| Joe Masteroff was my teacher at NYU in the grad program for writing musicals from 1984 to 1986, my dramaturg at the O'Neill Music Theater Conference in 1987, and we were friends afterward. When the Mendes version was produced, he told me that he, John Kander, and Fred Ebb all went to London to see it. Joe and Kander liked the changes that Mendes had made; Ebb did not. None of the men were prepared for the extent of the changes, which included new book writing done by Mendes. Ultimately, the three men decided to allow a New York production of the new version. However, Joe insisted that the Mendes script not be used. Instead, he wrote his own versions of the new scenes while keeping Mendes' structural and character changes intact. Mendes was not given a writing credit as a result. However, just as Harold Prince has an author copyright and royalty on many of the musicals he directed, even though he gets no formal writing credit, I think one would have to say that Mendes is a co-author of the 1998 Broadway version of CABARET. Joe never discussed the question of royalties with me, alas, except that he got a lot of them. |
