The Prince of Egypt

We saw Prince of Egypt in it’s final performance in the West End and were so lucky to have Stephen Schwartz come on the stage at the end of the show and talk to the audience.

We are so sad that it has finished in London and heard that there may be plans for it to come to Broadway, has anyone heard this or has the failure to continue in London put an end to the chances of this?

I think it would absolutely smash it on Broadway. 

See our short review below.

Prince of Egypt Review - final London performance

It was a decent show but in no way demanded a Broadway transfer. I think the filmed version, which will be released for sale, would put a nail in any transfer rumors, but stranger things have happened. 

Some of the worst crap I've ever seen, the biggest evidence that nepotism doesn't do well in the arts. It would do only a little better than Diana on Broadway 

It was crap. You’ve already suffered Diana, you don’t deserve this.

Like another user said recently...."this thread is my time to shine". This show is ATROCIOUS. I've commented on just about every thread about this and I adore this movie beyond words. It's pitch perfect, I literally cannot see anything wrong with it, the story is well paced, tight in terms of coherent narrative, screenplay isn't cliche or uses language that doesn't seem to fit...and I don't need to say much about the music. It's glorious and I've said for year that it's Schwartz's magnum opus. I will die on that hill. So when I heard that it would be a stage musical , I could barely contain myself since that movie screams for an epic, sweeping stage production. Then I saw Schwartz Jr. would be directing, and since Hunchback is also misguided as heck, I had to lower my expectations. I saw the world premiere production in California, and it was exactly what one could expect from Scotty. The only thing that I was happy about was that it didn't use their usual, awful story theatre format. I have no idea if that changed in London, but as I understand, it didn't for Tuachan or the Denmark production. 

I saw this production with my entire immediate family, we all love the movie so much. And even they, who don't really understand what makes good theatre work, didn't have much good to say about it and we watched the movie a few days later to cleanse our pallet. My brother thought the people playing chariots was ridiculous (among other things that the humans were 'playing' and though he has no idea about what a narrative through line is, the first thing he said was that Nefertiri's song, while lovely on its own, makes no sense because he noticed it had nothing to do with the main conflict...the boys. That just the least of what we all said. It's a damn shame this will seemingly never get the sweeping epic stage treatment it deserves. 

Someday we will all realize, musicals written for animated movies- are written to be movies from the inception of the idea, and so there will always be a wonkiness in transferring that to stage cause it was built from the ground up for that type of heightened realm. Something like "When You Believe" is so much bigger and more beautiful drawn with thousands of people caravaning across a literal desert. 

You put that on a broadway stage- it feels a little cheesier. It feels smaller. 

Also Hans Zimmer is just as much a contributing factor to why the film works as Stephen Schwartz is. 

I think that original production of “Beauty and the Beast” at the Palace will forever be the gold standard of what an animated film could look like onstage. Even “The Lion King” doesn’t reach that height, outside it’s opening number.

Updated On: 2/14/22 at 02:15 PM

JennH said: "Totally see your point, and it does have a lot of validity. But if Beauty and the Beast and Lion King can work, so can PoE, it just needs actual vision and creativity...both of which Scotty lacks. Same with the German Hunchback production. It clearly worked. Others absolutely didn't. I still have no idea who thought Tarzan would work..."

I liked Tarzan. It worked for me.

I just hate that Hunchback never made it to Broadway. That score is perfection.