Shows that were especially different during development

[jvoom]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 1:44pm

I was just reading about the history of Dreamgirls and saw it was once called "Big Dreams" and Effie died at the conclusion of act 1. I remember also reading that Evita was originally to be told through the eyes of Eva's hairdresser. This got me thinking ... what other shows were especially different during their early stages of development? 

[bwayrose7]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 2:13pm

The earliest versions of Wicked hewed much closer to the novel, with Glinda being very much a supporting character in Elphaba's story, rather than a co-lead. 

[Kad]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 2:31pm

Next to Normal, back when it was (rather tastelessly) called Feeling Electric and was more of a satire about the medical establishment than a straightforward family drama (though the show kept the number "Feeling Electric" for its off-Broadway run). At one point, the "twist" was that the show was actually about Dan and his mental illness, not Diana, as the audience was led to believe.  I believe there was also a point where it was intended that characters that became Gabe & Henry were to be played by the same actor.  

Updated On: 3/18/19 at 02:31 PM

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 2:51pm

Back in the early 1980s, the Tommy Tune musical MY ONE AND ONLY started off with a completely different book.  Early during its out-of-town tryout, they fired the creative team and rewrote the entire book and this is what eventually opened on Broadway in 1983.  Original cast member (and Tony Award nominee for the show) Denny Dillon, is including all this in her autobiography.  

[SomethingPeculiar]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 3:06pm

This is a great piece about My One and Only's messy road to Broadway.

Seussical was (allegedly) a MUCH better show in the workshops with Andrea Martin. It didn't rely on big huge sets and costumes to tell the story, and Martin was more at the center of the story. But Martin didn't want to commit to Broadway, and the show kept getting clunkier and bigger the more that they worked on it.

Annie was a mess at Goodspeed, but Mike Nichols saw potential in it and did a lot to turn it into the show we know today (including casting Dorothy Loudon as Hannigan). Nichols produced the show, but it's been said that he basically co-directed and helped restructure the book.

Sunday in the Park famously only had a first act when it was workshopped at Playwrights Horizons, and Mandy Patinkin had very little to do, so he taught himself to paint to pass the time. Sondheim then crafted the role of George around Mandy's abilities.

[darquegk]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 3:41pm

The Book of Mormon originally had a very nasty alternate ending, which can be heard on the composer demo recording. Instead of Elder Cunningham becoming a religious leader and creating a new religion that brings improbable peace to Africa, the original ending was that the Africans misinterpret the story of Christ to the extent that they kill and eat the Mormons, believing God has sent "body and blood" to feed their village. The implication is that they develop a new religion built around cannibalizing Western missionaries.

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 4:05pm

Wonderland went through book hell.

True book hell.

And then stayed in hell.


Also Mack and Mabel has different endings depending

[kdogg36]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 4:47pm

Follies was originally called The Girls Upstairs and its plot involved a murder mystery set at the follies reunion. When Hal Prince became involved, after Company was up and running, the murder mystery idea was dropped and the title changed. 

I hesitate to provide more details because there are folks here who know much, much more about this than I do, and I fear I'll make a fool of myself. I wouldn't be surprised if I've already said something inaccurate. 

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 4:50pm

At one point in great comets development it was in a tent....

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 5:04pm

I saw Bonnie & Clyde out of town with Stark Sands as Clyde and it was a bit different than what ended up on Broadway. The entire opening was different with a song called "Short Order World" sung by Bonnie. There was no young Bonnie and young Clyde. We didn't see Clyde until his first scene after the opening number attempting to steal Bonnie's car. There was a song addressing Clyde's impotence called "This Never Happened Before" which you can hear on the album as a bonus track. A few other songs like "Sixteen Years" and "These Are What You Call Guns" were cut and replaced with "Raise a Little Hell" and it's reprise. There was a song for the cop called "The Long Arm of the Law" and a song for Bonnie's mother called "The Devil." There was also the much talked about nude scene with Stark in the bathtub that got cut when the show came to Broadway and he was replaced with Jeremy Jordan. The first act ended with the murder of the police officer in the shop hold up scene which was more exciting than what was done on Broadway. The finale also included a reprise of "This World Will Remember Us" and a montage of monologues from various characters that I found effective.

