April 22, 2005
'Sweet Charity,' 'Spamalot' dialogue contains ads
Paid-product placement has seeped not only on the Broadway stage, but actually into the actors' mouths in "Sweet Charity" and "Spamalot", the New York Times reports. In 1966, when the Neil Simon musical "Sweet Charity" opened on Broadway, a waiter in one scene asked a customer, "A double Scotch, again, sir?" In the revival, soon to open at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, the waiter asks, "Gran Centenario, the tequila?" The line was changed with Simon's permission, the Times reports.
In "Spamalot" -- sponsored by Spam canned meat and the Yahoo! search engine -- "a character says 'Yahoo' (minus the yodel) and the company appears as a make-believe sponsor of an on-stage routine." Previously, advertisements were limited to tactics such as "placing products onstage in exchange for acknowledgements in tiny type under the 'Credits' section in the back pages of Playbill." The paper said the promotions can land a play $500,000 to more than $1 million.
April 22, 2005 08:43 AM in Broadway
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