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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Last Edit: bmc 10:53 am EST 12/02/18 | |
| Posted by: bmc 10:50 am EST 12/02/18 | |
| In reply to: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - RufusRed 09:55 am EST 12/02/18 | |
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| Saw CABARET in '68 with an all replacement cast, and I must admit I enjoyed the Studio 54 production more(except for Sally-Anita Gillette)........ For CHICAGO, I caught the Bway production in its last month, with Reinking, Orbach, and standby Elaine Cancilla, and the following winter, saw the 3 original stars in the City of Chicago... I greatly enjoyed both performances. One thing I have liked about the Encores version, is that it TOURS. I have seen it 4 different times in Detroit and once last year at the Ambassador, where(I'm Guessing) extra dance moves were added for Tony Yazback in the "Razzle Dazzle" number. That (Except for Mr Yazbeck's performance) number(R.Dazzle) is the one that I feel falls short of the original, which I remember as being more colorfully costumed and more varied in its movement.......But for People who werent teens in the 60's or 20 somethings in the 70s , the new productions give them a chance to see these shows. The Encore Spring season gives,what, 5 or 6 perfomances of a show?........But tho the Encore CHICAGO production might not be as great as the original, it is close and better than nothing (and as I mentioned, it TOURS--providing work in NYC as well as cross country) | |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 12:52 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - bmc 10:50 am EST 12/02/18 | |
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| I don't think any of us in the theatre-loving community would want a requirement that all revivals exactly re-create what was done in the original. That puts the material in a straitjacket, reducing the medium to the status of museum pieces, and stifles creativity. That said, the stronger an original work is, the more readily it can adapt to new interpretations. CABARET is the classic here, with significant differences in the original, the movie, and the Mendes versions--even Prince's 1987 revival differed from the first. I felt very odd watching the touring company of the last revival of A CHORUS LINE. Part of me was glad my kids got to see so much of what made the original show so great. But part of me was longing for a different take on the material. And another part of me was proud when my youngest, raised on cast albums, old video clips of shows, and about to go to college to major in theatre studies, made the exact same observation I had been thinking. Laura |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 01:28 pm EST 12/03/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - showtunetrivia 12:52 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
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| I too have been longing for a new take on A CHORUS LINE for, at least, 20 years. But I'm not convinced it's ever going to happen in any of our lifetimes. I would think that a new staging of ACL, in particular, would be the calling card of any exciting new director/choreographer who wanted to make a splash and show off what he/she can do. There are just too many people with direct connections back to Bennett who make a living recreating the original staging over and over again. It's not difficult for any theatre at any level to find someone with access to the ACL bible to come in and stage your production. And, I imagine those same choreographers who might otherwise chomp at the bit to do their own ACL might be intimidated by the brilliance of the original and the fact that that staging has never gone away and is so fresh in the minds of so many. Even the most dazzling work might be seen to be inferior. So, I think we're stuck with A CHORUS LINE as a museum piece...there just doesn't seem to be the will in any quarter to do anything new with it. You know what I'd also be interested in? A new take on the idea. A CHORUS LINE is largely about the life of chorus gypsies in the late 60's and early-mid 70's when the dancers who participated in the original recording sessions were active. I'd love to see a new team investigate what life is like for chorus gypsies in the 21st Century and build a show around those ideas and compare and contrast with the original show. Some it is probably very similar, but some is also likely very different. For example, where a couple of the dancers bring up THE RED SHOES as a particular inspiration in A CHORUS LINE, I imagine that more than one dancer in a new show would bring up A CHORUS LINE itself as an inspiration. It would also be interesting to see a more diverse cast of characters...ACL was probably at the forefront of diversity in musicals at the time, but a show with this many characters that features one black character, one Asian character, and only 2 gay characters seems...well...diversity-lite, I guess. |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 02:51 pm EST 12/03/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - JereNYC 01:28 pm EST 12/03/18 | |
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| In talking about the somewhat lack of diversity in A CHORUS LINE, I forgot to mention the two Latinx characters. My apologies. | |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 02:44 pm EST 12/03/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - JereNYC 01:28 pm EST 12/03/18 | |
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| I'd buy a ticket. Great idea. Laura, grumpy about dentistry and ready to listen to LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: BigM 03:12 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - showtunetrivia 12:52 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
