Hi, Sherry:
I would be delighted to have you in our orchestra pit -- but we don't have one!
Unfortunately, our theatre is really too small to allow any live music bigger than one or two musicians, so we rely, as in this case, mainly on pre-recorded stuff.
We've used 5-7 piece orchestras for a couple of shows, but at the expense of much onstage space and most of our wing-space. We do have a 3-manual WurliTzer concert organ that we have hauled out and used a couple of times, notably for our adaptation of Charles Dickens's The Chimes, which is all organ and chime music.
While not as "live", at least pre-recorded music is predictable.
And, thanks for your comments on the piece. I'm not sure how a paying audience will react to it -- modality is not as common in show tunes as it once was (say, 2,400 years ago.)
D