Just dug up the relevant part of that interview with Alan Menken, speaking via email in 1998 - prior to Hunchback's Berlin preproduction and back when Newsies on stage was a pipe dream. I'm going to seek permission to post the full interview as his complete and honest answers to my (often impertinent) teenage questions are as fascinatng now as they were then - more so in many cases; covering Disney, Broadway, varied collaborators and work past, present and future.
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M.J. - What projects have most disappointed you in the past (in terms of output or the commercial success that they received)?
A.M. -"God Bless You Mr. Rosewater", "Newsies", "Weird Romance" and "King David".
M.J.- What would you change, given a reinterpretation?
A.M. - I would have "Rosewater" either made smaller in scale or produced on a Broadway (as opposed to Off Broadway) stage. I would want more resources (number of dancers, camera angles etc.) committed to the musical production in "Newsies", I would search for a more stylized (pastiche) approach to the writing, arranging and staging of musical number in "Weird Romance" and I would scale back the "King David" concert to avoid having it look like a
finished piece of musical theater when, in fact, it was a staged concert of a work-in-progress.
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Updated On: 6/26/14 at 04:25 PM