SENSE OF OCCASION – Harold Prince (APPLAUSE BOOKS – ISBN: 9781495013027)
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Books arrive every so often that you start to read and find you have great difficulty in putting them down – this is one of those!
The first two-thirds of the book is a reprint of Harold Prince’s earlier publication: Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre but each of those chapters has a ‘reflections’ section appended to it in which Prince adds thoughts and perhaps pieces of information he had left out in the original book.
These are very interesting and, not having read the original book, I found the whole experience quite eye-opening at times (in a good way!) Then from Chapter 27 onwards we take up the story from the previous book starting with Pacific Overtures through to discussing a new production of Evita in 2017 where the original production, designs, etc were all being replicated for Johannesburg.
The book is extremely easy to read, the chapters are all quite short and you appear to be getting through it at the rate of knots but still taking in all the detail. My only gripe (and it is a very small one, but I do have to mention it) is the repeated use of the word ‘parenthetically’ – I don’t know why but every time it showed up (and it showed up a number of times throughout the book) I cringed.
I have also read some reader reviews on Amazon which say they would have liked more anecdotes, but I don’t think that is Prince’s style – he wasn’t writing a ‘tell all’ book about uncooperative actors, etc – this is a book about his career and his productions. If you want gossip and dirt, then this is not the book for you.
Prince has had a very long and interesting career in both producing and directing and it is always a wonderful experience to sit down and have the good and the bad times related to you by the person themselves. I was extremely lucky in that I attended one of the rehearsals for the original production of The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s in London and could see just how kind and generous this man is when directing. A feeling that came over me time and time again when reading this fantastic memoir of a fascinating gentleman of the theatre.
Nick Wakeham
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