Harold Prince - 1928-2019

[bostonman]

I am so sad to report that one of the most giant giants in the world of musical theatre, Harold Prince, left us today.

 

I met him several years ago. Great and gracious man. Left us an indispensable legacy and really changed the shape of where musicals would go. One of my heroes. May he rest in very deserved peace.

 

I may write more later, but for now, here's the NY Times obit.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/theater/hal-prince-dead.html

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

And to think that ALW almost didn't hire Prince to work on Phantom of the Opera.

 

While I don't love the show, his direction of it has clearly stood the test of time. That's damned impressive.

[+ ProGay]

Harold Prince, Producer & Director of Cabaret (1966):

 

"Prince's staging was unusual for the time. As the audience filled the theater, the curtain was already up, revealing a stage containing only a large mirror reflecting the auditorium."

[bostonman]

As a boy in my mid-teens (in the late 1970's), still a bit more of a classical/opera nerd lol, I discovered Company, the first of the Sondheim/Prince collaborations, and that's one of those shows that I feel really changed my life lol - or at least really perked my interest in musical theatre. At this time, Sweeney Todd was on Broadway, and I soon fell in love with that score as well as A Little Night Music and Follies (Pacific Overtures would follow soon after). Certainly Sondheim was the focus of my new-found love for musicals, but without Prince, none of those shows would have been, or at least would have been what they were.

 

I'm not a huge Phantom lover either, but I do think that Prince successfully captured the mysterious/fantastical world that the story (and that ALW's music) demanded, and really made the show better than it's score. His contribution to that show is immeasurable.

 

He also really saved Evita, IMO - taking the rather fragmented Webber/Rice concept album and really finding a way to make it work creditably onstage. Evita's look was as spare as Phantom's was opulent, but both were distinctive, inventive physicalizations of the material that have become iconic.

 

BTW - Sondheim envisioned Sweeney as being a much more small-scale production (as it has been done since, albeit with too much fussy silly konzept-ishness, by John Doyle), but Prince had a large-scale vision for the production (along with, I believe, the ideas surrounding the Industrial Revolution and the British class system), and I'm glad they went with that. Like many shows, Sweeney can be done in many ways, but that original production also feels iconic to me.

[bostonman]

Harold Prince, Producer & Director of Cabaret (1966):

 

"Prince's staging was unusual for the time. As the audience filled the theater, the curtain was already up, revealing a stage containing only a large mirror reflecting the auditorium."

 

And, although Fosse's film version of the show was very different in many ways, he kept that mirror concept. It was, in both cases, also a warped mirror, so the images the audience saw in the theatre, and the images we see in the film, were distorted.

[+ ProGay]

Farewell, Mr. Prince!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzBTqLy7gkY

[edjames]

A true legend has left the stage. May he rest in peace. He will always be remembered.