Prince of Broadway

23 October 2015 (Fri), Tokyo

Harold Prince has apparently been shopping around the idea of a retrospective of his life on Broadway for years without much success. The plan was to feature samples from his amazingly varied 60-year career not, I had understood, as a song-by-song compilation like Jerome Robbins Broadway but as something brand new that would provide a different perspective on the shows and a broad idea of what it means when the name Harold Prince is on the marquee. He’s got quite a list to choose from: he’s been responsible for some of the most iconic musicals in the history of Broadway, and his contribution to the development of the art form either as producer or director is immense. But backers were understandably wary. It’s a lot easier to understand a show centered on a choreographer or songwriter or performer than on a director, whose input is not as obvious. A Prince recap seemed a fantastic chance to give the rest of us an idea of what the director’s function actually is, though I’m not sure if that would be so interesting to anyone other than us musical freaks. Continue reading →