Gandolfini

Get ready. Tony Soprano on Broadway.

James Gandolfini — from HBO’s classic mob series The Sopranos — will star with Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden in God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza’s four-character play about the clash between two liberal, middle-class couples.

The play opens March 22 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. It begins preview performances Feb. 28.

God of Carnage was a hit last year in London with a cast that included Ralph Fiennes and Janet McTeer. The director is Matthew Warchus, who also directed Reza’s comedy Art in London and New York.

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A publicist for Howie Mandel says he is out of the hospital and plans to return to work today.

Mandel was in Toronto taping his new show Howie Do It! when he was taken to the hospital for an irregular heartbeat Monday, said Lewis Kay, publicist for the 53-year-old comedian and game show host. Mandel was conscious and breathing when police officers responded to a report of a man with a medical condition at a downtown hotel Monday evening.

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Rock legend and social activist Bono, the latest addition to the New York Times’ lineup of contributing columnists, has offered up a rumination on music icon Frank Sinatra for his first effort.

Bono said Sinatra had “the least sentimental voice in the history of pop music,” yet was able to convey more than one emotion in different versions of the same song.

The lead singer of the band U2, who joined with Sinatra in a 1993 album, Duets, said a 1969 recording of the Sinatra standard “My Way,” is a song of defiance — “more kiss-off than send-off,” while a later version, when Sinatra was 78, is “a heart-stopping, heartbreaking song of defeat.”

“I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment,” Bono wrote.

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A representative for Mariska Hargitay says the actress has a partially collapsed lung but will appear on all of this season’s episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Representatives for the NBC police drama said a statement would be released later.

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Chris Rock is making a comeback, as an author.

Grand Central Publishing says Rock’s new book — not yet titled — will be full of “comedic observations.” It’s tentatively scheduled for release next year. His “Rock This!” was published in 1997.

Deb Futter, vice president and editor-in-chief of hardcovers at Grand Central Publishing, said in a statement yesterday: “We are so excited to be publishing Chris Rock, especially because he hasn’t published a book in many years so this one will be highly anticipated.”

Rock, 43, was a featured voice in the Bee Movie and Madagascar films, and he created the Everybody Hates Chris TV series.

Rock will have good comic company at Grand Central, which also publishes Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

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Lil’ Kim was a big part of the Notorious B.I.G.’s life, but she’s not happy about the way she’s portrayed in the new biopic about the late rapper.

The Notorious B.I.G. mentored and dated Lil’ Kim. Their relationship is depicted in the new movie Notorious but Lil’ Kim doesn’t think it’s accurate.

In a statement, she says: “The film studio and producers involved were more concerned about painting me as a ‘character’ to create a more interesting story line instead of a person with talent, self-respect and who was able to achieve her own career success through hard work.”

Notorious opens in theaters this Friday.