42nd Street review

42nd Street review

42nd Street Review - Broadway musical

This musical is an adaptation of the eponymous film of 1933, which was filmed based on the novel written by Bradford Ropes. Although the motion picture was of a great success and collected $2 million at the box office, the public quickly forgot about it. In 1978, Broadway writers Mark Bramble and Michael Stewart accidentally went on showing of this film in the cinema, representing the forgotten tapes. After viewing it, they were fired-up with the idea to create a musical based on it. The authors did not reduce the available story, deciding to add only a few characters and scenes to it. Since Harry Warren could not finish new songs due to a serious illness, the writers did the original step. The creators have taken the most famous works of the composer and his partner Al Dubin, sounding in other pictures, and added them to this staging.

The producer of the show was David Merrick. Due to lack of funding, he has invested in production his own 3 million dollars. Tryouts were unsuccessful, but the producer believed in the success of the created show. Ordering to remake decorations and to rewrite the theater program, Merrick did not change the main production. Successful Broadway premiere proved the correctness of his decision. Attention was drawn to the show because of not only the beautiful songs and dances – a few hours before the start of it, director and choreographer G. Champion died. Producer hid the sad news from the troupe and the public and informed them all about it from the scene only after repeated coming out of actors for an encore. This staging was the last successful work of D. Merrick. He had gone through a stroke three years after the premiere and since then he was wheel-chaired almost all the time and left the creative work.

The musical was nominated for various awards. The original Broadway production was awarded with Theatre World. It triumphed in 2 out of 4 categories presented at the Drama Desk. The performance received 8 Tony nominations and won two of them. West End production was given with the award from the Evening Standard. Also, the play has won 1 out of 2 nominations for Laurence Olivier. The second Broadway production 5 times was nominated for Drama Desk, receiving 1. The histrionics was nominated once for Drama League and forwarded in 11 categories on the Outer Critics Circle, receiving 2. The play was represented in 9 nominations on Tony and managed to win 2 of them.

The second Broadway production received maximum box office in late December 2001, amounted to 1,233,693 dollars. The minimum amount – $ 211,761 – organizers received in April 2001. The musical was represented in 8 countries. Russian show in 2002 with the participation of American actors turned out to be a failure. Staging had been closed after a 3-month run, although it was initially planned that the musical would stay on stage at least 2 times longer. The organizers have not been able to return 11 million dollars spent on the establishment of Russian production. The melodies, familiar to Americans from childhood, were not so well known to local Asian audience.
Last Update:August, 19th 2016

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