Hal Prince school project - Page 1

[EvanK]

Posted: 10/8/12 at 9:42pm

Hey everyone! I have to do a presentation for my directing class on Hal Prince, and well, I have never seen a production of his being stuck out in western Canada.. I was hoping I could gather some quotes from some broadway world users about his productions, those that have seen them! From his directing style, parallels you've noticed between productions, to just what you think of shows you have seen of his. The impact they had on you! Any history or anything you want to say about him will be greatly appreciated!!

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/8/12 at 9:57pm

Why would a quote from me be authoritative?

Read Prince's book, CONTRADICTIONS. Then read Craig Zadan's book, SONDHEIM & CO. You'll find plenty of quotes on and from Prince in the latter.

Maybe somebody else can recommend something more recent...

(If you do a little research and then have more specific questions, Evan, I'm sure a lot of us can help.)

Updated On: 10/8/12 at 09:57 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/8/12 at 10:26pm

I've been stuck out in Western Canada most of my life, and yet managed to see tours of Spider Woman, Phantom, Parade and the Canadian sit down production of his Show Boat. Just saying

As Gaveston said, a number of people on here could probably give good answers to specific questions, but it's kinda hard to know where to start.

One thing that comes to mind is that he very much needs a concept for his shows--and preferably a political one it seems. His flops often seem to come about when he doesn't find one (like with Merrily--actually in that case it was more a muddled mix of concepts). He famously didn't reallyget Sweeney until he saw that he could use his industrial revolution concept. Equally famous is his quote to Lloyd Webber when asked to do Cats--I don't remember it word for word, but essentially he asked if it maybe had something to do with Queen Victoria, and was a metaphor, and ALW replied basically just saying "Hal, it's about *cats*".

If you have time, aside from the books mentioned by Gaveston, there are two pretty good bios of his work: Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre and Hal Prince: A Director's Journey. EVerything Was Possible about the making of Follies aso gives great example of his process.

For what it's worth, he's my fave director who wasn't also a choreographer (if that makes sense).

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/8/12 at 10:32pm

FWIW, I was told by one of his musical directors that Prince's real genius was in choosing collaborators. I was a little shocked at the time, but the more I looked at the shows, the more I saw the truth in the claim.

BTW, don't take everything Prince says in his autobiography at face value. He falls into a habit of dismissing anything that made money while praising everything that lost money.

CABARET and A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC were not obvious commercial hits when they were first conceived. The fact that they eventually made money in no way diminishes the artistic risks they took.

[EvanK]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 12:42am

There will be tons of research done, but I guess I'm just looking for first hand experience for some quotes to include.. So essentially... A production of his you have seen, how it impacted you.. If you've seen more then one of his shows, did you notice similarities? What are your thoughts on Hal Prince?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 1:47am

Look back at the threads on FOLLIES and COMPANY, Evan. You'll find countless pages of discussions by those of us who saw the original productions.

You're asking about one of the most prolific producers and directors in Broadway musical history. It's a little hard to sum up Prince in a few sentences, without knowing what direction your paper will take.

[EvanK]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 2:56am

This is just an informal, oral presentation. So I'm really just wanting to throw some random audience thoughts. So it could be Anything you want to say. From a moment in a show that strongly impacted you, to some Hal Prince quirk you've noticed in his shows. I just want to add a relatable, we see theatre, here are our thoughts section.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 3:28am

One "quirk" is he tends to like to have people on stage observing or watching the action (he did this as early as Cabaret, with the spiral staircase observers would be perched on for the book scenes).

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 3:12pm

Lots of folks would say Hal Prince helped invent the Concept Musical. A tawdry cabaret stage can stand in for all of 30's Germany. A buzouki taverna holds the essence of Zorba's Greek tale. A twilight lit birch grove serves every location for its Swedish summer night's romances. Ragtag ramps and trapdoors through the audience can be Candide's unreliable world's stage. An iron foundry becomes all of Sweeney Todd's London.

Productions could be opulent or bare stage affairs-- they all seized a visual language to tell their stories that was uniquely OF the theater. As an audience member you couldn't wait to see what treasures awaited when the curtain (or stagelights) went up.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 5:36pm

Eric, that fondness for having actors "watching" reached its apotheosis in A DOLL'S LIFE when Prince had a woman in a bright orange dress walk in slow motion on the cat walk (left over from SWEENEY and EVITA) from one side of the proscenium to the other.

