Little House on the Prairie -- the Broadway musical?

Go see it! Besides Melissa Gilbert, the cast was phenomenal! I knew nothing about the series/books and I loved this show.

Isnt it en route to Broadway? I dunno.

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... or desperate. I wouldn't know. Is the show doing well?

It was our Holiday show here in Denver. Here is a Denver review:

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/REVIEW_Little_House_on_the_Prairie_settles_into_Denver_20091217

There is also a thread about the show on here somewhere.

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Updated On: 2/22/10 at 10:08 PM

Maybe Little House on the Prairie hopes for a limited Broadway engagement in the summer. I think that would be neat if the tour made a Broadway stop. Every so often, that happens where the entire company plays an NYC engagement. Dreamgirls and Peter Pan revivals did something similar. And then the shows like Annie at Madison Square Garden during the holiday season.

But aside from that, saying it's a "Broadway musical" is a common marketing device, especially when a show is part of a Broadway season of national tours. Shows sometimes market themselves as Broadway-bound or pre-Broadway and then the Broadway production doesn't materialize.

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Updated On: 2/24/10 at 11:56 PM

I saw this show in Toronto on tour and was largely underwhelmed. No great songs, no terrific dance numbers, no real chance for the actors to shine. I was really disappointed in Rachel Portman's score. She has done such wonderful work in movies and I believe her operatic version of The Little Prince was well received. But the inappropriate power ballads and the the generic identical sounding choral numbers did not make me want to see this show a second time.

I was really disappointed in Rachel Portman's score. She has done such wonderful work in movies ...

I thing that is the whole problem. When you write a score for a movie it is essentially background music to enhance the mood. But when writing for musical theatre the music is very much in the foreground. Look at some of the great film composers who were unable to create a decent Broadway score: Elmer Bernstein, Manos Hadjidakis, and Michel Legrand come to mind.

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The Guthrie run (which I don't know can be considered an official part of the tour) was nearly almost sold out with moms and little girls (many of whom dressed in prairie girl clothes - which was SO CUTE!). Overall, they seemed to enjoy it. The tour did a stop in St. Paul (I think it was one of the first ones) and the show sold incredibly well there (and the Ordway is substantially larger than the Guthrie). So, that's probably an indication that people really want to see this show (and probably lots wanted to see it again).

The show itself is kind of a mess and it doesn't seem to have fixed any problems with additional working time between the Guthrie showing and the tour. But, Francesca just does not seem to be able to get a hit on her hands in the musical theatre world, so I'm thinking that is perhaps the primary reason why the show isn't working.

So, there is an audience for it, just not a theatre-savvy one. And perhaps that truly is enough for the producers to keep running the show. A full-on B'way production seems highly unlikely, no matter how much they want to tout that to draw attention to the show.