Tour Review: 'Life of Pi'
Which is the better story?
Baltimore is the new Schenectady.
Let me explain.
For years, thanks to its proximity to New York City and a generous tax credit from the state of New York, the folks in Schenectady have been the first audiences treated to Broadway’s latest national tours. Just a few hours’ drive from Manhattan, casts and crews have moved from midtown rehearsal halls to the Proctors Theatre, where they rehearsed a show’s technical elements and treated local audiences to the first public preview performances. Just in recent memory, Frozen, Some Like It Hot, Company, and Waitress have launched in Schenectady, with Parade and Beauty and the Beast soon hitting the boards. For a long while, if you read a national tour press release, chances are it started with, ‘Performances will begin in Schenectady with additional cities to be announced at a later date.’
But Baltimore is right behind. After the passing of a similarly generous tax break bill, producers have used Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre to launch their tours of The Wiz, Peter Pan and & Juliet, with Water for Elephants and the new staging of The Phantom of the Opera coming soon.
Life of Pi, based on the bestselling book of the same name, is the latest production to launch in Baltimore, now playing at the Hippodrome through the end of the week before moving to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. for its next stop.