[mailhandler777]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 7:00pm

Waitress was very different at ART then it is on Broadway and tour. Even at ART it changed a ton from first week of previews to right after opening to closing.

[Fetus]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 7:28pm

Carousel's development is pretty well documented. The Starkeeper was originally God played by both a man and women who appeared to Billy in a parlor and the ballet's were much more extensive in the second act.

[MollyJeanneMusic]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 8:15pm

I wouldn't say it's as different as some of the examples, but Dear Evan Hansen has had a bunch of different iterations throughout its readings and out-of-town tryouts.  Evan was a lot less sympathetic, there was a lot more focus on some of the side characters, and every song from the first eight or nine that Pasek and Paul wrote ended up getting rewritten or replaced at some point.  Like I said, it's probably not as different as Bonnie and Clyde or Book of Mormon, but it was definitely more different than, say, Hamilton - I remember seeing an interview where Lin mentioned how rare it was that they only had one opening song, one "I Want" song, etc.

[megs17]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 8:50pm

Adding more to the changes in Dear Evan Hansen, according to the companion book, very early on, Connor Murphy was a popular athlete named Dennis Morse, Zoe was his girlfriend instead of his sister, and he died in an accidental overdose after stealing Evan's anxiety meds. Also, even into workshops, there was an ensemble that was a part of several big dance numbers. Connor didn't reappear after his death, and Mike Faist was supposed to just don a new character and become part of the ensemble.

[A Director]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 9:04pm

In the first version of Hedda Gabler, she shot all the other characters.

In an early version  of Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche and Mitch got married.

In an early version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, after Nick and Martha leave, the doorbell rang and George and Martha's son walked in.

In an early version of Hello, Dolly, Irene and Minnie were lovers.

In an early version of Phantom, he had the first successful plastic surgery.

In an early version of Sunset Blvd, Max killed Norma.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 3/18/19 at 10:29pm

Finding Neverland's original production in the UK had a score by Frankel and Korie and a book by Allan Knee that were pretty much completely jettisoned for the ART and subsequent Broadway runs.

[Crazy NooNooHead]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 1:23am

darquegk said: "The Book of Mormon originally had a very nasty alternate ending, which can be heard on the composer demo recording. Instead of Elder Cunningham becoming a religious leader and creating a new religion that brings improbable peace to Africa, the original ending was that the Africans misinterpret the story of Christ to the extent that they kill and eat the Mormons, believing God has sent "body and blood" to feed their village. The implication is that they develop a new religion built around cannibalizing Western missionaries."

...Wow!

I read once (I think either in the souvenir program or the coffee table book) that in another early draft of BOM, the general shot Elder Price instead of one of the villagers, and "Man Up" was about Elder Cunningham being forced to take the lead now that his companion was gone. 

[Sho-Tunes-R-Us]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 1:43am

A Director said: "In the first version of Hedda Gabler, she shot all the other characters.

In an early version of Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche and Mitch got married.

In an early version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, after Nick and Martha leave, the doorbell rang and George and Martha's son walkedin.

In an early version of Hello, Dolly, Irene and Minnie were lovers.

In an early version of Phantom, he had the first successful plastic surgery.

In an early version of Sunset Blvd, Max killed Norma."

Dint you forget that in the original ending of My Fair Lady Eliza exited the Higgins manse by walking up the aisle of the theatre, walked into the street and was never seen again?

Or am I flashing-forward a bit?

[gypsy101]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 3:32am

Call_me_jorge said: "At one point in great comets development it was in a tent...."

wasn’t it still kind of in a tent off-broadway?

also re: The Girls Upstairs, i think Sondheim said it was a sort of “Who’ll Do It?”, trying to figure out which of the four will kill which other. idk how that would have played out onstage though 

[devonian.t]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 4:00am

They should have kept that Sunset Boulevard ending!

