But consider, about revivals, that there is a LOUD minority who don't want anything old fashioned or that they see as offensive, or even more strictly, written or for a time before wokeness...
they are not the majority of ticket buyers. Lots of ticket buyers still want to see those shows, lots of ticket buyers love beautifully restored and staged classic gems, and reinvented new visions (that don't massively rewrite and overhaul the text/score).
Also, Encores hasn't only been obscure shows for awhile. I mean even when they did Chicago... Encores began in 1994, and Chicago was done in 1996. The musical itself had only closed on Broadway 19 years prior, after a run of over 2 years. So it's not as if it were some obscure show no one had ever heard of. It definitely fit the bill of an under-appreciated gem that many audiences of the day would never have had a chance to see, with a score very worthy of an "Encores treatment". I mean, their first production was Fiorello... which VERY much fit the bill of being tragically unknown to most modern audiences, rarely performed etc... and at least it was from the 50s (36 years old in 1994)... but it also had won the Pulitzer and Tony for Best Musical. So even then some might have said they were pushing the concept of under-appreciated by picking a show which at the time was 1 of 6 musicals to ever win a Pulitzer. There's next production, Allegro, was even more THE perfect choice for Encores. And that "perfect for Encores" streak continued until their 9th production with Chicago.
But they did Wonderful Town in 2000, Hair in 2001, The Pajama Game in 2002, Bye Bye Birdie in 2004, Follies in 2007, the revised Merrily in 2012 (the fact that they didn't do the original, to me, flies completely in the face of the reason to do it at Encores, but hey)...
So that aspect of their mission, or how it's interpreted, has been malleable since the beginning. And let's not forget, they have to make money too.
But what has always been true is that they do not reinvent and rewrite the shows -- they do basically the original score, with original orchestrations if possible, and a paired down version of the book. Only in rare cases like Merrily where the show has been rewritten by the living author prior to Encores selection did they do actual rewrites. |
