Chances are these days, it's partly live and it's partly pre-recorded music.

We've all heard about the showdown between the Musician's Union and Radio City Music Hall (I believe it is still unresolved as I write this) so in the meantime the Rockettes are rockin' out to taped music. Gee, how exciting! But even when it comes to Actors Equity there is pressure to use pre-recorded vocals.

My insider source was telling me about a committee at Actors Equity which is constantly being bombarded with requests from productions to use a little or a lot of pre-recorded vocals. Pit singers used to be used a lot (i.e. in Cats) where they have live singers in the pit augmenting the vocals of dancers.

But extra people cost extra money, so ususally Actors Equity are presented with a laundry list of requests to use tracks. Equity then whittles it down until they have to give in to just a couple, or else submit the whole thing to arbitration and then that opens the floodgates. So they give in on a couple of items. On Woman in White, Equity reluctantly agreed to let them use pre-recorded vocals during two scenes -- the nightmare scene and the wedding scene. My source described the reasons to me and quite frankly, as an audience member, I didn't really notice the effect, and I don't understand why they can't just use the superb live ensemble that they have and re-work the staging slightly to get this "essential" desired effect...

Or, God forbid, hire more actors. But who knows, maybe everyone else in the audience was thinking "hey, I'm really glad they used pre-recorded vocals there".

Apparently there is a spot in Sweet Charity where they used pre-recorded vocals too.

Tsk, tsk. As Danny Kaye sang, "The theatuh, the theatuh, what's happened to the theatuh?

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