Well, I have returned from opening night of 42nd Street. I would say that son, Jed’s, assessment of the production is fairly accurate. Personally, I think the dance numbers in the show are fantastic. I can’t say enough about the talented group of young (and not so young) hoofers who dance their hearts out and their feet off in this show. Acting-wise, well, there isn’t a lot of it going on in this show, but, then again, I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning Ruby Keeler and Oscar in the same breath.
Technically, this show has had more problems than most theaters have in a season. A week ago tonight, our lighting designer was walking a ladder off the stage, fell, and broke five ribs. They finally managed to find a woman designer to take over the light design, who had, at least, done the show before; but who, unfortunately, had never worked at this theater or with any of their equipment. She managed to light the show, but not without turning Wednesday night’s full dress rehearsal into a five hour tech rehearsal. Unfortunately, Wednesday night was the first time the cast and, more importantly, the dancers got all of their costumes for the first time to try and see if they could do all the costume changes. It wasn’t a problem for most of us, but the dancers had over a dozen costume changes to get through during the show. Our sound operator was introduced to the cast last evening at 7:00 p.m., as he passed out the body mikes; and he then saw the show for the first time in his young life, exactly one hour later. By the way, the follow-spot operator that Jed mentioned is the son of our Dorothy Brock, and is, I would guess, twelve years old.
And to top of the tech nightmare of this show, about an hour before the show started tonight, the musical director came running in the back door and announced that Dory had fallen and possibly broken her hip. All of us in the men’s dressing room were, of course, shocked and concerned; but mostly confused, because none of us had the slightest idea who the Hell Dory was. We later learned that Dory was our scenic designer and painter and she had literally fallen only a few feet away from the stage door. So, for the next forty minutes, the theater parking lot was filed with ambulances and fire trucks. Fortunately, late word was that Dory probably only dislocated her hip, although she also may have broken her ankle (ohhh, a 42nd Street reference).
