Word: broadway
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Producers put shows out on the road for three basic reasons: to prepare for Broadway; to capitalize on a Broadway success already attained; and occasionally, when a show's concept and stars are more marketable than its actual merits, to bypass Broadway's fierce competition and legion of reviewers. Steep staging costs have made offerings in the first category, known as tryouts, a vanishing breed. Nowadays pre-Broadway tryouts are usually limited to one city, unless a show has a big-name cast or is a revival of a fondly remembered musical, like the current tours of Cabaret and West...
...essence of the road show, however, is a touring version of a work that is already firmly established on Broadway or that recently closed. Almost all tours are of musicals, although the comedies I'm Not Rappaport and Social Security played across the nation into the summer. For audiences, the crucial but often unresearchable question is how a touring version measures up to its Broadway forerunner. Based on a sampling of half a dozen offerings, including two versions of Cats, the verdict is mostly favorable. Sets may be simpler, lighting more rudimentary, and the miked-up sound systems uniformly lousy...
...most popular Broadway show on the road is Cats, which through its three companies has been accounting for about half of current touring-troupe revenues. The two productions viewed deliver at least the raucous pleasures of the original. The version that has been playing in Washington since July has more elaborate lighting and staging effects than one of those that are moving from city to city every week or two, but the differences are minor. The celebrated catlike movements look more Vegas-like now. In both casts, only the dancers playing the secondary role of Alonzo (Ken Nagy in Washington...
...gutsy production radically improves on its Broadway model: the 1966 and 1986 hit Sweet Charity, dazzlingly restaged for a North American tour by its original creator and re-creator, Bob Fosse. From the first appearance in silhouette of the title character, a taxi dancer who in the face of all experience remains a fool for love, to the ironically identical finale, this version zips along with style, assurance and the ingredient it lacked in its 1986 Broadway reprise, real heart. Whereas Debbie Allen seemed too tough, too much a survivor to elicit audience sympathy when she played Charity on Broadway...
There is, of course, no formal Cognoscenti Caucus. But Labor Day is a rough benchmark, as the candidates move from backers' auditions to full-fledged Broadway tryouts. The cast in both parties seems set; only Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of Colorado is waiting in the wings actively considering a late entry. The candidates (eight Democrats, with Schroeder, and six Republicans) have had months to master their lines, crafting glib answers to almost every conceivable question and perfecting a sincere this-is-who-I-am stump speech. The early-bird voters in Iowa and New Hampshire for the most part have...