I saw the show during its Philadelphia engagement last week. While I would have preferred to see it in a smaller house, I didn't think all intimacy was lost in the Forrest Theatre (which is approx. 1900 seats). The staging is very similar to the production at the Public, and Gold has directed the show to maximize the intimacy factor in larger houses, such as playing a lot of the show downstage center, as close to the audience as possible. Unlike many tours, the performance was mercifully NOT overamplified.
I would assume that most of the principals are on at least a 1-year contract which would be October. But I have no idea. At the first performance in Philly, the full cast was there and they all sounded superb.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
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