- Performances: 1,524.
- Open / Close: May 2, 2001 – January 2, 2005
- Theater: The Lyric Theatre.
- Tony Awards: As with the original 1980 production, it was nominated for 8 awards and won 2. However, none of the actors in the original won an award. For this revival, Christine Ebersole won for Best Actress in a Musical (the other win was for Best Revival of a Musical) Ebersole would win her second Tony six years later for “Grey Gardens.”
- Fun Fact: In the podcast, Phil and I don’t get too deeply into this revival’s replacements. They included Shirley Jones for Dorothy Brock and Tom Wopat and Patrick Cassidy for Julian Marsh.
Podcast
I often say I’m not as devoted a theater nerd as you might expect from someone who’s written about theater for more than 25 years and has a theater history podcast. This episode is the proof, however, as I’ve never in my life seen what may be the ultimate Broadway lover’s Broadway show, “42nd Street.” This Broadway show about putting on a Broadway show includes all of the benchmarks of a Golden Age musical, even though the original idea for adapting the movie into a show only came to fruition in 1980.
Even though this show exposed a huge gap in my theater knowledge, my guest is possibly the best person to talk about it: the podcast’s most frequent guest, Phil Crosby. In this, his 8th appearance, Phil once again brings his extensive knowledge base to bear in our conversation about this classic “small town girl becomes a star” story.
Phil was itching to dig deeper into the original production – and we couldn’t help but dig into it a little – but in our consideration of the revival, we talk about why this show plays so well with certain generations, why it doesn’t necessarily require big name stars, and what changed (for the better but arguably for the worse) between the original and the revival.