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| re: Prince on Broadway | |
| Posted by: EvFoDr 02:30 pm EDT 08/13/17 | |
| In reply to: Prince on Broadway - Naughty_Rob 12:09 pm EDT 08/12/17 | |
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| I think your last sentence sums up the missed opportunity here. Why not tell us through narration and song choice how PRINCE shaped these stagings and how that contributed to the show's success (or lack of). I know--and lots of us theatre lovers too--from a lifetime of following his career, reading interviews, etc. some of these things, but you really have to fill in the blanks. What about the people who don't have all that knowledge? For example, what a chance to talk about the way he was influenced by theatre in Europe. How be brought back this black box idea and worked with it in various ways from Cabaret all the way through the Phantom. How about having to a take an existing recording, and with only a few changes, and no dialogue, shape and tell a story (Evita). Many of the original reviews noted that his work made more of the material than was actually there. This was certainly confirmed in my mind seeing the recent lackluster revival. How about how he had to have Sweeney set in a factory? How about the complete re-shaping of Spiderwoman after the disaster in Purchase? This is just the tippy top of the iceberg. | |
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| re: Prince on Broadway | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 04:34 pm EDT 08/13/17 | |
| In reply to: re: Prince on Broadway - EvFoDr 02:30 pm EDT 08/13/17 | |
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| Your points are well taken, but the problem then is that the show would easily become very very academic in nature - which might be interesting for us theatre geeks, but wouldn't be interesting to anyone else. It would have closed already. I assume they were consciously trying to avoid the Jerome Robbins' Broadway model - understood, but clearly what they've ended up with is something which may be an entertaining evening of songs, but nothing that really puts the spotlight on Prince. Your ideas sound a little more in the vein of Sondheim On Sondheim, which they were probably also trying to avoid, especially given how recent that was. And again, I tend to think that only the Sondheim fans really appreciated the video segments, etc. I think with the Robbins and Fosse revues, it was generally much easier to present the choreography and let it speak for itself. The same way that any number of composer revues can let the songs speak for themselves, or with bits of narration to clarify. I think it's much harder to illustrate what a director does in this kind of a format. So they didn't try to. Which makes for a rather generalized evening of songs. Ah, well... |
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