That European tour looks amazing!!! Thanks for the clips!!
A Chorus Line revival played its final Broadway performance on August 17, 2008. The tour played its final performance on August 21, 2011. A new non-equity tour started in October 2012 played its final performance on March 23, 2013. Another non-equity tour launched on January 20, 2018. The tour ended its US run in Kansas City and then toured throughout Japan August & September 2018.
Never saw the Broadway revival, but I did see the London revival in 1999. Jason Donovan was a STUNNING Frank. It was the introduction to the "new" Rocky Horror Show and I actually got to play Brad in the first US production of the revised script in Houston a few months before it opened on Broadway. I had informed the director of the revised production I saw in London and he inquired about it. In less than a week, Richard O'Brien sent the revised pages directly to our theatre.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
Interesting choices here and there in that Euro tour video. Frank dressed as Fay Wray for the Floor Show, rising in a giant King Kong hand; Riff and Magenta as twelve-foot-tall Cenobites for their extraterrestrial forms; Columbia played not as comic relief but as an increasingly serious alcoholic throughout the second act.
LOVED the 2000 Broadway revival, the energy was insane and the intimacy of Circle in the Square was perfect. The new UK Tour is the same one that has been on the road for the past 5 years, its not bad but playing 2000 seat theatres kinda detaches it
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
My favorite part of the European production- all the aliens are blond and the humans have dark hair. As the show progresses and Janet "gives herself over to absolute pleasure" her hair starts getting streaks of blonde. I love little touches like that. (and the Rocky birthing scene is the best I have seen)
Despite what some people were saying, I loved the 2000 revival. I think this is something that should run in NYC all the time. I think it would work great at New World Stages for an open ended run.
not Broadway but one of my fave productions was in San Antonio w/ Sharon Needles as Frank. they had all the Transylvainians dressed w/ homages to Sharon's different looks from Drag Race
Yes, Ripley's bare boobs. At the end of "Touch-a-Touch", she stands of Rocky and rips her bra off on the last beat of music, just before the lights bump to black.
I'm not a huge Alice Ripley fan, but I thought her Janet was fantastic. And it was my first time encountering Raul who also blew me away. Joan Jett, bless her, not so much...
the upcoming production at Bucks County Playhouse directed by Hunter Foster is absolutely amazing and a riot. I saw it last year and they're doing it again this year. I believe they have been eyeing this production as a possible Off Broadway transfer...And well deserved and would work perfectly in a space like New World.
I was mixed on the portrayal of Brad Majors as a closeted homosexual finally letting himself go- to me it counterbalances the character's arc. Brad casually demeans and belittles Janet constantly in a typically off-handed sexism. In Frank's world, gender roles are queered, and he finds himself the object of the same sort of systemic sexism that he perpetuates outside.
However, Kevin Cahoon's performance as Frank (seemingly influenced by Jim Rash's Dean Pelton on "Community") was hysterical, and I enjoyed the conceit of the very hard-working Narrator rushing back and forth between roles, a la the original revival of Candide.
Rocky should totally make a return, and what's great about it is I truly think it doesn't matter who plays Frank, or for that matter - who plays any of those characters. I've seen hundreds of shadowcasts where all sorts of people have played Frank, Brad, Janet and Rocky. My theatre company produces Rocky annually and in our last year we even had a black woman play Rocky. It was incredible. It's a show that truly defies the gender binary and what's "acceptable" - and I think that applies to well outside of a shadowcast context. If there were only more ambitious directors.
I for one think it would be fascinating to see someone tackle SHOCK TREATMENT. As it stands currently it's rather incoherent, but there's something great in there. I don't know why it wasn't produced on stage first to begin with.