Hal Prince

Hal Prince0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty six, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:29

Our Castaway is one of the towering figures of modern theatre. It's almost easier to list the musicals he's not worked on over the past thirty years than talk about the triumphs.

Presenter0:38

But for the record he's been associated during his career as either producer or director or both with Westside Story, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Fiddler on the Roof, Company, A Little Night Music, Cabaret, Evita, and most recently Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest success, Phantom of the Opera. He is Hal Prince. This present musical that you've done, I mean, where do you place that in the context of all the great musicals you've been involved with? Very, very high. Really? Because I think it's a major work.

Hal Prince1:04

Very

Presenter1:08

An amazing achievement. Beautiful, beautiful score.

Presenter1:12

And it kind of

Presenter1:13

serves a need I have as not only someone who works in a theater, but as a theater goer. It's a very romantic, lush score and and story. Yes, it's a musical with a story, which is really very nice.

Hal Prince1:24

Yeah.

Presenter1:26

Looking through your list of records, it's rather interesting because I would imagine lots of Sondheim and lots of songs representing the musicals that in fact you've worked on. But in fact, there's nothing there, is there, from any of them. Why is that? No, well, I could be very sort of cute about that answer and say I'm wise enough not to choose between Sondheim and Lloyd Weber and Kander Neb and Bach and Harnick and so on, but that's not the point. No, I really did quickly write down eight choices that meant a lot to me, and I think they in fact have influenced the composers that I would have chosen had I chosen from the shows I've worked on. All right, so this first one then, what does that represent? Porgy and Bess?

Presenter2:04

Bess, you is my woman now.

Presenter2:06

Well, it's Gershwin. It's one of the first musicals I ever saw.

Presenter2:10

It's very interesting to me because, in fact,

Presenter2:13

I saw it in about thirty eight or thirty thirty seven, I think. It first came out in thirty-five. It was not appreciated at the time. It was in a Broadway theater called The Alvin.

Presenter2:22

And it

Presenter2:24

Epitomizes the opera's popular musical theater, which in fact is coming into its own right now. We begin to really accept opera, that whole form, in a popular musical theater context. They wouldn't in 1935, and Gershwin died never knowing that we would be talking about Porgy and Bess all these years later. Who's doing it? Todd Duncan and Ann Brown.

Speaker 42:55

Fine and evening time and sorrow time and queen

Presenter3:13

You hear that now and you're you're amazed, aren't you, that it wasn't an instant popular critical success, that people didn't see it. Less amazed than I wish I were because so much of that's happened in one's lifetime, you know. So many things that are passed over the first time around.

Hal Prince3:20

Less amazed

Hal Prince3:24

Uh

Presenter3:27

Let's go back in in your life, the the sort of background. I mean, where you came from. What what kind of a family was it? Was it theatrical? Not remotely. No, my father was a stockbroker in New York.

Hal Prince3:34

Oh my

Hal Prince3:36

In New York.

Presenter3:37

And uh my mother was a housewife. She loved the theater. The theater was a habit. Uh going to theater on Saturday afternoons was a habit when I was a kid. Alas, it's not a habit any more in our country. What kind of theater was it that you went to, first of all? You remember? Well, we went to some musicals. I wasn't crazy about musicals. There weren't enough. There wasn't enough stuff happening.

Speaker 43:51

Well

Hal Prince3:51

Oh it

Presenter3:56

I went to the opera with my grandmother, who had seats alternate Tuesday nights at the old Metropolitan Opera House, and she took me. And I saw the damnedest stuff at the age of eight, you see. And that really got me into musical theater. And then there were a lot of wonderful plays and wonderful performers. You know, I saw Orson Welles when he was twenty one and I was six or something in the Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar. I remember those things vividly, rather more vividly than a lot of things I saw last year. It was a very rich term, of course, in American theater, wasn't it? Just wonderful. Wonderful time.

Hal Prince4:25

Just wonderful.

Presenter4:27

And what about your ambitions then? I mean, were you immediately fired with an ambition to go into the theater? Yeah, the opera did it, really. I mean, uh it it's such a corny story. I keep reading it, you see, from other people. But I mean, I had a toy theater and I used to listen to the opera on Saturday afternoons on the radio.

