South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Come on down to Coral Springs
To “The Price Is Right Live” and the chance to win prizes.
If the words Plinko, Cliffhangers and the Big Wheel make your heart skip a beat, then you might want to check out a live show cloned from “The Price is Right,” the popular television game show.
“The Price is Right Live” will play the Coral Springs Center for the Arts on April
4. Like the TV version’s iconic catch phrase, some audience members will be invited to “come on down” and play various games of chance to win prizes such as vacations, appliances and, yes, even a new car. But if you want to try your luck onstage, you need to register at the center three hours in advance of the 7:30 p.m. curtain.
“The Price is Right” as we know it today has been on television since
1972, although the DNA of the game show goes all the way back to a protoPrice is Right in 1956. That makes it the longest-running daytime game show in North America. Drew Carey currently hosts the TV version, having taken over from original host Bob Barker in
2007.
What will happen during the stage show?
The stage show coming to
South Florida also has a wellknown host in Todd Newton, who has over the course of his career awarded contestants around $50 million in cash and prizes on TV shows such as “Friday Game Night,” “Hollywood Showdown,” “Whammy!,” “Instant Millionaire” and “Monopoly Millionaire’s Club.”
In a telephone interview Newton explains the show: “We are a live, traveling production of one of America’s most iconic television shows. There’s no camera, no commercial breaks. The similarities of the touring show and the television show are endless. The differences are very few. Every night you get to give out cash and vacations, a new car, kitchen appliances — we have it all.”
Newton says the same producers of the TV show are behind the touring version. Some of the crew and even the set designers are the same. But he says the crowds are very different.
“No two audiences are the same, so no two shows are the same,” Newton says. “This is a live show, so I tell people anything can happen, and it often does. I’ve probably been picked up and spun around and given big hugs more than any one host. I get a lot of that game show love.”
Why a road-company version?
“I was here from the very first show,” Newton says. “We started the show in a tiny little theater in Reno, Nevada. This show was created by Bob Barker for ‘The Price is Right’ fans who could never get out
to Hollywood. He wanted to bring a little bit of Hollywood to North America. And Bob was my gameshow mentor, so I am incredibly grateful and honored to be able to say that. I mean, 47 years on television and almost 15 years on the road now — it’s almost something unheard of in the entertainment industry.”
Newton adds, “There are people who have been waiting 40 years for their opportunity to play Plinko or spin the Big Wheel. I like to host the show … because you see the show through the eyes of the contestants. It’s like when you have children and you see Christmas and birthdays through the eyes of a child. It’s exciting and fresh again.”
The tour is in the spring, usually through the end of April, before starting a second cycle in the fall.
“Last night [in Jackson, Mississippi] we gave a wonderful vacation to a woman in the show who said she hasn’t been able to take a trip in 30 years. I love seeing that.”
If you go
“The Price is Right Live” starts at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday at the Coral Springs Center for the Arts, 2855 Coral Springs Drive. Tickets are $43.87 and $54.57. To order, call 954-344-5990 or go to TheCenterCS.com.