Hal Prince's Flops

Eric:

You might wish to read his book in which he discusses these shows.

I thought all the shows you mentioned were bad. The musicals "A Doll's Life," "Roza," and "Grind" may have sounded like good ideas on paper, but they failed when put on the stage. I thought the score for "A Doll's Life" had a few excellent songs, however. As for Prince's staging of these musicals, they all suffered from a certain heavy-handedness.

As for the plays, "Some of My Best Friends" was terrible, and "Play Memory" and "End of the World" just not good. You can add "Hollywood Arms" to this list, though it was better than the other three.

Updated On: 11/16/09 at 10:42 AM

I saw Roza and rather liked it -- Georgia Brown was really fantastic. One of the posters indicated something to the effect of relistening to it recently. I'm sure it never had a commerical recording -- is there a demo or something like that?

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Some of My Best Friends; Good God, I was at the opening because a friend was a production assistant on it. She said it read a lot better than it played. Some plays are like that. I told someone who had a little money it it that it was the kind of show that would close on Sunday and the following day the business would wake up and not even remember it. It was the sort of flop that no one would get professionally hurt.

I do remember poor Ted Knight smiling to beat the band at the final curtain call, but with the most gritted teeth I have ever seen on stage. Poor guy. His jaw probably went into spasm.

It was an expensive show too. There were a lot of roles and the actors playing them didn't come cheap.

End of the World (With Symposium to Follow) which was the full title, at least had Linda Hunt fresh off her Oscar win in a funny performance. Note: there were audience members who stayed in their seats after the show waiting for the symposium which never existed.

Play Memory was not bad, but it wasn't any good either. There was no imperative about it. It was a late season entry that somebody scraped together the money to bring it in from a regional run in Princeton. The woman who was Tony nominated (name?) died tragically within a few years in a car crash.

Grind was a great, big over-amplified, over-designed show with a familiar script and songs that the sound system homogenized. It didn't come together. Talented people on stage though.

Roza was fun, but there wasn't anything that 'had to be seen' in it.

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"I'm sure it never had a commerical recording -- is there a demo or something like that?"

I'd be interested to know if there was a recording of Roza too.

Youtube has an amusing tv commercial for Roza. I know one book called the score "europop" which has always made me wanna hear it-- It sounds like an interesting script that maybe got too preachy with its message near the end?

I agree with the poor Grossman sentiment--I think he has talent (maybe partly as I grew up with the animated Snoopy The Musical, a score I MUCH prefer to YAGMCB). I even liked his fairly recent song for the direct to DVD mess Pocahontas 2 (but it seems Disney has started hiring Tesori to crank out their tunes for such projects rather than him--though I guess thankfully they quit that line of projects altogether).

I'll have to track down Doll's Life and Grind recordings--if they're easy-ish to find. Doll's Life at least LOOKS gorgeous in the pics I've seen--Grind looks kinda like a mess (one muddled in my mind with Big Deal though I've managed to "see" Big Deal and at least enjoyed large chunks of that).

I guess my original question was what made Hal choose these plays? Was he just floundering post Sondheim? I wonder if he kicked himself after all for not doing Cats (not that a Prince Cats would make any sense to me).

Some of My Best Friends had no relation to the gay cult classic 1971 film does it? (That film was set in a gay bar on Christmas Eve I suppose--it's even more of an "angry tragic gay" picture than Boys in the Band and has a wonderful Rue McClanahan performance lol)

What did you think of Cabaret (original or revival) Zorba, or later Spider Woman? Or his first film, Something for Everyone (which I think is better directed than ALNM movie though the direction is the weakest element of a great Kander score, great Wheeler script and a great cast--then again I'm an ALNM movie defender, so...)

I do think Prince's production for Phantom is the best thing about Phantom, though I haven't seen it in ages (and probably won't in ages) so...

Merrily definitely suffered from the get go with its concept (I still find it weird how Sondheim, Furth and Prince seemed to think they were making a supremely youthful, hopeful and optimistic show not realizing just how depressing the material was).