Hal Prince4:31

Yeah

Presenter4:42

And I used to move little tin soldiers around on a stage and since I didn't speak the language of the opera and I didn't really know the music, I would hear the the libretto, Pray C, you see, and then I'd move my people around. I'd come to the end of the act long before the opera had, or I'd be way behind in my moving my soldiers around the and the act would be over and so on. But that's the way I got used to operas and to dramatizing them with those little soldiers. So the ambition was always to manipulate the people the people on the stage rather than being manipulated. Oh, absolutely. No interest remotely in being a performer. Scares the hell out of me. Really? Yeah. I think it makes me compassionate, though, towards them.

Hal Prince5:09

Days rather than

Hal Prince5:11

Oh,

Presenter5:19

Now what about then to further that ambition? I mean you didn't go to uh drama school you or to not at all. I had a liberal arts education right through university.

Hal Prince5:23

No, not at all.

Presenter5:27

And uh

Presenter5:28

I've never had any formal theater education, but I apprenticed, and that's the best thing in the world that can happen to a human being, I apprenticed to George Abbott from the age of twenty on, and he was the most prolific and experienced director, producer,

Hal Prince5:37

Familiar.

Presenter5:43

Writer

Presenter5:44

on Broadway at the time. This is we're speaking of the l late forties and early fifties. And he took me on and put a an arm around me and gave me courage and en encouragement.

Presenter5:54

That's very important.

Presenter5:56

Let's have your second choice of record.

Hal Prince5:57

Well, it

Presenter5:59

The Lieberstadt, Wagner, Tristan and Solde.

Presenter6:03

Flagstadt recording with the Philharmony Orchestra, Furtwangler conducting.

Presenter6:09

And it's one of the first experiences I had at the Old Met.

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On Thirty Seventh Street in New York City.

Presenter7:13

That is an extraordinary voice, isn't it? Oh, unbelievable. She lived next door to my grandmother in a hotel in New York.

Presenter7:20

In the years immediately preceding the Second World War.

Presenter7:24

And uh she used to vocalize a lot, and that obviously was heard next door. And my grandmother, however, being the opera buff, was just tantalized, thrilled even to hear her doing the exercises.

Presenter7:35

But she never saw her. So one day she waited for her maid to arrive, and she said to her maid, Look, I I just I have to ask you this. I keep hearing her vocalize, but I've never seen Madame Flagstadt. When does she come and when does she go? And the maid said, I am Madame Flagstadt

Presenter7:53

Oh, wonderful. Going back to the time with George Abbott, you couldn't have actually had a better mentor, could you, I suppose? Because the man's history, it's the history of the Broadway musical, isn't it? Absolutely. And preceding that, of course, the comedy and the melodrama and all that stuff. It's been around a long time. He's 100 next year. And still alive and away. You bet we share an office. Still working. Absolutely.

Speaker 48:00

Remotely.

Speaker 48:04

Absolutely.

Hal Prince8:10

Then still a little bit.

Hal Prince8:11

You bet.

Presenter8:15

One of the the the things that came out of that association, I think I'm right in saying, is uh

Presenter8:19

is uh Pajama Game. That was the first show that I produced and he directed and he co wrote the the libretto. What was the background to that? I mean, how did that Well, I'd been an assistant stage manager in Wonderful Town and I uh I started to dream up with my partner who was the chief stage manager, fellow named Bobby Griffith.

Hal Prince8:22

Yeah.

Presenter8:37

The whole notion of moving up on the ladder. And obviously, Abbott didn't need a director.

Presenter8:43

But we figured he was kind of tired of producing something I well understand. And uh so we cooked up the notion of finding a piece of material and then interesting him in it, which thrilled him. And we found this book called Seven and a Half Cents and

Presenter8:57

And then he went right along with us. This was the start of the of the career as first co-producer and then how much of the hustler is in the producer.

Hal Prince9:01

That was it.

Presenter9:05

Oh, I think more than comes easily to me. I don't like it much. Looking for money was just hell. But we only did it for one show, and then for the next.

