Hal Prince at 90: Working on 2 new musicals & knocks Broadway's 'temptation to copycat'

Hal Prince says musicals should be dangerous. And he adds that theater shouldn't compete with movies with special effects, and points out that his ''very minimalistic'' production of ''Phantom of the Opera'' has ''no projections and no fancy technology.''

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/apr/07/harold-prince-theatre-musicals-interview-at-90

Updated On: 4/7/18 at 03:20 PM

I think Mr. Prince's intentions with the minimalist comments are perfectly clear. I also think every single point he makes is perfectly clear, and just looking at the threads on this message board will tell you that.

Dewey4david said: "Hal Princes POTO really is minimalist if you think about it, it’s a decorated black box theatre."

Have you seen even seen the show? You couldn't be further from the truth.

Harold Prince has always been very good at provoking scenic suggestion, particularly when working with brilliant people, and Phantom is a good example of how he uses objects carefully organized in darkness to give the illusion of controlled maximalism. He has a really interesting way of managing your eye so you don't feel like you've taken in the entire set and now you've got nothing new to look at, because his spaces often have the sense of being perpetually partial and sort of obfuscated, pieces of a bigger whole - all these little vignettes here and there around these big, black spaces

What I'd really be curious is a comparison of the ledgers from back then to now.