SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, March 21, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — If you’re looking for a show this spring that’s not just big, but huge, “Pretty Woman: The Musical” might be right up your alley.
The production comes to Salt Lake City as part of the current national tour, and will play at the Eccles Theater downtown from Tuesday, April 2 to Sunday, April 7. Tickets and more information are available here.
“Pretty Woman: The Musical,” based on one of Hollywood’s most beloved romantic stories of all time, has been brought to life by a powerhouse creative team led by two-time Tony Award®-winning director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, whose previous work includes “Hairspray,” “Kinky Boots,” and “Legally Blonde.”
The musical features an original score by Grammy® winner Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, who are long-time writing partners, and a book by the movie’s legendary director Garry Marshall and screenwriter J. F. Lawton. Featured in the show is Roy Orbison and Bill Dee’s international smash hit song “Oh, Pretty Woman,” which inspired beloved 1990 rom com.
The original production of the musical premiered at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago in March 2018. It made its Broadway debut at the Nederlander Theatre in July 2018 and closed a year later. It opened in the West End in March 2020, then had to close due to COVID, reopening in July 2021. The show closed in London in June 2023. This present tour kicked off in October 2023 in New York, starring Ellie Baker as Vivian Ward and Chase Wolfe as Edward Lewis. It’s due to close in May of this year in Pennsylvania.
Gephardt Daily spoke with Channing Weir, who is making her national tour debut as a swing, understudying for both Vivian Ward and her friend Kit De Luca. A swing refers to a member of the company who understudies several roles. Weir, who was raised in Florida and has a BFA in musical theater from Brigham Young University, was previously a swing for the Norwegian Cruise Lines Breakaway production of “Six,” covering Anne Boleyn, Anna of Cleves, and Katherine Howard. She has been seen in “Footloose” at the REV Theatre Company in upstate New York, and in Utah at the Hale Center Theatre as the wife in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” in 2017. She’s also worked on Norwegian and Viking Cruise Lines.
We spoke to Weir by phone from Syracuse, New York, the tour stop before Salt Lake City.
We asked her what her time at BYU was like and how that training prepared her for a professional career.
“It was great,” she said. “BYU has an incredible dance theater program and we pump out a lot of Broadway actors, a lot of people on tour, a lot of people working, so it’s a great program.”
She also spoke about her time on cruise ships. “I did a few cruise contracts, I did one; I took a gap year, that was before I went to BYU. I went to my first university, University of Northern Colorado, and took a gap year to do my first cruise contract. And then after I graduated, I did my second one, because cruise jobs are one of the most stable income earning jobs that a professional performer can get. Because unless you do a show or a season like Tuacahn, which is about like five to six months, or a big long national tour or a sit down production in some place like New York City, no job lasts longer than a couple of months, then you have to find a new job. And so, cruise performance, depending on the line that you work with the company, the show can be seven months, sometimes a full year or more of work, of a consistent paycheck; which people forget; this is our full time job. I’ve met and worked with some of the most impeccable talented performers of my life of my career working on cruise ships.”
We also asked what Weir learned on cruise ships about being a full-time, working performer.
“You have to build up the stamina,” she said. “And the best part about working on ships is you do have the ability to travel and your house goes with you. It kind of it pushes you into OK, this is my job, how do I pace myself? How do I spend my day to prepare to do my show at night? Because when you’re performing in college sometimes, I mean sometimes the schedule is more rigorous in college because you’re also doing classes and other performances, workshops, after class things as well as potentially being in shows. I know some students are always in things at one of the Hales. I did something at the Hale during the summer when I was at BYU; the Hale Sandy, I did it in the old building right before they moved to the new big thing, ‘cos then I graduated.”
We also asked her what the audition process for “Pretty Woman: the Musical” was like, and how the tour is so far.
“So for me specifically, I was always being looked at for a swing track; I’m kind of a career swing, which is; my brain works where I can successfully and accurately cover multiple tracks at a time,” she said. “Currently with ‘Pretty Woman,’ I’m a swing and I also understudy the female lead. So I know all nine female tracks that are on stage; those are in my brain at all times. And I have to be able to perform any one of the nine tracks, including the two females, at any point in time. I’m actually going in for Vivian, for the lead tonight [March 20], here in Syracuse. I’ve done her a bunch of times, I’ve done Kit De Luca a bunch of times, I’ve done basically all the ensemble females.”
Weir does not appear in the ensemble every night, but she has to be prepared to step in for any one of those nine tracks.
