The Miller's Son on Tonight Show - Question — Page 3

But some people evidently did, even on Broadway. I don't know.

I doubt they did. I think it's just one of those collective negative myths that the Internet fosters.

It's Easy Cynicism: Oh that wasn't so good...THE SET MADE NOISE.

---

One imagines that a good deal of the folks claiming to have experienced noisy ALNM sets, also claim to have seen one of the 21 performances of Anyone Can Whistle's original run.

Horsey, I think you were thinking of Merrily's 21 performances

There aren't enough eyeroll .gifs in the world for After Eight's posts ...

Okay, this should be the LAST word on the panels.

From Frank Rich's masterfully written and lavishly illustrated book THE THEATRE ART OF BORIS ARONSON:

Simple as the screens looked, their execution was complex. The sliding panels, each driven by a separate motor, hung from tracks over the stage. The motorized panels had to stop at a variety of exact marks during the show. Motors were also required to drive furniture in and out on 150 different cues. This was accomplished with an elaborate system of tracks on the floor, in which different pins guided “plates” (carpeted panels one inch thick bearing the furniture) into the correct grooves, so that the furniture would end up in exactly the right position on a grass-colored carpet that covered the floor.

During Night Music’s Boston tryout, however, a hitch quickly became apparent: Aronson’s delicately painted but heavily hung birch-tree screens were emitting a coarse racket. The sound they made in their metal tracks was picked up and amplified by the production’s microphones. The solution, again proposed by Peter Feller, was to return to a practice of a generation earlier and redo the tracks in wood. The resulting diminution of the noise level was nearly as pronounced as the contrast in decibel levels between the rubber-wheeled Paris and steel-wheeled New York subway trains.







I hope never to hear those anonymous complaints about noisy panels in New York EVER again.

---

Updated On: 3/18/14 at 12:43 AM

And I'm sure nothing ever, ever went wrong that might have caused them to be a little noisy at some performances, not even after the move to the Majestic, for which a new set was built (the original set went on the road). And, of course, Frank Rich was at every performance so he must know.

Ever.

---

As I said, I saw it three times and I don't recall noise. But I also tend to trust the person who told me this. I wasn't there when he saw the show. It does seem possible that there might have been an occasional problem later, especially given that a new set was built for the move.

I think there are times when we can definitively say something didn't happen. Ever. But things do go wrong sometimes.

IIRC, a couple of the critics complained about light shining off the panels.. I'd need to double check to be sure. I was never bothered by that, but I think not everyone loved those panels. I did.

EDIT: I do recall being able to see the lights reflected on the panels, but that didn't bother me. This might also have had something to do with where someone was sitting.

Updated On: 3/18/14 at 05:15 PM

Don't have my book handy tonight, but Frank Rich explains that as well.

---