I also loved that twist when Scout found the KKK outfit in Atticus' closet.

[magictodo123]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 7:31am

Not in terms of plot or anything, but I do know shows that have changed their casting multiple times throughout development, previews, etc. Waitress' lab/workshop started off VERY differently (Bryce Pinkham as Dr. Pomatter!), Anastasia, etc. It's kind of cool to go through their Wikipedia pages and see what could have been. I did notice that Jennifer Simard was involved with the initial stages of Mean Girls, was replaced by Kerry Butler, and now she's back! I'm sure there are a lot of other examples of this (Carousel and the whole Betsy Wolfe casting, as well as Betsy in Frozen). I don't know much about plots, but I have learned a lot about casting from looking up different shows and seeing who was involved from the beginning and how they either stayed with the show or ended up being replaced. I find it very interesting! 

[willep]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 7:55am

darquegk said: "The Book of Mormon originally had a very nasty alternate ending, which can be heard on the composer demo recording. Instead of Elder Cunningham becoming a religious leader and creating a new religion that brings improbable peace to Africa, the original ending was that the Africans misinterpret the story of Christ to the extent that they kill and eat the Mormons, believing God has sent "body and blood" to feed their village. The implication is that they develop a new religion built around cannibalizing Western missionaries."

 

My recollection of that song isn’t that they built a new religion around cannibalizing Western missionaries, it was just that they saw Elder Cunningham as their Christ figure and so they had to kill him and eat him the way Christians did with Jesus (killed him and then eat his body as the Eucharist).

 

[jpbran]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 12:47pm

Disney's Aida in its initial run in Atlanta was a sparse set with nothing but a giant mechanical pyramid that changed to suggest or reveal different sets. That was all $hit-canned when they couldn't get it to work correctly, and Bob Crowley was hired to revise the whole look of the show (to occasionally stunning effect.)

[Jarethan]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 1:09pm

Two productions that I thought were very different between Boston and NYC, 40 years apart, were Dear World and Finding Neverland.  Dear World received mediocre reviews in Boston and managed to eliminate some of the best stuff.  It was very different an a lot worse.  There were so many things to love, but the show went from a B (with some beautiful A quality scenes) to a C- (while still having some lovely moments).  I have always wondered what would have happened if they staged the show in a small theatre and eliminated the incredibly stupid (but incredibly catchy) title song.  I imagine Lansbury would have not been part of it, and she was the one outstanding thing about it.

Finding Neverland changed dramatically...I thoroughly enjoyed it in Boston (Cambridge), but I HATED the choreography, which was very prominent in the original production.  The choreography was very different, at least as I remember it, but still not good.  Interestingly, I recently saw the road tour, and the first 20 minutes or so were totally different from either earlier version, and far inferior to both.  I still enjoyed the shows because of its heart, individual numbers, the great staging to the recreation of the play, ending with Sylvia's death...IMO a great scene in a less than great show.

I don't know if the show changed dramatically beyond the opening number, but Broadway legend has it that A Funny Thing was headed to failure until they added the opening number, Comedy Tonight, which -- besides being a great number -- told the audience loud and clear that they were in for a lot of silliness and to 'let their hair down'.  And apparently Hello Dolly opened in Detroit (or am I remembering this incorrectly) without a title number and was not received well.  While HD would not have been as good without that number, it would have still been a lot better than a lot of hits in those days; so, I can only imagine that a lot of changes were made post opening in Detroit, besides the title number.  But this is just conjecture.

[Kad]

Posted: 3/19/19 at 1:10pm

Call_me_jorge said: "At one point in great comets development it was in a tent...."

...it had two off-Broadway engagements staged in specially created venues under tents. The show itself was not much different than what ended up on Broadway.