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‘Wicked’ Hits the Road, Carrying the Hopes of Broadway Tours - The New York Times
Aug 02, 2021 2 mins, 24 secs

The production, which starts Tuesday in Dallas, is the first Broadway tour back onstage, a test as American theaters seek to rebound from the pandemic shutdown.

Sixteen months after the touring production of “Wicked” in which Suskauer stars as the green-skinned witch Elphaba was forced to close, the cast and crew have reassembled in Dallas for a high-stakes effort to start again.

The show’s first performance here on Tuesday, the first by any touring Broadway production since the coronavirus pandemic shut down shows across the nation, will be a sign of hope for a battered theater industry, but also a test at a time when the spread of the Delta variant has Americans once again on edge.

“Each show is going to be someone’s first time back at the theater, so each show is going to be emotional,” Suskauer said.

“If anybody doesn’t love a national tour, there’s something they’re not getting,” said Cleavant Derricks, who in 1982 won a Tony Award for his role in the original Broadway production of “Dreamgirls,” and who now plays the Wizard in the “Wicked” tour.

The touring company includes 33 actors, an 18-person crew, six musicians, three stage managers, two company managers and a physical therapist, plus the 16 dogs, one cat and three ferrets brought along for companionship.

The resumption of the “Wicked” tour, which comes a month before the first musicals are scheduled to restart on Broadway, will soon be followed by others: Beginning in mid-August, touring productions of “Hamilton” will resume in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Tempe, Ariz., and in September tours of “Frozen” and “My Fair Lady,” as well as the play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” will hit the road.

In Dallas, the touring production of “Wicked” is requiring vaccines for cast and crew, but not for the audience, which will be instructed to wear masks.

“Since I’ve been married, I’ve never been home this long, ever,” said the tour’s hair supervisor, Andrea DiVincenzo Shairs, who has been with “Wicked” off and on since 2003.

“We were worried about what was going to come out of the trucks,” said David O’Brien, the tour’s production stage manager.

While the crew reassembled the Tony-winning set, the cast rehearsed in the lobby, working on a sprung floor rented from the Texas Ballet Theater.

“Our biggest concerns have been how to reinvent things we do in a Covid world,” said Steve Quinn, the tour’s company manager, who has been touring with “Wicked” for 16 years.

The tour company has a wide range of experience

Rebecca Gans Reavis had been playing a flying monkey for just a week before the tour shut down, while Laurel Parrish, the advance wardrobe supervisor, has been with “Wicked” since it opened on Broadway

“I think I’m going to say it the same, but it’s going to feel different,” Bailey said

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