hands with some other theatregoers who took photos and clapped. He then hugged Dustin Hoffman, who was sitting a few rows away, which drew another cheer inside the theatre.

Amid the hubbub, it took a while for people to take their seats.

Then the moment they’d been waiting for arrived: Holmes and her fellow cast members stepped out on stage to start the play, which officially opens on October 16.

If Holmes felt nervous and jittery, she didn’t show it. She delivered her lines with confidence and projected her girlish voice so it could be heard loud and clear. She danced around on stage with gusto.

And she received a standing ovation afterward. It’s safe to say that no one probably clapped harder than Cruise.

All My Sons concerns businessman Joe Keller (Lithgow) whose factory supplied defective cylinder parts to the military, resulting in the deaths of 21 pilots during World War II. Yet it was his business partner who went to jail for the mistake.

Not among the observers: the roughly 30 protesters who demonstrated before the show behind a barricade, chanting “Scientology kills!” Some wore masks like in the movie V for Vendetta.