I am one who is vocal about how much better the original version, cast and production were than what's come since.
And whether one thinks it was good, great or a mess, it was nowhere near as bad or as messy as you're describing.
Perhaps you can at least accept that the original still stands, for some of us, as untouched by future productions simply because none of the rewrites have improved it (I'd say confidently they've almost all made it worse, as a script, a score and a musical as a while) and that for all its many many issues, no staging or cast since has been better. That doesn't mean the original production was flawless or that others haven't had good things... but I can say I've seen many productions (of the revised version), and i would pick the Prince staging/production, the bad and the good, over the ones I've seen since (the good and the bad). |
