I did a production of
The Producers with a cast of 22, plus a costumed ASM who appeared a couple of times (pushing another cast member in a scaled down tank!). It made for some frantic costume changes, but it is achievable. However, our space is not huge and we couldn't really have fitted any more people on
stage! I may still have a cast breakdown somewhere - but I'm away from home at the moment and won't be able to look for it for another fortnight.
Set-wise I don't know how helpful I can be as our set wouldn't have worked in any other space but ours - our
stage is a very odd shape and we don't fly or have room in the wings for more than one truck, so our sets are very space-specific! (and usually diabolically clever - they unfold,
swing around a pivot, slide along tracks....) The thing to bear in mind is that there are a LOT of locations. We simplified as much as possible - we kind of had a generic "New York" look which did for quite a few of the scenes, but a lot of them you do need the specifics for. For the accountants we didn't have desks or anything -
Props built us adding machines with neck straps so the boys just stood up for the scene. In terms of the office we had one office which had light grey walls; for the first act we had loads of pictures up on the walls, carefully-sewn together clothes covering the couch and architraves and skirting boards; we took all those off at interval to leave bare walls, and it worked very well with a different (white) set of furniture. We were thinking about getting painted-over pictures and architraves for act 2 but just did not have the time either to
build them or to do the change.
It's also a proppy show, and some of them are complex and specific - pigeons that can salute Nazi-style (and that you can get Nazi armbands onto easily without being seen, during the scene), adding machines, walking frames
etc etc. We also had a 1/10th replica of a Mk1 Panzer tank for
Springtime! Costuming is also HUGE, simply because of the sheer number of production numbers - little old ladies, stormtroopers, prisoners, Prisoners of Love, Keep it Gay, King of Broadway, two lots of opening night patrons - plus there are some tricky things like the Follies Girls (the Beer Stein, Pretzel, Sausage and Viking girls plus Ulla as the
Iron Eagle) - I don't think I've ever seen our wardrobe department so busy.
To this day, 2 1/2 years later, I still do not know how we got the show open. On
preview night we still had bits of set being painted in the foyer (no room anywhere else!) 90 minutes before curtain up; I remember thinking
on opening night that this could go either way - it was either going to be amazing or it was going to be horrendous, there was no middle
ground! Having said that, the
theatre gods must have been smiling on us because it absolutely flew, and we had a brilliant (12-week!) season. We still talk about it and everyone involved says that they'd do it again at the
drop of a hat - it's a bonkers, brilliant, mad, wonderful show and I loved it!
The one thing I know I still have is an electronic copy of the script with music inserted into it - let me know if that's any help (your SM may well find it useful!) and we can arrange getting a copy to you. If you have any other questions
send me a PM and I'll help however I can.
