Tickets for '42nd Street' going fast

Bad wiring, bruises, strained ligaments: All of these things have added to the challenge of bringing "42nd Street" to the Rose Theatre stage.

Despite those challenges, director Dr. Kenn Stilson said the show will be ready to please audiences when it begins Friday.

"The audience is going to love it," Stilson said Tuesday night, just before the first dress rehearsal. "We've got a lot of work to do in the next 72 hours, but it's where it's supposed to be."

Stilson and company will have a large audience for opening night. Southeast performing arts marketing manager Perrey Lee said Wednesday afternoon that only nine tickets were still available for Friday's opening night, and 50 for Saturday. The rest of the performances have about 200 seats left each, but they're going fast, Lee said.

Monday was a record-breaker in terms of single-day sales for the box office, Lee said. That day $2,500 in tickets were sold, beating the previous record of $1,200. Campus phones and Internet were temporarily disabled in two separate incidents recently, but the box office still took ticket orders. When the Internet was down, orders flooded the phones. When the phones were down, Lee fielded calls on her cell phone.

"There was no stopping it," Lee said of the orders that continued to pour in.

-- Matt Sanders