Hal Prince9:09

Looking for

Presenter9:13

Twenty-five years I never looked for money again. Then when the prices soared and one had to look for money again, I lost interest in producing entirely.

Presenter9:22

Well, this is uh from South Pacific.

Presenter9:26

And it's Some Enchanted Evening, and it's Peenz is singing it, but I'll tell you th there are a lot of connections to that. First of all, I was lucky enough to go to the opening night, which was nineteen forty-nine.

Presenter9:38

On that night

Presenter9:39

I was introduced to Stephen Sondheim.

Presenter9:42

So that's memorable.

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And very recently, a year and a half ago when Andrew Lloyd Webber played

Presenter9:48

The first of the songs for me.

Presenter9:50

From Phantom of the Opera, All I Ask of You, it's called. I was immediately reminded of.

Presenter9:58

Kind of music, in other words, some enchanted evening that I hadn't heard in the theatre in too long a time, and I was hooked.

Speaker 410:05

Some enchanted evening

Speaker 410:10

Someone may be laughing

Speaker 410:15

When you were laughing, oh to Lord Santa.

Speaker 410:23

And night after night

Speaker 410:27

As great as it seems, the sound of a laugh

Presenter10:36

I must tell you that Hal Prince's smile gets wider with every record. That one he was positively beatific, I thought.

Presenter10:45

It's just extraordinary. And that's what I love about the musical theater is you find something like that that just is so pure that you remember it for the rest of your life. Well, do you remember the opening night of that?'Cause I mean that's that's one of the the great key nights in the isn't it.

Hal Prince10:57

Nice.

Speaker 410:58

Oh a lot.

Presenter11:01

It was the first time in the history of musical theatre that there was a continuous musical.

Speaker 411:05

Hmm.

Presenter11:05

Up until that night you always stop.

Presenter11:09

Brought in some curtains. The orchestra played utility music, we used to call it, while the scenery was changed upstage. Josh Logan changed that forever. He'd been the director of that. And he had drapes that you could see through that closed across the stage and he kept the action moving. We've come so used to that today that we take it for granted. But in fact, it had not happened until 1949. And the next morning when I came into the office, Abbott had been to the opening, of course, and I was just off the ground with excitement. He said, What you saw last night was epic. Things will never be the same again. And they haven't been.

Presenter11:43

Why do you place then Rogers and Hammerstein in the history of something, we're coming back to Puccini, we're coming back to popular opera, we're coming back to them as well.

Hal Prince11:46

Very nice.

Presenter11:55

I remember stuff that I've seen, for instance, that that I mean changed my perception of the theatre. One you were involved with, the West Side Story. I saw the opening night in Manchester before it opened in London. I was there. And I w you were there, yes. I'm not surprised. But I was I was staggered, you see. I came out of that theatre and my entire attitude had changed toward what I'd seen, you know.

Hal Prince12:02

Copy.

Hal Prince12:04

Who's there?

Presenter12:15

The theatre was never the same again for me after that. That's wonderful. The theatre can do that. You came up to Manchester in rather spectacular style, did you not, for the matter? Yes, well.

Presenter12:24

Well, we chartered a plane from Pan Am and we talked them into letting us fly directly into Manchester, which had never happened before, from the States.

Presenter12:32

And we put a small piano on the plane and everyone danced and sang all the way across the ocean. Pretty amazing stuff. That could be wonderful, I think. Yeah, it's the kind of thing you say, you tell people, and I can't really remember that such marvelous things happened.

Hal Prince12:41

Yeah.

Presenter12:45

Of course, it's one of those musicals, too, that's been revived recently here. Do you think it wears well? Yes, I do. I was afraid it would be very dated. I think some of the language of it is. You know, the whole notion of street ruffians, dangerous street ruffians, who have nothing more in their hands but a knife, which very rarely they use, is tragic. But we've progressed, haven't we? We now kill them dead in great numbers. But even so, in the time when you were actually putting that deal together, I suppose that the theme of it was very difficult to sell people, wasn't it? Very, very, very. And the show was a success.

Hal Prince13:08

Hmm.

