A 13-year-old Broadway star and his stage-struck sisters are at the center of a custody battle rife with allegations the dad prefers corporal punishment, while the mother blows through the kid’s money.
By night, singer Daniel Manche swings from vines as the adolescent ape-man in the musical “Tarzan.” By day, he gets tutored as his parents battle it out in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Daniel’s dad, Daniel Dean Manche, has accused his estranged stage-mom wife, Dawn, of squandering their son’s money. He also claims she’s been turning his son and daughters, Jade and Autumn, against him; preventing him from talking to them on the phone, and saying disparaging things about him to them.
The embittered dad, who lives in Montclair, N.J., also says his wife doesn’t tell him about important events in their children’s lives – including today’s preschool graduation of his youngest daughter, Jade.
Dawn Manche fired back from the witness box yesterday, insisting that she only uses her son’s earnings so she and her three children can afford to live in a $2,600-a-month apartment on the Upper West Side.
She said all three kids have the white lights of Broadway in their sights, and she spends a lot of time on helping them pursue their careers.
During her testimony, her lawyer, Robert Anesi, asked her about her husband’s use of corporal punishment, but Justice Laura Drager stopped her from replying, reminding the dueling parents that there was an agreement to exclude the topic from the proceedings.
Dawn Manche claimed she bends over backward to include her husband in their children’s lives.
She recalled how she insisted on bringing them to his house for Christmas, along with “a big Italian dinner” that she prepared.
She testified that in the months before she filed for divorce in 2005, “my husband would threaten me and say he was going to take the kids and take them back to Alabama.”
“My husband would go through periods where he would not talk to me for two to three weeks. He’d belittle me sexually.”
Again the judge interceded, and she was prevented from saying more on the subject.
During questioning by the children’s law guardian, Dawn Manche was asked if she was familiar with the report of a court-appointed shrink who found that “you take no responsibility for your own behavior and lack any insight into your own behavior.”
The petite mom denied that that was what the report said.
She moved to New York in 2003 so her son could pursue his acting career.
Back home in Daphne, Ala., he has said, his classmates thought he was an oddball for wanting to act, sing and dance.
“They made fun of me,” he said.
Young tousle-haired Daniel Manche alternates with another youngster in the role of Tarzan as a young boy.
In addition to “Tarzan,” he has appeared in “Nine” on Broadway.
Last year, he was featured in the title role of the macabre film “The Resurrection Apprentice.” His television credits include “Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” “All My Children” and Guiding Light.”
He is said to be making about $1,500 a week in “Tarzan.”
Backstage sources say he’s a cute kid and very easy to work with.