Abstract
Harold Prince’s role in establishing musical drama on Broadway can be clearly seen in his body of work from Cabaret (1966) to Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1993). A closer examination of four early shows—Cabaret., Company (1970), Evita (1978), and Sweeney Todd (1979)—reveal the way in which Prince anticipated the director-dramaturgs of the following decades through his active participation in the development process, his need for social relevance, and his incorporation of structural formats and staging techniques beyond the traditions of the American musical theatre. Just as much of American drama in the 1970s was heavily indebted to European playwrights such as Brecht, Beckett, and Pinter, so the structure and staging of many Prince musicals were influenced by a number of foreign directors and theatre traditions. Although these connections have been touched on elsewhere—notably in Ilson—the extent of Princes interest in theatre outside America has not been extensively analyzed and can usefully be examined here to demonstrate the incorporation of foreign theatre traditions into the Broadway musical even before the so-called British Invasion of the 1980s and 90s.
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Notes
Stanley Kauffman, “Company,” The New Republic, May 23, 1970.
Stanley Kauffman, Saturday Review, November 24, 1979.
Joan Goodman and Mike Bygrave, “Presenting the Che and Eva Show,” The Observer, June 11, 1978.
Walter Kerr, “‘Evita,’ a Musical Peron,” New York Times, September 26, 1979.
Richard Eder, “Introducing Sweeney Todd,” New York Times, March 2, 1979.
T.E. Kalem, “Razor’s Edge: Sweeney Todd,” Time, March 12, 1979.
Bill Zakieriasen, “Sweeney Returns Opera to Its Roots,” Daily News, June 4, 1979.
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© 2008 Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen
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Lundskaer-Nielsen, M. (2008). From Cabaret to Sweeney Todd: Musical Drama on Broadway. In: Directors and the New Musical Drama. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611245_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611245_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37068-9
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