My friend Dave Schwartz (one of thousands of Dave Schwartzes I know) informs me that he went to see What About Dick? last night and the evening did not close with "The Dick Anthem," the song it closed with on the first night when I saw it. Instead, they did a reprise of a tongue-twister tune that Billy Connolly sang to close the first act. So they seem to have cut the title song, the one you can hear a bit of in this video.
I'm a little curious to see what becomes of this show. I assume there will be a cable special and/or DVD of what's playing through tonight down at the Orpheum in downtown L.A. But what else? At first thought, you'd figure this was a chance to test out the material and maybe then do a rewrite for a longer-running production somewhere…but I'm thinking that wouldn't make a lot of sense. Testing the play out with a cast like that isn't going to tell you much about how it will fare without Mr. Connolly, Ms. Ullman, Mr. Izzard, etc. And if you have this DVD out, people are going to go expecting that play, not the rewrite. Someone who has a small theater group in Oregon wrote to ask me if I thought this play would be good for his company to do sometime. The answer is I don't have a clue. We weren't listening to the play. We were watching Mr. Connolly, Ms. Ullman, Mr. Izzard, etc. So I don't know what, if anything, lies ahead for it. But it sure was fun to see last Thursday night.