Please note this production has been postponed indefinitely.
Celebrating the most influential and successful career in the American theater of the past 60 years, PRINCE OF BROADWAY will look at the circumstances and fortune, both good and bad, that led to Hal Prince creating some of the most enduring and beloved theater of all time, from 1954's The Pajama Game to The Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running show in Broadway history.
PRINCE OF BROADWAY will feature words and music from the shows that have earned Hal Prince a record 21 Tony Awards.
PRINCE OF BROADWAY will be directed by Mr. Prince with co-direction and choreography by Susan Stroman (The Producers, Contact, Crazy for You). David Thompson (The Scottsboro Boys, Chicago [adaptation]) is writing the book and Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, Parade) is writing vocal and dance arrangements.
All this aside-and despite our thorough admiration for the career and life of the eighty-nine-year-old Prince of Broadway-the entertainment wears thin in the second act. Here we have a show which only exists by virtue of song selections from the Prince catalog, written by three dozen fellows. (While one woman-Betty Comden-is credited on the title page, there isn't a word of hers in evidence.) In such a venture, some material is likely to be included for reasons other than suitability. You could indeed do all Sondheim, all the time-but then that wouldn't be Prince of Broadway, would it?
On this cruise through Prince's greatest hits (and a few of his flops), there are as many Hal Princes as there actors on the stage, all speaking improbably in the first person, all offering bon mots ('And we had another hit!') or epigrams, pithy truisms, famous names ('Steve and I') or wry acknowledgments of the role of good fortune and hard graft in any illustrious career. As written by David Thompson, those do not amount to meaningful insight into the subject under review. And as a consequence, and despite the pleasures of hearing reprises of musical numbers like 'The Worst Pies in London,' 'Being Alive' and 'You Must Meet My Wife,' the show functions mostly as a cautionary tale about the difficulty of anthologizing directors in a Broadway show.
| 2015 | International Tour |
World Premiere Production International Tour |
| 2017 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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