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| As a former director, I have to chime in on this. Theater is an art, and art depends on spontaneous creation. Every new production of a show depends on the talents and impulses of a new group of artists. If you try to duplicate the original production over and over, what you end up with will be stale and regimented. When Bertolt Brecht was alive, his productions at his German theater, the Berliner Ensemble, were praised as breathtaking and innovative. After he died, while the theater was still run by members of his family, they duplicated his productions and the theater was widely scorned as a lifeless museum. You can see this with Hal Prince himself; his 1987 revival of Cabaret, featuring one of the original actors, was widely panned, and thought to lack the excitement of the original - even though it featured not only that actor but the same director and the same designs. In general, I've found that musicals are especially dependent on the chemistry of the original artists, and are often customized to those artists' particular skills. New productions must be tailored to a whole new team of people. | |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 10:03 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - BigM 03:12 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
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| Variety summarized the New York critical to Prince's 1987 revival thus: five enthusiastic, seven favorable, two mixed, and five unfavorable. And the original won awards and had a long run but it got very mixed reviews. Variety did not summarize nearly as reviews of the original, but it ranked those as four favorable and two unfavorable. I've just re-read a bunch of the original reviews, and it was certainly not universally hailed, not even close. The original West Side Story is often remembered as having gotten somewhat mixed notices, but I'd say that it got a much more favorable critical response than the original Cabaret. I do think that the 1987 production was problematic in various ways, including rewrites that didn't work all that, but then I don't think the Mendes-Marshall version works all that well. I'm not sure that I would have felt the original worked all that well, even as I'm sure I would have admired many aspects of it. |
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| Let's try that again | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 12:22 am EST 12/03/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - AlanScott 10:03 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
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| I hope that I don't leave out words that should be there this time. :( Variety summarized the New York critical response to Prince's 1987 revival thus: five enthusiastic, seven favorable, two mixed, and five unfavorable. And the original won awards and had a long run but it got very mixed reviews. Variety did not classify nearly as many reviews of the original, but it ranked those it did cover as four favorable and two unfavorable. I've just re-read a bunch of the original reviews, and it was certainly not universally hailed, not even close. The original West Side Story is often remembered as having gotten somewhat mixed notices, but I'd say that it got a much more favorable critical response than the original Cabaret. I do think that the 1987 production was problematic in various ways, including rewrites that didn't work all that well, but then I don't think the Mendes-Marshall version works all that well. I'm not sure that I would have felt the original worked all that well, even as I'm sure I would have admired many aspects of it. |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: peter3053 03:38 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - BigM 03:12 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
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| While it's absolutely true that the text of a show should be open to re-invention, it is also true that it's been hard to find better productions of Hal Prince shows than his original direction. Not that anyone can re-invent the spark that made those productions work simply by reproducing staging, but sometimes the re-imaginings seem to miss the way he blended the theatricality with the idea in a very tightly focused way, a way that brought an engaging tension to the evening. Has there ever been a better version of Follies than his? A Little Night Music? Sweeney Todd? Evita? Phantom of the Opera? Could there ever be? On a related point, remember the splendid recreation of the original Oklahoma by the North Carolina (I think) students and staff, broadcast on TV? We saw not a museum piece but a timeless one, still alive with the joy of fresh collaboration circa 1943. Everything is possible! |
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| re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions | |
| Posted by: fosse76 02:18 pm EST 12/03/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Harold Prince: The Director's Life and the case for original productions - peter3053 03:38 pm EST 12/02/18 | |
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| "In a related point, remember the splendid recreation of the original Oklahoma by the North Carolina (I think) students and staff, broadcast on TV? We saw not a museum piece but a timeless one, still alive with the joy of fresh collaboration circa 1943." Actually, I thought it looked very much like the college production that it was. But since not even my parents were alive at the time of the original, I wouldn't know how the original looked anyway. |
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