However, finally seeing a high quality of the Prince televised production of Pacific Overtures, and not just the fuzzy bootleg, I do think the staging is genius. A big chunk of this is Aronson's amazing designs, of course...

I do agree that Prince has never found someone he meshed with as well as Aronson (it's too bad too, that we didn't get mor work with Bennett but of course that worked out fine for Bennett--though I do think Ron Field's work on Cabaret is exquisite (firing Field from Merrily seemed to be a mistake as fromall I've read, his work wasn't part of the problem)

I find Pacific Overtures very involving--but I think that's largely because before I saw a good copy of it (ie one that didn't give me a headache after 20 minutes of watching) i had had 15 years to fall in love with the score, read the script, etc. I have no idea what I would have thought seeing it live back when.

I've also managed to "see" the Cabaret revival and I admit it's mainly interesting to me for the museum piece qualities--to see even a watered down recreation of that iconic staging is exciting enough for me as a theatre geek. So it's hardly an accurate way for me to judge it.

I actually had assumed that Prince wasn't involved in Kiss before Livent and crew got their hands on it and largely re-conceived it. It sounds like he really had the wrong concept for it. But I did see his final production on tour with Chita and was pretty blown away (though I was 13 at the time and it was maybe the fourth major show I had seen in my life--after Phantom, Miz and Grand Hotel which I think was an even more stunning production with far lesser material).

The only other two Prince shows I saw were Show Boat, the Vancouver Livent staging (which I thought was as near perfect as I could want a Show Boat to be--though once again I have to emphasize I was pretty young and "new" to seeing big live productions) and the slightly scaled down tour of Parade he did which I found an often striking production but somewhat uninvolving--something I have chalked up more to my reaction to the score and book but maybe Prince is to blame as well.

Sorry PJ if it sounds like I'm arguing your points--I'm not, I just find your opinion on this fascinating and wonder if I agree or not that it really depends on his collaborators.

I do find it interesting that in as much as one can see a clear progression from his early concept musicals--Cabaret and Zorba and then after Zorba it's almost like he kept Aronson and some of his ideas for shows, but replaced Kander and Ebb with Sondheim and Field with Bennett (probably wisely although I think all three's work on Cabaret and Zorba were wonderful)

OH I also saw the anniversary tour of Evita which he remounted himself--and I found the staging spectacular, though it almost eclipsed the so so cast I saw.

Updated On: 11/16/09 at 11:50 PM

I actually think the changes he made to Show Boat's scripts and elements he took from various productions were close to ingenious--but it may have helped that I was in a production around the time that used the lumbering 1940s revival script just before.

Eric I think Doll's Life is realatively easy to obtain. I certainly have a copy I got a couple of yrs ago @ Footlights.

I saw Kiss of the Spiderwoman 4 times in London. I consider it to be one of Prince's best works- up there with Evita.

Maybe his high flop rate is to do with taking a gamble- willing to risk being wrong. What he did with Evita and Phantom really took questionable material and created credible, even masterful, theatre. Maybe he was trying that with the likes of Roza but just didn't quite get there.

Prince directed a very successful production of Turandot for the Vienna State Opera in the early 80s.

Updated On: 11/17/09 at 10:19 AM

WOSQ--interesting theory. It would explain why (Kiss, and arguably Show Boat aside) he has stepped away from dance (his early shows being quite dance heavy)--although of course many classic operas do have ballet elements.

I'll ignore your comments about Zorba just because I have a soft spot for it and have loved everything I've seen and read of the Prince production (which was dance heavy--and had awesome Aronson designs), but I think your description is right and, along with the designers, I agree with you re Evita and Phantom.

While I think I what you mean--would you care to explain what for you is the difference between opera/operetta and musical theatre staging?

It's interesting that in some ways Sondheim has moved into more of an opera (or chamber opera) element post Prince(again far less dance, etc) yet when they teamed back up together, for Bounce, Prince seemed to be trying hard to do a classic musical comedy, which didn't work.