Most important Director/Writer collaborations?- Page 2

Posted: 10/30/11 at 7:51pm

Joshua Logan was another earlier director who was known to help write and shape his plays (including South Pacific, Picnic, Mr Roberts). It's too bad he was such a ham fisted, literal movie director, and I feel ruined the movies of plays he apparently helped make great on stage--including those very three, but...

[SondheimFan5]

Posted: 10/30/11 at 9:53pm

I agree---Prince was/is a wonder when it came to choosing a strong creative staff and cast (partly due to Joanna Merlin). He really always had the dream team for all his shows. This really made up for the fact that he is really not an actors' director (and he admits that about himself). Unlike people like Arthur Laurents, he won't sit down for hours on end and discuss the characters and script, he leaves that up to the actors and then stages and supervises the production.

On COMPANY, Sondheim would not write a note/word of the score until he had seen Boris Aronson's completed set model which had been approved by Michael Bennett and Hal Prince.

Prince also allowed Sondheim to write some more "obscure" (for lack of a better word) shows---Prince has been quoted as saying that they did PACIFIC OVERTURES for artistic reasons; they knew that they wouldn't recoup their investment unless there was an act of God, and he was OK with that. His productions of Sondheim's shows were spectacular even though none of them turned a profit. (Correct me if I'm wrong---I know Follies, Night Music, and Pacific Overtures lost their complete investment and Sweeney only recouped 1/2 its investment).

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

You're right that he isn't an actor's director (something which may have been one, of a myriad, of issues with Merrily and its inexperienced cast), but has a brilliant theatrical instinct--even if he has had more than his share of "WTF were they thinking?" flops.

I believe Company at least made its money back and turned a profit on the road, but I could be wrong--and I'm nearly certain Night Music did by the time it reached the road (though everyone did expect it to run longer)--though you say it lost all its investment so I'll have to check the Prince bio that goes through all of that. (I know Zorba, a flawed show but one I love and see as an important bridge between Cabaret and the Sondheim shows, only made back its investment on its second tour).

It's funny, by all reports Sondheim had to be talked into doing Night Music, almost as a favour to Hal to do a more commercial piece, but the end product became a favorite of Sondheim's, and one of the shows Prince considers the least interesting.

(Speaking of teams, I always wonder if there was any feeling at all from Kander and Ebb that Prince had in a way dropped them for Sondheim--although I don't get the sense there was, and I know they were friends with Stephen).

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 10/30/11 at 11:50pm

Eric is right: in CONTRADICTIONS, Prince says the point of doing NIGHT MUSIC was to have a commercial hit and it repaid its investment during the NYC run. COMPANY may have paid off by now, but I don't think the original Broadway production and national tour did it.

I haven't read CONTRADICTIONS in years, but I remember it was easy to tell which shows had made money because Prince dismissed them all as "commercial." You know, like that obviously commercial show he did about the Weimar Republic!

The chapters on the flops all read like love letters.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 12:05am

Eric, I think you're right that Mamoulian only directed Oklahoma and Carousel, but I believe he also may have directed Broadway revivals of both shows, if that makes a difference.

Of my other suggestions, I'd say that the August Wilson/Lloyd Richards collaboration is especially significant as I believe it covers all of Wilson's major plays.

And speaking of Wilson, there's also the very successful longstanding collaboration of Lanford Wilson and Marshall W. Mason.

Then there's Wendy Wasserstein and Daniel Sullivan.

Neil Simon's repeated collaborations with both Mike Nichols and Gene Saks.

And Tony Kushner and George C. Wolfe.






Updated On: 10/31/11 at 12:05 AM

[SondheimFan5]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 12:07am

Ordered a used copy of "Contradictions" from an online library sale couple months ago, haven't opened it yet. I've heard it's excellent, just haven;t had the time to read it yet

[After Eight]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 10:02am

How about Noel Coward and...... Noel Coward? I have no doubt that the director had a huge hand in realizing the author's intentions. And I don't think any other director could have done it better.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 10:28am

Collaborating with one's self only happens with split personality cases, as with, say, David Mamet (the contrast between his plays and his politics clearly reveals a psychotic break).

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 10/31/11 at 4:32pm

I'm sure you'll enjoy CONTRADICTIONS, SondheimFan (though SONDHEIM & CO. covers much of the same territory and is better). As I implied, my only problem with the Prince book is that the author seems to fall into the trap of assuming everything that was popular was somehow pandering and every commercial failure must have been too "artsy" for the public.

I think it's a bit silly to insist that CABARET and NIGHT MUSIC were "obvious" commercial efforts. (My edition of the book came out in 1974, so I don't know what he would have written about SWEENEY.)