No reason. Just 'cause.

***

Well put, Someone. Where Fosse tended to use the vocabulary of burlesque and Robbins that of ballet, Prince did as much as anyone to import conventions of avant garde theater (particularly that of Germany) into popular musical theater.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 5:43pm

I've heard that about A Doll's Life. That show seemed to have several concepts too many--between the actors rehearsing framing device (had he just seen Reisz and Pinter's film adaptation of French Lieutenant's Woman, or something? It did come out around the same time IIRC), and what you mention...

Prince also was greatly inspired in the 60s by the modern Soviet theatre--I think he's admitted that the curtain of light he used in Cabaret (and elsewhere) came to him directly from there, Meyerhold's work in particular. Part of Prince's genius was using those elements in a much more commercial context.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 6:07pm

Prince seemed to have lost his internal editor by the time of A DOLL'S LIFE.

The "rehearsal" framing meant that the curtain rose on the climax of Ibsen's play, with Torvald shouting, "Miserable wretch, what have you done?!"

The language was archaic and, with no build up, the moment was risible, getting a sizable laugh when I read the script and every time I saw the show.

And yet it remained. The ensuing five minutes of naturalistic dialogue only served to confuse the audience when the musical comedy finally began. Prince apparently forgot the Abbott/Robbins dictum that the opening minutes are the spectator's guide to the entire show.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 6:43pm

I know various revisions (at York, etc) of Doll's Life have flirted with dropping the framework, as well as opening with House's final scene, or not. I guess the thought was that a lot of audience might not actually know Doll's House, and to give them at least a reminder but I don't think it worked--if they don'tknow the original play (and I suspect a lot of audiences for a big, commercial Broadway musical wouldn't--and why should they?), opening that way won't really help anyway.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 7:14pm

Really? Most theatergoers don't know A DOLL HOUSE? Even *I* knew it at the time of the original: I hadn't studied Ibsen yet, but films and TV versions had been broadcast.

I don't see how the final scene of Ibsen does anything to help the viewer understand the musical's plot because the musical has so little to do with the source play.

I suppose Prince wanted to introduce the concept of the actor playing Torvald also playing Nora's later lovers so that the eventual reunion of Nora and Torvald would have the feeling of a (qualified) happy ending. But really, it didn't work. It just didn't.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 7:27pm

I suppose I'm looking at it from my generation. Unless read in school (and some theatre courses I know of did cover it), I think most of my friends who are into theatre know the basic idea of Doll's House, and not really much more (though perhaps they all know the famous final scene). Certainly nobody I ever knew was itching for a sequel to it, but that's another matter (what an odd choice for Comden and Green, stylistically, anyway).

That'sa fair point about the concept of the actor playing all those different men (though, that could be another questionable concept...).

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 7:35pm

Comden and Green weren't calling the shots at that point. My husband (who worked for Prince) found Betty Comden crying in the lobby of the office because she didn't want to work on the next project Prince had chosen for them. (It was some baseball musical.)

When feminism was young (or "revived") in the late 60s/early 70s, A DOLL HOUSE was often revived as a sort of argument for women's equality.

I trust you if you tell me most people today don't know it.

As for George Hearn playing multiple parts, I'm not sure how many in the original audience "got" the concept and how many just thought the production was doubling. That was pre-LA CAGE and Hearn wasn't as big a star as he is today.
Updated On: 10/9/12 at 07:35 PM

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 7:52pm

I'd say if there's any through line to Prince's later work, it's a failure to edit as ruthlessly as he had when younger. To take one example, when he created Phantom of the Opera's staging in 1986-7, those ravishing stage pictures were often composed of one or two cast members perched on a skeletal setpiece that floated in a vast black void. It was the movement of drapes (or fog or ballet dancers) wiping across the scene that filled in the impression of luxury and opulence.

So what happened when he went to create the show anew for Las Vegas 20 years later? Gone was the empty stage, gone was the SUGGESTION of opulence when the real thing was now in demand. Literal theater boxes, literal chandelier, literal wing-and-drop set after set. Sad to see a brilliant (and ruthlessly editorial) theater artist succumb to the more-is-more aesthetic that he might have rejected decades before.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 7:55pm

I always wondered who instigated the project. Was it Prince who had the idea--or Comden/Green? (Or even Larry Grossman?) It just seems so out of Comden/GHreen's comfort zone--like Prince loved the idea but couldn't ask Sondheim to do it, after the Merrily thing, so turned to his 20th Century book writers.

