Though I Didn’t Get to “Come on Down,” seeing the “Price is Right Live Stage Show” in Atlantic City this week was a remarkable experience. The mini-trip to see the show was my wonderful wife’s idea, and since she’s hardly a game show fan, that alone is a sacrifice. We had tickets for the show on our first night in town, and it was fascinating to see how they reproduced the television version for a stage show.
The scaled-down set was a faithful interpretation of the TV version, adapted for the venue, right down to having a version of the “turntable” on stage right. The pricing games they played during our performance looked nearly identical to their Bob Barker Studio counterparts. The first player to get to the stage played Race Game, and it was authentic down to the models’ poses as the announcer introduced the prizes. Other games included Hole in One—or Two (complete with the push button to reveal the “or Two” sign, Cliff Hangers (and, yes, they had the yodeling music), Clock Game (speaking of that turntable) and It’s in the Bag (played for smaller denominations, of course).
There are, as one would expect, minor differences in the rules when adapting the TV show for the stage. Four new audience members are called to Contestants’ Row before each pricing game (of which there are five instead of six). The “Big Wheel” is played midway through the show, but with three players called from the audience, not as a showcase showdown. The winner (as always, closest to $1 without going over) pockets $250, and anyone scoring $1 in one spin or a combination of two gets $100 extra, with a bonus spin worth $1000 (not $10 grand) if they hit the dollar.
The showcase also involves two players called from the audience, not the top winners (making it more fun for more people to have a chance to win). In this version, there’s one showcase that both players bid on, and it’s a prize package on par with the television version. For our show, it included a washer and dryer combo, vacuum, gift certificate for dinner at a hotel restaurant….and a Jeep Liberty. Since it would be rather cost-prohibitive to be giving away cars left and right on a stage show, there’s a catch: the contestant closest to the package value without going over wins one prize (on our night, the washer & dryer), but if they’re the winner and less than $100 away from the actual retail price (sound familiar TPiR fans?), they win the whole showcase, car included.
I’ve read various message board posts and blogs suggesting CBS and “Price” producers are using the various stage show versions running around the country as a sort of audition process for potential hosts when Bob Barker retires. I have no way of knowing if that’s true or just the game show fan universe’s version of a conspiracy theory, but if there’s any validity to the claim, Todd Newton, host of the show we saw, should earn some serious consideration. I can’t pass any judgment on other hosts who are working the show, so this isn’t a comparative assessment, but Newton looked completely at home running Price’s carnival-like atmosphere. Having seen his work on shows like “Whammy” and “Hollywood Showdown,” it hardly comes as a surprise—he’s a veteran of game shows among other formats, and it shows. Seeing how well he did on a live version, with no edits and no re-takes, there’s no doubt in my mind he could take the reins of the TV version.
That said, I’d still argue that when the time comes to make a change to the daytime version (and let’s be honest, it’s not that many years in the future), they could look to the 1994 syndicated version for inspiration on how to modernize the set while still maintaining the unmistakable design. Frankly, I would say Doug Davidson, host of the ’94 show also could do an admirable job hosting just as he did back then. Parallels can be drawn to the “Tonight Show,” as it has changed hands over the years. Subsequent hosts can place their own stamp on the look and feel, while the show maintains its tried-and-true formula. To simply place any new host behind the big doors on Price is to invite the “But that’s not how Bob did it,” comparisons, and no one can be the next Bob Barker. They need to have some freedom to try to make the show their own.
One other observation about the stage show: the interaction between Todd Newton and announcer Randy West clearly demonstrated that Freemantle, owners of “Price” made a mistake after Rod Roddy passed away by minimizing the role the announcer can play in the show. New announcer Rich Field has a great voice, and I wonder how much we’re missing by not including more interplay between him and Bob Barker. Some of the showcases with Johnny Olsen and, later, Roddy, provided the funniest moments on “Price,” and they’re noticeably missed. On the stage show, West fired off some of the great lines of the night, even cracking up Newton on a few occasions. That kind of dynamic would add a little something extra to the TV version.
Finally, no discussion of a rendition of “Price” would be complete without some mention of the classic prize accouterments, the models. The stage show version included two, and much like the current TV version, they’re silent parts of the set decoration (unlike the days when Holly, Janice and Dian would chip in to be part of the proceedings). As comical as it seems at times to have someone waving in Miss America-like poses at a DVD player, it’s part of the “Price” experience.
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Not part of the usual "Price" experience though was what some would call a wardrobe malfunction of sorts, though the male half of the audience probably felt it worked just fine. The intense, bright white stage lights and skin-tight white tank tops combined to reveal a couple of additional "prizes" on one of the lovely models. Hey, I wasn't complaining!
Kudos to the creators of this exciting, entertaining and engaging show. I would have thought it would be hard to make a stage show as much fun as the “real deal,” but they did it.
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