R.I.P. Hal Prince

[Jefforey Smith]

2017's PRINCE OF BROADWAY is a musical revue showcasing Harold Prince's producing career.

[OscarGuy]

Dan, I think the likes of Cameron Mackintosh might come close. He's close to legend now simply for his revival re-stagings.

I always was flummoxed by the hate for Merrily We Roll Along, it was a fascinating concept and I love the original cast album.

[danfrank]

Nice tribute, Tee. He was indeed a giant. I’ve been on a bit of a Sondheim listening binge lately, and was just this past weekend thinking of the great career of Hal Prince. I doubt that anyone will ever surpass his level of success.

[Okri]

Yeah. This hits.

[Mister Tee]

It's hard to find anyone who meant more to the America theatre in the second half of the 20th century. If you limit it to the musical theatre, the decision is even easier. Fosse, Robbins, Abbott all had significant impact -- often in Prince-produced shows -- but no one had the career-length or artistic footprint Prince did. As someone said on another site, they ought to dim Broadway lights for a month in his honor.

Consider: if he had never begun to direct, he'd be a Hall of Fame producer. The run he had in the decade-plus from the early 50s to mid 60s is unsurpassed: Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Fiorello!, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, culminating in Fiddler on the Roof. The only one of those shows not regularly revived is Fiorello! -- which I guess will have to content itself with its Pulitzer prize.

His directing career started modestly, with the minor success She Loves Me (a show whose shelf-life would surprise people who were around during its original run). He then stumbled a bit with the ambitious but not-fully-realized Baker Street and It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman. After that, though, came Cabaret, which can be seen as a turning point for the American musical -- Jerome Robbins had pointed musicals toward the concept show, but Prince here -- with his Brechtian framing device of the Kit Kat Club numbers -- pushed them over the threshold, winning his first Tony for his inspired direction. And if that weren't enough, his decade-long partnership with Stephen Sondheim marked him as the most innovative artist Broadway had seen since Williams and Miller had accomplished similar breakthroughs on the drama side twenty years earlier.

I've written here many times about how influential Company was in my life -- I still recall it as the most astonishing, I-never-could-have-dreamed-a-theatre-like-that evening I've ever spent on Broadway. That one show alone would have put the pair into the history books. But, of course, they followed it with one breakthrough show after another -- Follies, A Little Night Music, the revival of Candide (for which Sondheim drastically revised the lyrics), Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd. Sondheim's brilliant scores were matched in each case by the visionary staging Prince provided. So many moments in all these shows are burned into my memory: the young and old line of showgirls mirroring one another in Who's That Woman? in Follies, the Plexiglass panels moving aside to reveal the rolling lawn of the Armfeldt estate in Night Music, the quiet transition as one aging Samurai adapts to modern times -- while the other resolves to kill him -- in A Bowler Hat from Pacific Overtures.

Of course, no career is without its dips. Though Prince began the 80s with the triumph of Evita (dubious material, but impeccably staged), he and Sondheim came a cropper for the first time with Merrily We Roll Along (something in which a capable-of-jealousy theatre community took great glee), ending the partnership. He also failed to excite the community with flops like A Doll's House and Grind. But he rebounded spectacularly with the still-somehow-running Phantom -- I credit his stagecraft with much of that mediocre show's uncanny success. And,, then, in the 90s, he achieved his last true Broadway triumph with his revival of Show Boat. The second-act, years-passing montage was as great as anything Prince had achieved during his golden period.

So, yes: for the past 30 or so years, his triumphs have been fewer (though perhaps more conspicuous). But the man died today at 91, meaning those late triumphs came in years when most people are happily retired. Meantime his early, prime-years resume surpasses pretty much anyone who's ever worked in the American theatre.

So, a legend. A giant. One whose work has inspired anyone currently working in or aspiring to work in theatre. Not to be forgotten.

[anonymous1980]

Story.

For fans of Broadway and theater, this is a MAJOR, MAJOR loss. R.I.P.