“I have no idea what my day looks like every day,” she explained. “It absolutely depends; the one that I have today, I was notified last night because our leading actress Ellie Baker, who’s a fantastic human being and a fantastic actress, she started feeling unwell during our night show last night. She went to stage management and said hey, just to prepare you and to prepare Channing, I will probably be calling out and not doing tomorrow’s show. I’ll let you know in the morning if after a night’s sleep I feel better, so I got warning last night. But a few months ago when we were in California I was notified 25 minutes to the top of show I was going in for Vivian, so it varies. As a swing you can also be put in in the middle of a show.”
We asked her if that has happened to her before.
“I’ve done it in previous contracts. We’ve had two mid-show swing-ins for this contract so far, because there’s four swings, two male presenting and two female presenting swings in our little team,” she said. “And so for this contract, I have not been the one to do the mid-show swing on, but we’ve had it a couple of times, but I have done it in the past. Yeah, so we are there but we are always working, because I don’t know if I’m gonna have to sing my face off at the end of the day. So I have to live my life as if I have to be thrown in without a without a proper warm up, without anything.”
We asked her how she manages catching some downtime on tour with the need to be alert and ready to go on at all times.
“Swings are always hyper alert,” Weir said. “The best part about being a part of the performance industry, especially now, post-COVID, as someone like me who’s kind of a career swing, because my brain functions that way, we’re getting represented a little bit more. We’re getting acknowledged a little bit more; because they’ve always existed, swings have always been there. But it wasn’t until the pandemic and after that the audience members actually got to kind of see how important we are and what we do. Because I wake up every day, I have to take ultra care of my body, I have to take ultra care of my voice. I have to take ultra care with what I do during my day because you are the last line of defense and we are hired to do the job, kind of because we are one of the best at the job.
“Because even during the rehearsal process, we don’t get the amount of time that the actors that we share the roles with get, we don’t get the amount of personal time, we don’t get the amount of information, we don’t get the opportunity to do it on its feet over and over again, go through it properly, any of that. When I debuted in ‘Pretty Woman’ it was as Kit De Luca, one of the friends, and I got 30 minutes of rehearsal onstage, same with when I debuted as Vivian, I got 30 minutes on stage to run a couple of things mostly for safety. We do have a couple of moments that we have to be very safety conscious, so a good lot of those 30 minutes are spent making sure no one gets injured, no one gets hurt. We know that we can climb up and down off of a set piece safely in high heels, like all of those things. And that’s not something that the actors we share these roles with have to worry about.”
Because the show is touring, the company is also experiencing a different theater each week; and in some instances, the tour stops in a location for just one show.
“Completely different theater, completely different backstage, sometimes we have set pieces that are not being used in the show,” she said. “Sometimes we have different traffic patterns that have to be maintained. So the swings have to learn all of that and do that and have to know it without walking it every day. I got a text where I almost did a mid-show swing, where I was sitting in the audience actually watching the show, because periodically we sit and watch just to kind of maintain and see what’s going on. And I got a text from my stage manager that said: ‘meet me stage left right now,’ and I had to go through the back around, and they said: ‘we have an actor that is currently ill, we don’t know; she hasn’t confirmed whether or not she’s going to continue on after this one number. We need you to get upstairs and start getting into wig prep in the middle of the show.’ She rallied, and it was towards the end of the show anyway, but no matter, we have to be ready. So I was upstairs getting my hair ready to go into a wig as quickly as possible. We always have to be there because that does happen frequently.”
We also asked Weir if she’s likely to take another job as a swing after the tour ends in May, or whether it just depends on what auditions come up.
“It sort of depends on what happens, when it comes to long contracts,” she said. “I do love swinging and understudying; my contract before I did this, I did ‘Six’ the musical, and I covered three queens and was dance captain and that was an incredible experience, and now coming here and being able to cover all nine. I’ve done a lot of swinging and understudying in my career and I do enjoy it, but it does depend on what the job is and also how the pieces fit together. As far as where casting sees… what are the director needs type of type of thing, because to be a swing or an understudy, especially someone in my track that covers all nine and the two females, it’s not something that everyone can do. And so as a professional actor, you have to realize, you have to have your own personal: ‘but I want to do this and I don’t want to do this’ to figure out where you fit. I’m very aware that I’m good at my job. I’m good and it’s a unique skill that swings and understudies have that needs to be celebrated from the audience perspective, and from the cast perspective and from rehearsal perspective; celebrate the fact that I am a unique performer that can do all of these things.”
Weir said that while she doesn’t have family in Utah, her college friends will be coming to see the show here.
For more information on Weir click here, and for more information on “Pretty Woman: The Musical,” click here.
