Harold Prince: A Director’s Journey

The saga of Hal Prince continues. The last edition of Carol Ilson’s biography ended with the apparent demise of Kiss of the Spider Woman after its out-of-town tryout. New York critics were not invited to attend, but they came anyway – and crushed the show. There was, however, some life in the Spider Woman yet and, resurrected in the form of Chita Rivera, she opened first in London, then on Broadway, was acclaimed in both venues and carried away the 1993 Tony for best musical. So the new material in this second updated edition of Harold Prince, covering the past decade, has a happy beginning, which is followed by the director’s joyously welcomed revival of Show Boat. In the years since then the string of successes seems to have frayed a bit, though Prince’s most recent directorial effort, Parade, also won itself a Tony for best musical, in 1999. And as this book ends, Hal Prince talks enthusiastically of various forthcoming productions in the planning stage, making clear that the end of his saga is nowhere in sight.