Harold Prince & Susan Stroman to Direct THE PRINCE OF BROADWAY Revue - Page 2

[dreaming]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 10:36am

This is like "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" all over again. Yikes. Did we use up the royalties from all these shows?

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 10:41am

Maybe they can call it "Jerome Robbins' Harold Prince's Broadway."

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 12:00pm

Prince is a legend but he was a Producer and Director, how do you re-create that?
Fosse and Robbins had dances that could be done as before, if you do a Porter or Sondheim revue, you sing the songs. But how do you do Directing on stage?

[jv92]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 12:09pm

Yeah, It's a very odd concept. I'm looking forward to it very much, but I can't see how it'll work. I hope it does work though.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 1:59pm

I'm waiting for "Tharon Musser: A Little Light Music"

All her greatest lighting designs in a musical revue!

[uncageg]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 2:12pm

I would pay to see "Color & Light" (Musser and Aldridge) :)

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 4:31pm

Sort of sad to see all the greats reduced to Side by Side by Sondheim outings these days. Wish that all the Prince/ Stroman creative juices and producer money were focused on the creation of a brilliant NEW show instead.

Saw the Jerome Robbins fest in 1990 and yes, that night provided glorious chances for many of us to enjoy recreations of brilliant choreography from shows we were too young to see. But staging a series of perfect dance sequences is a very different animal than showing selections of Prince's direction: how do you convey a show's concept or character nuance in a concert format? Will they be rebuilding the great sets of Aronson, Eckhart and Lee to stage these scenes in?

What I wouldn't give to have Prince/Stroman put Kander and Ebb's The Visit on Broadway instead. (Prince's staging of the play back in 1974 was electrifying.)

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 5:06pm

"Wish that all the Prince/Stroman creative juices....were focused on the creation of a brilliant NEW show instead."

You mean like PARADISE LOST?

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 5:31pm

Remember I said "brilliant"...

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/21/11 at 6:39pm

While I loved Fosse simply because it gave me a chance to see many of my fave numbers (and many I didn't know) live, I agree that the staging should have had either some narration or lighted titles (yes they were in the program, but especially for some of the numbers that were a mix of things, it was a bit hard to figure out).

As others mentioned Jerome Robbins' Broadway also largely (And expensively) recreate the original designs. This would make even more sense in a Prince show--and I have zero hope they would ever do that, or could even afford to recreate a couple...

[BroadwayNorth2]

Posted: 10/17/11 at 1:45pm

More info came out today on the Broadway-bound revue "Prince of Broadway":

http://www.toronto.com/article/701332--new-hal-prince-musical-sparks-dancap-season

------------
"Prince has always been known as a man for whom theme comes before all else, so we asked him what he thought the message of this show would be.

“It culls from almost sixty years of working in the musical theatre and in particular, it addresses luck as a factor in anyone’s career.”

The veteran showman soft-shoed around the issue as to whether or not a specific actor would portray him (Jason Alexander, anyone?), but he would reveal that “I will be represented onstage using a variety of techniques, not just film.”

Perhaps the most delicious thing about the show is that it will include music from all of Prince’s major shows, which means that it will be the first stage show ever to feature songs by both Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber on the same stage at the same time.

Besides his numerous successes, Prince has also been the force behind shows that featured memorable material, even though they weren’t hits themselves, like A Doll’s Life and Parade.

“When we put together a list of all the songs from all the shows I produced,” he laughs, “it came to 55 single-spaced typed pages. We’ve chosen from the hits as well as the flops, but every song is a good one.” "
Updated On: 10/17/11 at 01:45 PM

[SondheimFan5]

Posted: 10/17/11 at 2:02pm

I really hope this will be good. I am very very curious...because Prince did not do a whole lot of musical staging, he often left it to the choreographer (especially in his early days).

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 10/17/11 at 3:09pm

Am I the only one who thought JEROME ROBBINS' BROADWAY was like the best high school production EVER!?

I really don't understand the point of retrospectives of director's work, much less a retrospective of a director/producer's work. Such Frankenstein's monsters don't have the automatic unity of a songwriter's retrospective (and even the latter should be done sparingly).

[somethingwicked]

Posted: 10/17/11 at 5:30pm

The veteran showman soft-shoed around the issue as to whether or not a specific actor would portray him (Jason Alexander, anyone?), but he would reveal that “I will be represented onstage using a variety of techniques, not just film.”

...so it's Hal Prince in the vein of SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM. Got it.

Updated On: 10/17/11 at 05:30 PM

[Tag]

Posted: 10/17/11 at 6:43pm

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/17/11 at 10:52pm

[Tom-497]

Posted: 11/5/11 at 12:51am

Sorry if this has already been mentioned and I somehow missed it, but an acquaintance told me that there seemed to be a decent chance that The Prince of Broadway would include one or more NEW Sondheim songs, and that Sondheim might be playing a bit of a collaborative role in some aspects of the production.

My internet searches haven't come up with anything in this regard, and I was just curious if anyone here had heard/read anything similar.

[best12bars]

Posted: 11/5/11 at 9:27am

The thing that seems so misguided about this is that it's a revue honoring Hal Prince but featuring none of his work on stage. It merely features numbers from shows he worked on. A "living resume" that isn't representational at all. Unless they are recreating the physical productions that he produced or his direction ... this doesn't make any sense to me.

"Here's a scaled-down, re-imagined number from a show I did 40 years ago! Yes, I did the original, but this isn't it! Hope you enjoy it!"

With Fosse and Robbins they recreated their staging. With Prince, what exactly are they recreating, except the titles of the shows? With new direction and choreography by Stroman?

Updated On: 11/5/11 at 09:27 AM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 11/5/11 at 8:09pm

That'swhat bugs me too--and if we are getting recreations of the original staging, wouldn't this be insanely expensive?

I get the complaints about Jerome Robbins' Broadway and Fosse but they DID allow us to see again some really incredible numbers, some, in both both shows, that have been little or completely un seen for a good while (which is why I wish the brief plan to film Jerome Robbins for TV had happened). As I've said in other posts, I do think Prince deserves a ton of credit for the shows he did--often times for their creation, but... I don't get how this will represent his genius on that level. And already I see it turning into some weird revue with a medley mixing the love songs of Phantom/Follies and Roza etc. Oy.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 11/9/11 at 11:54pm

So we now know it'll have a cast of twelve, and David Thompson is doing the book? hrmm... (Interesting Jerome Sirlin, who I think Prince only worked on with Spider Woman is doing the designs, which I guess means a lot of spectacular projections... )

[Tag]

Posted: 4/28/12 at 1:59am

Well the lead producer has pulled out of the production (according to this article, a few weeks ago due to “the uncertainty of obtaining the right theatre and the difficulty of raising funds in a limited window”).

Will this show go ahead?
Dancap Productions winding down, with no new shows in development

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 4/28/12 at 10:07am

I sure hope so.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/28/12 at 11:01am

This thread killed this show.

[Markecib]

Posted: 4/28/12 at 11:15am

I thought it was announced for the Broadhurst originally, or did they lose that when Rebecca announced they had their funding and opening?

[sundayclothes2]

Posted: 4/28/12 at 12:00pm

Sondheim once said that Hal Prince is very concerned about his legacy.
I guess that is why he is doing the show....