What are some examples where the sets of a show in it's out of town tryout or previous incarnation shows no resemblance to the broadway version?
The one I could think of off the top of my head is Catch Me If You Can and now Charlie.
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From my understanding the design for the catch me Seattle run was more similar to the tour design, where the band was on a curvy shaped set piece.
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Signed,
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It has been a while but I seem to remember the sets for Jekyl & Hyde changed from out of town to Broadway. When the tour came back, I remember thinking I liked the original sets better.
NOWaWarning said: "Aida was the first thing to come to mind. Heather Headley and Adam Pascal were injured because of the set in the Atlanta (I think) try-out.
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yes that is so true. But paid off Aida got a lot of design awards
Aida got a completely new design (and a new director) between the original Atlanta production and the Chicago tryout/Broadway production (the principle cast stayed the same.) The accident happened during the Chicago tryout run.
"My One and Only" completely changed from the infamous Out of town tryouts in Boston to the opening in NYC. Director, musical arranger, book writer and set designer were all replaced. I remember seeing it in Boston and Tommy Tune actually came out before the performance and apologized for what we were about to see, but he said they were working on it. I saw it again in previews in NYC and the show had totally changed, for the better.
Not a drastic change, and the location is different, but looking at some of School of Rock photos of the theatre in london, it looks like they have changed up some aspects of the staging over there, looks to me like it is somewhat more 'in the round' but this is solely based on a photo so who knows, but it does seem like they use a turntable.
and if you think way way back, JCS broadway was totally different from JCS london a few years later
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27199361@N08/ Phantom at the Royal Empire Theatre
But back to topic, it all seems kinda odd to me nowadays that out of torn tryouts are so expensive, with practically the same production values as the finished broadway version, how much realistically can a producer change between the two especially when most of the times with big shows the broadway house is booked before the out of town tryout even starts.
Like if the producers realize that they HATE the visuals in the tryouts, how realistic is it for them to scrap and start over. Or if they find that they need to drastically change plot but the set won;t allow for that.
Sometimes it just seems that some shows are just rushed through the process, which is why I was kinda pleasantly surprised that Frozen made some creative team changes before the tryout, not that this means a top notch show in the result, but atleast it shows me that they are trying to 'fix' things before they get in too deep with a set design.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27199361@N08/ Phantom at the Royal Empire Theatre