Hal Prince13:16

Very, very

Presenter13:19

But i it wasn't the success that, say, the Music Man was, which was running up the block and ran twice as long and made a lot of m buckets of money for its investors. We paid back.

Presenter13:29

But it took the few years between the Broadway production and the film

Presenter13:33

to really bring the public up to accepting that as a subject matter.

Presenter13:37

Let's have another choice of record, please, huh? Well, this is uh from Turn Dot.

Presenter13:41

It's Puccini.

Presenter13:43

It's Eva Martin singing Inquesta Reggia. I'm getting a little bit closer to home. This is a production that I directed in Vienna about three years ago, Lauren Moselle conducting the Vienna Opera Orchestra.

Presenter13:56

The lady has the most amazing voice I've ever heard, and I had one of the best times of my life.

Presenter15:00

Al, you work in both the field of stage musical and the and the world of opera. You seem to see not the any kind of difference between the two. Yet of course there is, as you're aware, a great snobbish divide in some circles. Absolutely. I I hope it I think it's going away. Is it? Oh yeah, I really see erosion on every side. Well it certainly affected some.

Presenter15:22

By shows like The Phantom and Sweeney Todd and Candide and so on. But I think the artists are making it happen.

Presenter15:30

Because they're not being snobby. The singers want to work in the musical theater.

Presenter15:34

And the singers want to work an opera and they want to be able to cross over and have those experiences the way people who work in the theater and work in films do.

Presenter15:41

And composers want to do that. And separating a composer is often say this is a modern opera composer and isolating him there and also refusing to accept

Presenter15:50

popular contemporary composers in the opera world is is very limiting as far as opera is concerned. When you direct opera yourself, I mean, does your approach change? No, not in the least. It doesn't. But that's because the singers are willing to act now. And if you get someone who isn't willing to really act,

Hal Prince16:01

Oh, not in the least.

Hal Prince16:05

And that's

Presenter16:09

And there are some great voices, world class singers who won't do that, won't carry props, won't move very far, won't do everything's the voice. I'm not the right director for those people because I can't make that sacrifice. And I tend to be happier with less of a voice if there's performing going on as well.

Presenter16:25

Another choice of record.

Presenter16:27

Well, this is Stravinsky's The Ride of Spring, and I must say I owe this entirely to my wife, Judy, who introduced me to this music and pointed out to me that this was in 1913, this first saw the light of day. And if you put it in that context, it's simply amazing when you imagine what it must have been like to hear this with all the other contemporary music that was being written. It's as modern as anything that you can hear today. This recording's the Cleveland Orchestra Pierre Boulez, and it's

Presenter16:55

Just extraordinary, the emotions of it.

Presenter17:56

Al Prince, you mentioned earlier that you first met Stephen Sondheim in 1949. You must have both have been very young men then. You both were.

Speaker 418:03

I wanna

Presenter18:05

One, he was nineteen. And you worked together after that, but it wasn't until I think uh nineteen seventy that you first directed a Sandrine piece, and that was company. And since then, well the rest is history. But I mean, d how do you regard the partnership? Well, good for both of us.

Hal Prince18:11

First

Presenter18:21

mutually stimulating and we've been able to uh

Presenter18:25

Experiment a lot, which is the best thing in the world you can do. We haven't made a lot of money for a lot of investors, I'll tell you what. But I was going to ask you that, you see, because you've not had the huge critical acclaim, of course. Yes, but never anything the equivalent of cabaret or Evida or Fiddler on the Roof, nothing like that. But why?

Speaker 418:31

Whatever

Hal Prince18:31

That's kind of my sister.

Speaker 418:31

Yeah.

Hal Prince18:34

No, no, never, really.

Hal Prince18:38

Yes, but

Presenter18:46

I don't know.

