The point: When people say things to the effect of "Well, Broadway is *professional* and they would *never* expose the 'magic' behind their set design!", then they don't know what they're talking about.
A whole slew of Broadway productions tip their hands to "backstage" stuff. In Les Misérables, they don't close the curtain, rotate the stage to reveal the barricade, then open the curtain again. They rotate it in full view of the audience. Other productions have either the cast or stagehands dressed in neutral clothing to move set pieces around. Heck, in Avenue Q and The Lion King musicals, they don't hide the puppeteers.
I saw a revival of Sweeney Todd with Patti LuPone. There were only 10 actors and they all took turns playing instruments. Patti was strutting around the stage playing the tuba when she wasn't playing Mrs. Lovett.
Broadway and Broadway audiences accept the lack of full verisimilitude, and happily suspend disbelief so that it's perfectly fine that a painted cardboard tree represents an actual tree. What's important is the acting and story-telling.
Back when Disney parks were good (
), there were breaks in lines of sights, there were garbage cans every 30 feet in the Old West, and a horde of 20th century guests milling about a medieval fantasy land. People knew to ignore certain things and fill in the blanks with others.Still, if the original DL was built today, you'd have people on the Internet complaining how fake it is because there are garbage cans and electric lights in the pre-industrial 'lands'. Sorta like demanding a ramp into a fully tourable Millennial Falcon, otherwise, it's all garbage!
This isn't an argument for 'not trying.' The BBB of Cosmic Rewind should have been hidden much better. But the standard of "never never never ever seeing BoH" is ridiculous. Broadway most certainly does not practice that. And it's broken every time one spots an emergency exit sign.
