All That Chat - re: Waiting for Reviews

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re: Waiting for Reviews

Posted by:	LegitOnce 07:53 am EDT 03/18/14
In reply to:	Waiting for Reviews - hitbycab 10:00 am EDT 03/17/14

Well, back then the custom was that on opening night the curtain time would be 6:30 instead of the usual 8:30. So the show would come down somewhere around 9 pm. The overnight critics could pound out a review in not much more than an hour, and the presses were held until the review was filed; essentially the important Broadway review was the last significant news of the "previous" day. Meanwhile, the leading lady had to meet and greet some opening-nighters in her dressing room, then get out of her wig and makeup, get her hair done quickly, slip into an evening dress and travel to the party where presumably she'd be one of the last arrivals. That had to take something close to an hour after the curtain came down, so I would put her arrival at something around 10 PM. From that time, the wait for the first reviews wouldn't be long, no more than an hour or so. Does anyone know when the changeover to reviewers' seeing the show the final week of previews happened? I know how in Chapin's book about Follies he talks about how Hal Prince doesn't want to tell the cast "which critics are coming when," so by the early 1970s it seems opening night was more or less a formality.

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