Presenter18:47

Caveat of the general maybe? Who knows? You know, some of them quite clearly are not designed to succeed in a popular terms, i.e. Pacific Overtures, you know when you're doing that. And all Asian caste and non-linear musical about the incursions of Western civilization on Japan, that the whole world is not waiting with open arms for that. But you still do it. On the other hand, then once in a while you do something like a little night music because you know you will probably, if you do your work well, pay off, make some money back and encourage them to continue with you, which is the pattern we took over the years. Yes. But I mean in that relationship, I mean you you move on and you you do other things, but I mean sometime I think of him now. Doesn't he ever get uh disenchanted with the outside world? No, I don't think so because after all, you know, he has such an incredible reputation right now and so many people are writing like him, alas, or trying to. I think it must be disappointing that he's never had a show that's run, you know, three, four, five years. Sure.

Hal Prince19:21

Yeah.

Presenter19:45

Who wouldn't be?

Presenter19:46

But uh you know.

Presenter19:48

He gets a lot of uh

Presenter19:50

What's the word I want? Approbation, I guess.

Presenter19:53

I think that the nature of what interests him is so specific and the amount of detail

Presenter20:02

that he puts into it can limit his audience. But out out of your long association with him, what have there been the particular moments, particular favorites? The things that you look at and say, well, look, I don't care whether the public wants that or not. Well, Follies is the biggest example of that.

Speaker 220:14

No follies is

Speaker 420:14

It's the biggest exam.

Presenter20:16

Some years ago, again, my wife was responsible for that. I kept calling things successes and failures and so on. And then I switched off and made this distinction. There were hits and flops. Clearly, the hits make money and the flops don't. They lose money. But the successes and failures are another matter entirely. Follies is a great success, as far as I'm concerned. Another choice to break off.

Presenter20:40

Well, this is Laval's Ravel. It's Leonard Bernstein and the French National Orchestra. There's a very easy reason why I choose it. I wish we could listen to all of it, but it's 13 minutes long. This is the kind of theater I like. It's theater and music in this instance, but everything's there. It starts out melodic, easy, beautiful, relaxed, and there's a war coming and the end of the world at the end of it.

Presenter21:05

And there's something happening all through it, a dynamic that you can't resist, and that's both thrilling and frightening. And it's a bit like living on this globe.

Presenter22:15

Now we were talking earlier about success and failure, about flops and hits. Fiddler, I mean Fiddle on the Roof was one of the biggest hits of you ever sort of think about what what it is that makes a hit like that. No, I've never given it any thought at all. It happens and I think you get into terrible trouble.

Hal Prince22:27

But no, I'm

Hal Prince22:28

Yeah.

Presenter22:31

If it's a consideration when you first choose to work, I think you just have to do what it is you want to do and very often what you want to do, or happily in my case, dovetails with what the public wants to see because you're tired of seeing the same old thing. Well, let's bring it right up to date. I mean, let's talk about Phantom. What attracted you to that, apart from the fact that you worked with Andrew before? The need to get away from sort of mechanized, computerized.

Hal Prince22:53

Boom.

Presenter22:57

musical theater to get away from

Presenter23:00

You know, orchestrations that made it impossible to understand lyrics because they're all hyped up electronically to get back to a good story, to get to something romantic and emotional, take you away from what's on your mind too much of the time. So backing, in fact, the personal hunch again, basically this is. Yes, absolutely, feeding myself. Now, what about those moments of despair which you've you've had in your life? I mean, when you do a show and uh direct it, produce it, direct it particularly. I mean, you put so much of yourself into that for such a long time, such a concentrated effort. There must have been times when you just felt like giving it all up.

Hal Prince23:15

Um

Hal Prince23:17

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter23:35

Well, you say you do, but you don't really take it seriously. Not for a minute. No, I've never really thought of giving it up. I certainly get to feel sorry for myself. I think less than most people who do this. I I kind of move on to other things. And I wear blinders, and I refuse to feel sorry for myself for too long. And I've got a lot of people around to pet me up. So it's not all that awash in depression. Let's have another choice of Beckley. Well, this is Defaya.

Presenter24:02

It's Elamor Brucho.

Presenter24:04

It's the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. It's Bernstein. This is a tantalizing excerpt. I wish we could play it all.

Presenter24:10

My family and I have a house in Spain. We have a great allegiance to the territory. We've been to Granada. We paid a pilgrimage to Defaya's home.

