I think that what EponineThenardier and Kquill were saying was this.
That there are going to be people who have heard of Barbour from the newspaper articles about him and nothing more. And those people are going to want to buy tickets to see who that man realy is and what kind of performer he is. People might want to see the show because of what he did as oppose to avoiding the show. I think that EponineThenardier and Kquill were saying that they would go becuase they would want to see the reaction that Barbour would get and that now Barbour is offically cast in the Broadway production it would intreague them to go when they might not have wanted to go before.
Like it or not, but there are going to be people who have heard of the name from the small amount of time he spent in the papers just as there might be some who would avoid the show because of the same thing.
As for trying out this show in Florida and about the reaction to this both from the audience and critical. I have no trouble belieaving that the papers down there praise everything to the point of comming off as an advertisment for the show. However, I find that people who attend the theatre in small theatre communities like Florida go to the theatre often enough because they want to. Thus making them get a sense of what is good thetre and what isn't. I agree wih what Scaryclowns223 said.
And, I feel that the reason why I don't smell another Pirate Queen with this is because Pirate Queen was using the fact that it was a Boublil and Schonberg musical and that they were the creators of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon to sell tickets. They never let the show sell itself and let it sell based on if it was good or not. I think that there were also a lot of pepople who saw that it was new work from them and thus used that as the reason to go to buy tickets.
And, keep in mind that it is starting to get less uncommon that shows will try out in places that are far from being considered major cities so they can do the work of the ou of town try out process in a place where it won't get large amounts of press etc. Keep in mind it wasn't that long ago that someone posted a link to a Ridel article talking about how a new Broadway revival of Dreamgirls was going to try out in Korea rather then America because they didn't want the lurking american press or people on theatre message boards to talk about the show.
"If you try to shag my husband while I am still alive, I will shove the art of motorcycle maintenance up your rancid little Cu**. That's a good dear"
Tom Stoppard's Rock N Roll