You're right, that Doll's House seemed to be pretty popular in the late 60s into the 80s--I have noticed that before, just in the past when looking into the play. While I wouldn't say it's an obscure play now, by any means whatsoever, I don't think it's nearly as in vogue to revive it, currently. When it comes to foreign playwrights from that era, Chekov (to use one example)seems to be more "in" than Ibsen. (I could be wrong, these are just vague notions I have :P )

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 7:59pm

And just to try to be more clear, I guess my initial statement was more that a fairly big budgeted, commercial Broadway musical obviously needs a fairly universal hook to bring in the audiences if it's gonna turn a profit. Doing a sequel to A Doll's House, and then assuming you'd have an audience on that alone, obviously isn't enough.

Someone in a Tree that's a good point--though I certainly thought highly at the time of Prince's staging of Spider Woman and Show Boat, as well as the revised tour of Parade. Re Vegas--I wonder how much say he had? I mean obviously he could have not taken the job, but the whole point of doing it in Vegas seemed to be to amp the show up to a Vegas level. I agree that Prince's original staging, along with Bjornson's designs of course, is striking--and more often than not it's done with a lot less than people seem to imagine they seem which is the point. (It's interesting that for such a cinematic stage director, he seemed to be so leaden when making films).

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 8:16pm

Like many directors, Prince does often work best when he's in synch with his designers, who he works closely with. It's interesting (to me) that you don't hear nearly as much about the designers of some of his flops. Doll's Life was done by Timothy O'Brien and Tazeena Firth who did effective work with Evita (I always wondered how they got the Evita job, not knowing anything about their past production work), but Life is a very different show. Grind was designed by Clarke Dunham who later did the 90s flop revival of Candide, Prince did. Alexander Okun, who designed Roza, has only that one credit to his name for Broadway (but I believe he came, with much of Roza from a European background).

Of course I thought the design of Spider Woman was mostly successful, despite maybe too many busy projections, and Jerome Sirlin has no other Broadway credits either, so maybe there's nothing to that theory.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 8:19pm

(Sirlin does have a lot of opera credits that are projection based, as well as doing the design for the European production of Disney's Hunchback http://www.jeromesirlindesign.com/index.htm_files/1024.htm)

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 8:25pm

I honestly don't know who had the original idea to do A DOLL'S LIFE, Eric. Like you, I think it sounds more like a Prince idea than a Comden and Green idea, but I never heard anyone say.

In the work itself, Comden and Green only seem to come to life in the opera parody.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 8:49pm

Thanks for reminding me of GRIND, Eric. I loved that production when I saw it, one of those shows when a perfect idea of a show (race relations in a down-at-heels 30's burlesque house) with a so-so script and score got an absolutely brilliant set design (by the frankly uneven Clarke Dunham) and overall staging that resulted in one of the great nights of theater of that season for me.

I agree with you on the Hal Prince Showboat being one of the glories of the 90's on Broadway. As for Parade and Kiss, not so much. Both have rich scores but staging and design only fitfully rose to the greatness inherent in their material. Gotta call them near-misses in the Hal Prince pantheon for me.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/9/12 at 11:20pm

Interesting to hear your thoughts on Grind. Besides the Not Since Carrie chapter, I don't think I've ever read anyone's thoughts who saw it.

I may like the Spider Woman production less now--I saw it when I was 13 and still hadn't seen too many musicals that dealt with heavier themes, and I was also excited to see Chita (I saw the tour in Vancouver). Also my grandma, who was a huge Broadway fan (she saw the original On the Town and Oklahoma productions while on leave from the air force), was visiting for it and took me because she was so excited to see Chita live. (I admit I was kinda uncomfortable at first with her due to the subject matter, but she was fine)--so the experience was all in all thrilling.

I found Parade more problematic, but I was ultimately won over. I'd love to have been able to see the original New York staging to compare it to his revised tour though.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/10/12 at 7:57am

I agree with Someone that GRIND looked great. I remember the show itself being underwhelming, probably due to what Someone calls a "so-so" book and score.

As Eric knows, I hated everything about KISS, which badly mutilated one of my favorite books and plays.