There's also the competing demands because cast albums can often help drive ticket sales, but the piece is often still being reworked through previews and sometimes beyond, so you don't want to do that before it's solid and get people attached to something that changed, but if the show doesn't last long, then the money for the album is hard to get.
There was talk of live recordings and that they are often more expensive, because additional people are part of a live show who wouldn't be part of a recording, and that the recordings have specific pay scale rules that often drive how long you can have everyone there.
The Obsessed Live panel featured the cast of upcoming show "Disaster". Faith Prince had apparently been offered Audrey in "Little Shop of Horrors" but couldn't get out of another contract to do it. She said when "Little Shop" took off people were worried she would freak out, and she was fine, she figured, this was someone else's time and her time would come. Seth Rodetsky asked her if that was her twenty years later response or if she'd always felt that way, and she said the name Faith wasn't a misnomer. They did perform "Suddenly Seymour" for us though.
Rodetsky had great stories for each cast member, and then they did a little bit from the show that sounded wonderful.
Then Caroline Rhea interviewed the three leads from "Something Rotten!". There were jokes (as you might expect when Rhea is involved) but she asked them about meeting presidents. Brian D'Arcy mentioned that he had met Hillary Rodham Clinton way back when and then she and Bill had come to see "Something Rotten!" when it was in previews, and his wife had seen her standing alone in the green room so went over and introduced herself and told her about their prior meeting. So, when D'Arcy came out he said, oh we've met before, and Clinton said, yes, it was back when you were just dating your now wife, and now you guys have a teenager and he was so thrilled, and then later discovered his wife had prepped Clinton.
John Cariani said he had some guy on the street say, hey, great job and tell Brian that was great too, and he said thanks and the guy drove off and someone else watching said he looked confused, did he know who that was? It was Nathan Lane. D'Arcy was apparently surprised to hear this story.
The creative team from "Waitress" came to talk about that process. Diane Paulus and Sara Bareilles had not seen the movie, but it had come up in a discussion at ART as one of the properties that could be adapted and she watched it and thought, yes. Jessie Nelson did know it, and in fact knew the family. She did say it was a learning curve, realizing that writing a musical meant a lot of the things from the script would get cut to become a song, since the processing happens in the songs. As the panel wrapped up, some fans chanted, "Sing!" and Bareilles said, oh alright, and played one of the songs.
Then there was a panel with snippets from upcoming shows, so they brought out a few folks, did some setup, sang a song and swapped in the next group. There was "Tuck Everlasting", "Nerds", "Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812" (including a taped message from Josh Groban), and "Found".
And then there was the goodbye. Some of the lovely characters from the opening returned to discuss how wonderful things had been. There was some singing. And a singalong. And another singalong. And that was it.
