Hal Prince Interview

[mlsheehan]

Posted: 5/29/06 at 4:27pm

Interesting interview article in the Las Vegas Review Journal with Hal Prince. Mr. Prince is preparing for the preview performances of the shortened Phantom of the Opera.

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"..."I'm here because it's interesting to me still," he says of his reasons for revisiting Broadway's longest-running title, one that has grossed $3.2 billion worldwide. The new version begins ticketed previews at The Venetian June 12.

" "I get bored with theater just like anybody else. Probably sooner than most," he says. "So the idea is, 'How do I entertain me?'"


"...Moreover, "All you do is read about Las Vegas," he says. "So you say to yourself, 'Nobody remembers that I actually went to Las Vegas and actually worked in the '50s. Nobody remembers any of that.' So guess what? I'll go back to the new Las Vegas and work again."

"Prince's first producer's credit was for "The Pajama Game," and he steered an abridged version of it to Las Vegas within a few years of its 1954 Broadway debut. He followed it in 1955 with another hit, "Damn Yankees." When that title opened at the Riviera in October 1957, it was advertised with a line drawing of a buxom blonde in a bikini....

" "One thing that wasn't true when I started in the theater," he adds, "You didn't create a show for the audience, you created it for yourself." Titles such as "West Side Story" were slow to catch on with audiences because they were so different.

" "There's a kind of pendulum out there. You get a saturation point and then the pendulum swings somewhere else," he says, adding, "People are smart. If I get bored with the same thing, audiences get bored with the same thing."

"People often tell him, "There's something about your shows when they first open, I feel something I haven't felt since I was a little kid."

" "That's nice," he says, "because there is a kid inside of most people that you want to know. And that kid's there always." But if they want to tell him the night of the Tonys on June 11, they will have to come to Las Vegas. He has a show launching the next day."

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Full text of LVRJ article

[EponineAmneris]

Posted: 5/29/06 at 4:28pm

Hal is brilliant. Thanks for the link! One day I hope to see PHANTOM out there in Sin City.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 5/29/06 at 5:12pm

He is brilliant because he absolutely loves the theatre.

I have done a couple of interviews with him over the years and he still has that child-like wonder balanced by the wisdom gained from 50+ years of doing what he loves doing.