42nd Street Tour

I just saw the 42nd Street tour tonight, and I was slightly disappointed. Everyone in the show is an amazing dancer and great singers, I just felt a little underwhelmed by this production. Is this tour non-equity? It struck me as def. non-equity because not a single person on the tour had a Broadway credit to their name. Also, how much of this tour was scaled down from the Broadway version? The sets were extremely simple, which kind of ticked me off. I felt like i was seeing a high school production at some points. one of the backdrops flew out too early (so they lowered it back down half way through the scene) --- people kept dropping props and I could see people standing in the wings waiting to go on. It just didnt seem very professional. There's nothing wrong with the actors, they were all doing amazing jobs. Shout outs to Kyle Dean Massey and Melody Davi, they were great in their lead roles. The only person who got on my last nerve, was - I guess the lead, since he had the last bow - David Grant who played Julian Marsh. He could sing, but his acting was horrible. Every scene he was in, he just played the "pissed director" there weren't any layers to his charcter, which i found to be a flaw of a lot of the actors in the show, though they didnt bother me as much. Anyways, didnt mean to drag this thing on, what do yall think of the tour?

Oh no, def. not discouraging seeing the show. Some of the performances are great. I'm just not a big fan of the "old Broadway" style of musical comedy. All of the acting seems so "fake" to me, I dunno. I just was disappointed by the technical elements of the show. Here in Birmingham we just had Lion King and next we're getting Hairspray, so I expected 42nd Street to be up there on par with those shows, but it wasn't. Although the big "42nd Street" number was pretty cool if you like dance / tap.

Yes, it is a non-union tour.

I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard it's really quite good. (I know a few of the actors in the production...)

Then again, I just did an Equity production of the show this past summer (a three month run), and the feedback I got from people who saw both productions tended to be that ours had more heart and was more affecting overall, even though our sets - believe it or not, from your comments - were more simple than those on the tour and our theater was very small. But again, no-one I spoke to was disappointed in the tour. Just my two cents.

Updated On: 1/13/06 at 11:13 AM

I recently saw the tour and enjoyed it very much. They do have to scale down the sets to fit in the different theatres. Unfortunatley, the theatre I saw it in wasn't able to fit the big staircase in for the finale. However, they did a very nice job adjusting to not having it. I believe the tour mostly plays smaller cities (and Natalie Buster, who plays Dorothy Brock, can correct me if Im wrong), but you can't have the big extreme sets that you had on Broadway if you're bringing these musicals to the smaller cities. Having seen the equity tour of this production the sets really arent that much different. I reccomend seeing the show. The talent is EXCELLENT.

42nd Street never has had the strongest book in the world.

But you don't go to see "42nd Street" to see a work of dramatic perfection and intensity, rather, to see tons of ginormus, sparkling, tap-dancing production numbers!!!!!!!

The actor who plays the doctor also plays the stage manager Mac and one of the thugs looking for Pat Denning. So he has three roles and understudies others. I saw B'way production and this tour and thought they did the best that they could with the sets although I missed the dressing rooms for "Sunny Side to every situation" and as mentioned before, the show's plot is not really that important. The dancing is the main attraction. In the original production, the book writers were given credit for "Cross-overs and Lead Ins" showing that they didn't even consider it a book, just a way to get from song to song. Hope this helps.

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Sorry you didn't enjoy yourself Rentboy. But thank you for not being an idiot about your complaints. You have no idea how mean some people can be. I enjoy being in this show very much and even though we are a non-equity tour, we got the same direction, choreography as the Broadway Revival. We even worked with the co-writer Mark Bramble on characterizations. The plot is basically a backstage musical about the goings-on behind the scenes...so that's why the setpieces look exactly like you said. We've received very good press here, so I dare to say that you may not like this kind of musical. It certainly is different than the sardonic musicals out today like Spamalot, Spelling Bee and Avenue Q. But thanks for your comments!