The Broadway Fake Book: Producer Promises: 'Bobbi Boland' is ready to tour!

At a breakfast press conference held this morning at Angus McIndoe, Joyce Johnson, the producer who decided to close the Broadway production of Bobbi Boland before the press was able to review it, announced that the play is now ready to tour nationally.

"I want to assure the theatre owners and road producers who were disappointed at Avenue Q's decision to forgo touring in favor of an exclusive Las Vegas engagement that their theatres need not go empty. Bobbi Boland is ready to tour the country."

"Ms. Jackson is correct.", concurred Farrah Fawcett, who spent the entire press conference autographing a large pile of Bobbi Boland Playbills. ("These things get a fortune on e-Bay.", she was later heard saying.) "Ever since the play closed in November I've been studying my script every day. Sometimes twice a day. I'm pretty sure I know it now."

"I cued her just last night.", added Johnson. "She only got stuck twice. I think that's excellent."

"Thank you, Ms. Jefferson", said Fawcett, projecting loud enough so that her voice could be heard as far as ten feet away.

"As I told Farrah when I decided to close the play in previews," continued Johnson, "the reason Bobbi Boland did not work well on Broadway is that the set was all wrong for this intimate piece. But after months of intensive work I'm very confident we have solved the set problem. I've instructed our playwright, Nancy Hasty, to revise the text with broader, simpler dialogue. What she had originally was fine for a small off-Broadway theatre, but if a play is to work on Broadway, or in a large regional theatre, it must be written to accommodate a big set."

"Everybody loved that set.", chimed in Fawcett. "I told Ms. Johanson that whenever the curtain went up we'd hear gasps from the audience. 'Look! Shag carpeting!', they'd say."

"And with a star who now knows all of her lines," continued Johnson, "and may I add we're talking about a People's Choice Award winner, we think regional audiences will be flocking to see this tender comedy that seriously deals with the important issue of how former beauty queens deal with the emotional trauma of not being young and perky anymore."

"Oooo! Tell them the tea analogy, Ms. Jutson! I love the tea analogy!", squealed an excited Ms. Fawcett.

"Yes, I thought you'd enjoy that. What I told Farrah the night I decided to close the production was that the preview process was as if we were serving Lipton tea. Then we find out that the audience doesn't like Lipton tea so we try Earl Grey. That doesn't work so we try English Breakfast. And they don't want that. Because they want coffee. We've heard you, America, and now we're bringing you coffee."

"I thought we were bringing them Bobbi Boland.", whispered a confused Fawcett.

"Just keep signing those Playbills, dear", advised Johnson.

The Broadway Fake Book, a series of theatre-related news items that have nothing to do with reality, saw Bobbi Boland on Broadway and heard that it was much better the way playwright Nancy Hasty originally envisioned it.