Presenter24:22

And I feel very emotionally about all of it. I think this music expresses a lot of what I feel about the country.

Presenter25:28

Al, so you've got uh another show on the road, and it looks like rolling on for a long, long time.

Presenter25:33

What uh interests me is is, as a director, now you put all this work into it and it's it's going, it's moving. Is that you finished now with it? No, no, no, no, no, no. After all, one hopes it'll be around a very long time, as you said, and uh I should keep an eye on it.

Presenter25:47

And I mean to come back regularly, every three months or so?

Presenter25:51

And take a look at it, tidge it up.

Presenter25:54

You do make changes, but I want to be the one in command when the changes are made. Improvements in many instances.

Presenter26:01

And you have an obligation. When I was a producer not directing, it always drove me crazy that the directors who were working on the shows I was producing did not come back, did not pay enough attention.

Presenter26:12

And uh so

Presenter26:13

The minute I started directing, I took a real sense of responsibility for the shows I did. And what about the future beyond that? I mean, what do you have any more plans for more musicals? Yeah, I'm going to go into rehearsal fairly soon with Rosa, a show I was supposed to do here three years ago, and they ran out of money. And now we're doing it in the States with Georgia Brown, who is quite amazing. It was scored by Gilbert Beko, and Julian Moore, who wrote songbook most recently. I think it's going to be a nice show. It's the other extreme. One set, no moving parts. Very simple. Character study. Final record. Well, this is a popular record. This is a new record of Dave Grusen and Lee Rittenauer.

Presenter26:54

The number is called Before It's Too Late. The singer, a Brazilian, is Yvonne Lintz. I owe this completely to my kids who play it. But I brought the cassette over to London when I came into rehearsal with me and listened to it a number of times. Again, here goes. I think that all that

Presenter27:11

Brazilian stuff is extraordinary. I think the Portuguese language is as theatrical as anything there is, and it's about theater again.

Speaker 227:20

Come for skill for badge.

Speaker 227:24

A Belicida.

Speaker 227:27

Artispal!

Speaker 227:30

Oh, thy messitime.

Speaker 227:34

Comports convent.

Speaker 227:38

Happening, situation

Speaker 227:41

Ah, this is Palia!

Presenter27:48

Now Prince, you're now on this desert island. Now first of all, will you try to escape, do you think?

Presenter27:54

I have a hunch I would, yeah. So I think I might get very bored. Very quickly. Very quickly. It's all sort of self sufficient, though, I mean, given not at all.

Hal Prince27:55

Yeah.

Hal Prince28:01

No.

Presenter28:04

I'd starve on this island without a lot of help, I'll tell you that right now. Right, before you starve then, you've got three choices to make now. You've got one record out of the eight to pick, one that you'll keep, supposing seven were washed away.

Presenter28:15

Okay.

Presenter28:17

I'll take the Lieberstoat. Why not?

Presenter28:19

Oh

Presenter28:21

Kind of primal, isn't it? And what about the book you take with you?

Presenter28:25

That would be uh Look Homeward Angel probably.

Presenter28:29

That's because when I was a kid, Tom Wolfe was really the most fervently appreciated writer in university and so on. Now I don't think many people read him at all, and that's stunning to me that that's happened. I connect that up with a kind of covering and an unwillingness of people to just express themselves, let go, you know, be something I'd like to see more of in the theater. And I can quote passages of that book, and I can't quote many. So uh from other books. I'd like to have that one. And what about the luxury object?

Presenter28:58

Oh, that's a whole meal. That's got to be ab about food. I really ought to have somebody serve it to me, but you didn't offer me that. There's a restaurant in Gauf Chouin in the south of France, called Teitou, Fish Restaurant.

Presenter29:09

And whenever we're down in that part of the world, you call up days earlier. Sometimes you call from another country and warn them you're coming, and you go in there and have bouillabaise with langouste, and that's just an orgy of good eating. So I think that's what I'd like, is a bouillerbais with langouste.

Presenter29:24

and a bottle of blanc de blanc.

Presenter29:27

And I might not worry so much about how to get off the island.

Presenter29:31

Oh, Prince, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

Hal Prince29:39

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