daredevil said: "I saw the Prince Candide twice, during its Broadway run, and have seen Comet twice, once at Ars Nova and once at ART, but not on Broadway. I really don't think one production has much to do with the other. Candide was performed on an open space---only once or twice did the actors interact with the audience. It was interesting to sit in a Broadway theater that had been reconfigured, but otherwise the production was pretty traditional. The vision of The Comet seems uniquely its own---its texture--the sense of flow between the actors and audience, and having its characters positioned at different spaces all around the theater seems, to me, to have nothing in common with the Candide that played the Broadway.
I saw it four times, sitting in a different section each time. There was a lot happening throughout the theatre. Glitter and Be Gay was performed against a side wall (she had to be adding jewels as the song went on) but Cunegonde was surrounded on three sides by audience members as close as 2 feet from her. There was an extended scene when Candide went searching...he kept on asking people in the audience to move (their top-price stools) so he could get by, singing periodically; the flogging scene was performed right by the Dangling section, etc. True, it was not as constant as Great Comet, in that there WAS a real stage; but, I would venture that approaching half the show was performed among the audience. The theatre was also considerably smaller, in terms of number of seats, than the current production of Comet.
