No More Reprises

repriselogo

In the past, I plugged the many theatrical productions of the Reprise Theatre Company here in Los Angeles. They did generally-marvelous short-term revivals of past Broadway musicals, working wonders with limited budgets and even-more-limited rehearsal schedules. I thought it was a great enterprise and I was proud to get involved with them, serving as "expert" for some of their Saturday lectures.

The main reason Reprise shows were so good is that top-notch people hired other top-notch people. The secondary reason may have been that they spent considerably more money on most of their productions than they took in. For a time, donations and fund-raisers managed to keep things afloat but the economy is what it is and costs are up and they had to abort their last season partway through and go on hiatus. Sad to say, it's become permanent: We who subscribed or worked with them all received e-mails the other day saying, basically, that they couldn't find a financial path to resuming…so no more Reprise.

That's a shame. I loved about 85% of everything I saw there, which is way above my appreciation level of all other shows I go see. The more I learned about how little time they had to prep, the more impressed I was. I often attended opening nights when you'd think there'd still be bugs and mistakes but I can't recall any more than I've seen in long-running Broadway hits. I'm going to miss those shows…a lot.