Little Women - expandable cast???

On Weinberger's website it says that the male cast of Little Women is expandable up to 19. And female expandable up to 23. Does anyone know how this works?
I know you can add more by not doubling up the performers' roles. But that doesn't take it up to 42.
I'm desperately trying to figure out a way to get a chorus involved, so my local theatre group will stage it. I was thinking of having them dance during the Overture, more playing the roles in Jo's stories, party guests at Mr Laurence's house and weddings guests. Any other ideas?

I took some scene change music and created a dance for the party guests in Act I. I had people playing and doing various things on the beach in act II before the song. I had two trolls, not one. They sang harmony.

I don't care for adding choruses to small cast shows, but where I directed it was still growing and they (and I) wanted as many people involved as possible. We chose it because we knew we could at least cast the 10, but we got more than that, so we found a place for them.

Updated On: 3/23/10 at 04:57 PM

It's hard to expand this show, but it's do-able. You could definitely have Clarissa/Rodrigo/Braxton etc. etc. be different than Meg/Mr. Brooke/Laurie. I think a chorus of trolls (5 or 6) would be good. Harmonize on the "I'll take you to your fate" and then have them all fight for the jeweled necklace. You could have a big dance scene with some repeats of the music before "Take A Chance On Me" to show them at the Valentine's Day Ball. Beachwalkers can be nice. This could make it a cast of about 30, 42 is hard to accomplish though!

Thanks, it pretty much confirms my ideas for the show.

It's such a great show, shame it didn't have more success on Broadway.