Beauty and the Beast NETworks tour question- Page 2

[My Oh My]

Posted: 5/2/12 at 8:56pm

These cheap, non-Equity tours annoy me. They mislead the public and then present a shamelessly cheapened version of well known musicals. Exploitative.

And these being MUSICALS, of course the music is the first thing they cut corners on, defeating the purpose of live theatre and the theatre experience. It's really sad how we've gone back to that era when it was expected for national tours to be significantly scaled down "road versions" of far superior Broadway productions with the leads being handled by the 3rd understudy of the 5th national tour.

It was brief, but I am glad I grew up during the period (roughly mid 80's to late 90's) where touring standards were at an all time high and few shows scaled down anything for the road and casts were just as good and even sometimes better than their Broadway counterparts. Orchestrations were skillfully adapted and sounded just as great as on Broadway.

I'm a detail obsessed nut and nothing gets by me, so when I saw the road versions of shows I later saw on Broadway, I was incredibly impressed by the road standards and how they were indistinguishable from the famous Broadway versions in every aspect.

Nowadays, non-Equity tours dominate the road and road audiences once again are treated to substandard versions of musicals. It's so bad, even the great long-running tours of Phantom and Les Mis have been shut down and reopened with a shadow of what they once were. Even worse, they are advertised and promoted as being improvements over those brilliant originals. Not everyone is an detail obsessed nut like me so not everyone is a moron for liking any production whether Equity or non-Equity, but the dip in quality and the terrible restagings are so bad these days, I wonder what has happened to taste?

Nowadays your best bet isn't even Broadway--it's the local civic light operas and regional companies that produce the best fare with the best quality and use the proper resources without going bankrupt.

I suggest you support your local regional company and leave the gaudy jukebox fare so typical of Broadway these days for another day.

[DEClarke]

Posted: 6/26/12 at 4:22pm

I'll be seeing this production when it rolls into Houston in September. The last time I saw the show was when it had its world premiere in Houston, TX in December of 1993. I was in 3rd grade then and don't remember much other than it looked JUST like the movie. The costuming and sets were spot on replicas. These negative reviews make me worry for September.