Sorry, but your director violated the copyright. Did he/she get permission to change the ending? The ending in the script is how the authors wanted/intended the musical to end!
Not quite. I think that only matters if actual text spoken or sung by the cast is changed. Stage directions don't hold the same kind of weight - and certainly as long as the director doesn't change the essential truth of the scene. (For instance, putting Annie back in the orphanage at the end of that show - that went too far from the original intention.)
That said, some directors go too far in terms of literally ignoring the printed stage directions because they were somehow taught that is what they should do. I was doing rehearsal piano once for a college production of How To Succeed, and I remember watching the young director at one point literally whiting out all the stage directions in her script. So - the show lacked its final original punchline, because it's only in the stage directions. As the cast sings "for the departed we shed a mournful tear," we're supposed to see Frump outside washing the windows, just as Finch had done at the top of the show. But since that was ignored, the lyric went for nothing, and the final clever joke of the show never happened.
Was that "violating copyright?" No. But it was stupidity, because the director seemed to think that the stage directions simply didn't matter, period. She didn't look at the original intention and say, "I think I have another way of making this work" - she just had no idea what she was doing. |
