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WHEELS-A-ROLLING

Just about a year from now, if all the ”ifs” that are generally associated with theater production work out, there should be a new musical with an old name on Broadway.

The name-”The Band Wagon”-will be almost 60 years old by the time the new show rolls around, but that will be one of the few similarities between the 1931 revue and the production-in-the-works, which will cost about $4.5 million.

The early stage production, by George S. Kaufman, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, featured Fred and Adele Astaire.

More than two decades later, Astaire also starred in the film, along with Cyd Charisse. Vincente Minnelli directed.

The musical will have a plot based on the movie: Middle-aged failed hoofer falls in love with a dancer while trying to adapt to a new career. But, according to Max Weitzenhoffer, the co-producer with Don Black, it will not be a re-creation of the film.

The new book is being written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and Gene Saks will direct. The Dietz-Schwartz score includes such songs as ”That`s Entertainment” and ”Dancing in the Dark.”

”We`re going to try for a musical that`s fabulous in sound, not masses of scenery falling around,” Weitzenhoffer said. ”It will be a lot of fun;

it`s not going to be done for intellectual qualities.”

– If Nos. 12 and 13 are coming up, what could it be but Joseph Papp`s New York Shakespeare Festival Marathon? The news this week is that Raul Julia will play ”Macbeth,” and Kevin Kline ”Hamlet.”

Kline already has played the role at the Public Theater. Julia, one of the busiest actors around and a veteran Shakespearean performer (”Othello,” ”The Taming of the Shrew”), will begin rehearsals in November. Kline, whose Shakespeare credits include ”Richard III” and ”Henry V,” begins rehearsals in March.

Steven Berkoff will direct ”Hamlet,” which, according to Papp, ”will prevent any politeness in the production-it will be strong and opinionated with nothing bourgeois about it-combining the romanticism of Kevin and the proletarianism of Berkoff.”

As for ”Macbeth”-no director yet.

– David Carradine, Elke Sommer and Karen Black will join the cast of

”Tamara” within two months. The unusual theatrical offering at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue at 66th Street will also change ticket prices on Sept. 25. The show, Champagne and dinner upstairs (planned by Le Cirque restaurant) will cost $100 to $120, depending on the night.

For the less affluent, an Italian trattoria-style meal ($75 to $95 including the performance) will be served in the kitchen, which is part of the show.

It`s likely that the armory will have another offbeat presentation late this fall.

Barrie Wexler, a producer of ”Tamara,” plans to bring in Jerry Fishman and Constance Stellas and the afternoon-tea theater they introduced downtown this year.

”The Music Cure,” a one-act, 45-minute, drawing-room farce by George Bernard Shaw, will cost between $16 and $20, including tea, scones and sandwiches.

– When the show is finished and Kathy Najimy and Maureen Gaffney go out to eat, as they occasionally do, they don`t speak to each other.

As the only performers in ”The Kathy and Mo Show,” they`ve exhausted, at least temporarily, their vocabulary, speech and interpersonal relationship. Tomorrow all will be fine, but tonight it`s silence.

When they start up again the next day, some of their talk might include such comments as ”Do you mind not winking?” and ”You shouldn`t take a breath between those lines,” because even after working on their show for four years and performing it here for almost eight months, the two haven`t given up critiquing each other.

But the comments, which have eased over time, don`t affect their friendship. Their major irritation at the moment-well, some moments-is that because of the show, they`re frequently thought of as one person.

”You want to be looked at as an individual, to succeed or fail on your own,” Najimy said.

”But there`s an advantage when you`re not feeling well.”

What kind of advantage?

”It`s more like an energy thing,” Gaffney said. ”Like one night Kathy was coughing so much, she couldn`t say her lines, so I said mine and then said hers.” The audience loved it.

– ”Annie 2-Miss Hannigan`s Revenge” will be taking over the Marriott Marquis Theater in February. The last performance of ”Me and My Girl,” which opened at the theater in August 1986, is scheduled for New Year`s Eve.