Productions
After thirty-three previews, the Broadway production opened on May 1, 1991 at the Palace Theatre, and closed on September 5, 1993, after 981 performances and 33 previews. Directed and choreographed by Tommy Tune, the original cast included Keith Carradine as Rogers, Dee Hoty as Betty Blake, Dick Latessa as Will's father Clem, and Cady Huffman as Ziegfeld's favorite chorus girl. Replacements later in the run included Mac Davis and Larry Gatlin as Rogers, Mickey Rooney as Clem, and Susan Anton and Marla Maples as Ziegfeld's favorite chorus girl. The recorded voice of Gregory Peck was heard as Ziegfeld.
The show also enjoyed a number of national tours, with Carradine, Davis, and Gatlin in the first National tour in 1993 and 1994. Pat Boone starred in the musical in Branson, Missouri in 1994. Variety noted that "Broadway Came To Branson with the bow of the 'Will Rogers Follies: A Life in Review' in the new Will Rogers Theater last Saturday...Pat Boone is a solid hit in Branson as Will Rogers in the 'Follies.'" The music was not live but digitalized.
Read more about this topic: The Will Rogers Follies
Famous quotes containing the word productions:
“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Most new things are not good, and die an early death; but those which push themselves forward and by slow degrees force themselves on the attention of mankind are the unconscious productions of human wisdom, and must have honest consideration, and must not be made the subject of unreasoning prejudice.”
—Thomas Brackett Reed (1839–1902)
“Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)