Actors' unions urge 'Music Man' boycott

"You got trouble, right here in River City," the con man Harold Hill warns an Iowa town in "The Music Man." The 21-city national tour of a hit Broadway revival of that musical may also find trouble in Iowa, when it opens there this fall with a non-union cast.

Actors Equity Association, the national stage actors' union, last week called for a boycott of the tour, which will open Oct. 2 in Des Moines and is set to play Seattle's Paramount Theatre in June 2002. Equity and its sister unions, the Screen Actors' Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), are telling members not to appear in the show and planning protests.

"We'll do something special in Seattle because we have strong union support there, and about 500 Equity members in the area," said David Lotz, Equity's national communications director.

Despite the boycott, the show will go on at the Paramount. "A lot of cities really want `The Music Man,' " said Drew Murphy, who runs the "Broadway in Seattle at the Paramount" subscription series for Clear Channel Entertainment.

"We didn't have a choice of an Equity or non-Equity show. But we were assured this would be a quality production, a copy of the New York show with Susan Stroman's direction and choreography."

Reached in New York, Stroman said, "They're renting my (staging and) choreography for the tour. I'm not directly involved in it."

"The Music Man" revival is a concern for Equity because it's the first time in a decade a Broadway hit has had its initial tour with a non-union cast. (A non-union "Annie," at the Paramount last year, was not a direct Broadway spinoff. However, the American Federation of Musicians union protested its use of pre-recorded music.)

The new "Music Man" tour is being mounted by Big League Theatricals, which specializes in non-union, no-stars, "bus and truck" productions — but usually of musicals on their second or third post-Broadway jaunt.

Lotz said Equity asked Big League Theatricals to consider a "low guarantee tour" for "Music Man." This type of contract (which applies to a "Guys and Dolls" tour headed for the Paramount) pays union actors negotiated wages below the standard Equity minimum of $1,252 per week, plus per diem. (Actors in non-Equity tours typically receive far less.) But no agreement was reached.

Meanwhile, "The Music Man" is doing good business on Broadway, with an all-union cast led by Robert Sean Leonard.

Misha Berson may be reached at: mberson@seattletimes.com.