Prince of Broadway – Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York

Michael Xavier and cast in a number from Company in Prince of Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York. Pictures: Matthew Murphy

Prince of Broadway continues at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York until 22 October.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Imagine leafing through a richly embellished scrapbook, in which just about every entry or memento comes magically – and vibrantly – to life.

That’s the happy delirium that may well overtake you as you witness Prince of Broadway, the new musical revue celebrating Harold Prince and his more than six decades as a producer and/or director. It’s a career that has given birth to an unparalleled string of hits (and some misses as well), many of them sampled here deliciously, often thrillingly.

For a show with such an epic mission, it’s a surprisingly intimate affair. There are nine cast members in all. Of course, it helps that they are all supremely talented, and that their numbers are staged with bone-deep insight and panache by Prince himself, in collaboration with the invaluable Susan Stroman, who also choreographs.

Although it does so, you never get the feeling that the show is trying is trying to overwhelm you. It’s more like a comfortable chat with an amiable persona, whose products speak triumphantly for themselves.

David Thompson’s script has each of the performers appear singly on stage and talk for Prince in the first person. The only bit of characterisation is the signature pair of eyeglasses pushed back on the head.

Even before the overture, they tell us how Prince began in showbusiness as a non-salaried office boy for the famed producer-director-writer George Abbott. Then as things progress, the brief monologues generally provide a bit of history or background for the show about to be sampled.

And what an assemblage of shows. When the excitement-building overture does begin (Jason Robert Brown did the new orchestration and arrangements), it calls to mind many of them, tying together snatches of melody.

It culminates with more than 30 titles being projected one after another onto the set, and as we hear the final strains of ‘Hey There’, we’re told how The Pajama Game – Prince’s first producer credit – became an unexpected hit.

This is followed by Damn Yankees, with its playful anthem ‘Heart’ given a fully-staged rendering. A group of dejected baseball players are receiving a pep talk from a determinedly inspirational coach, played with grand panache by Chuck Cooper. The ball players are the cast’s other three males: Brandon Uranowitz, Michael Xavier and Tony Yazbeck.

Tony Yazbeck and Kaley Ann Voorhees performing ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story in Prince of Broadway

The mood shifts palpably with West Side Story. Yazbeck takes the stage alone for a compelling ‘Something’s Coming’ and then joins Kaley Ann Voorhees for a swoon-inducing duet of ‘Tonight’.

Then, it’s on to She Loves Me. Uranowitz punctuates the exhilarating ‘Tonight at Eight’ with eye-popping physical comedy, and Bryonha Marie Parham bares her soul filled with romantic longing in ‘Will He Like Me?’

We’re told how It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman received rave reviews but failed to find an audience. Taking on the show’s most well-known song, ‘You’ve Got Possibilities’, a delightful Janet Dacal as a newsroom secretary aggressively vamps the mild-mannered Clark Kent, mutely but engagingly embodied by Xavier.

When it comes to his favourite show, a surrogate Prince tells as how he has “quite a number,” but “I lean a little towards Follies.”

From this masterwork, Emily Skinner and Karen Ziemba as the two former showgirls, Phyllis and Sally, along with Cooper and Yazbeck as their respective husbands, capture all the aging angst of the present and the youthful joy of the past in ‘Waiting for the Girls Upstairs’.

And Yazbeck brings the Follies sequence to a glorious close, alternating passionate singing with phenomenal tap dance breaks in ‘The Right Girl’.

And on and on, the gulp-in-the-throat moments are served up for some two and a half hours, broken only by an intermission.

Among the many highlights: the heartbreaking edge Skinner brings to ‘Send in the Clowns’ from A Little Night Music and the truly terrifying fierceness she injects into Company’s ‘Ladies Who Lunch’. Also from Company, Xavier takes ‘Being Alive’ from intellectual contemplation to an uninhibited cri de coeur.

Ziemba gives us a wondrously loquacious Mrs Lovett singing about ‘The Worst Pies in London’ from Sweeney Todd and a steely Fraulein Schneider from Cabaret, defying fate with her declaration ‘So What?’

Uranowitz imbues Cabaret’s ‘Willkommen’ with all the emcee playful sleaziness you could want, while Parham transforms its title song from a sexy invitation to a battle cry.

Demonstrating versatility to the nth degree, Cooper, in addition to his formerly noted tasks, portrays a bouncy Tevye with ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler On the Roof; Joe from Show Boat, going from deeply thoughtful to a powerhouse of passion in ‘Ol’ Man River’, and Sweeney Todd, scarily declaring his affection for his newly found set of razors.

And I still haven’t named them all, such as Dacal’s vivacious and elegantly touching Evita. But let’s jump to the final sampling, the uber-smash Phantom of the Opera, with a breathtakingly lush rendering of ‘The Music of The Night’ by Xavier and Voorhees.

Contributing mightily to each sequence are the scenery pieces and projections by Beowulf Boritt, the costumes by William Ivey Long and the lighting by Howell Binkley.

They all work together, smartly evoking the individual ambience of the shows being represented. It’s truly masterful design work. For example, the sudden appearance of a staircase and one showgirl surrounded by a gown and headpiece that almost fills the stage take you instantly into Follies.

Ironically, this salute to a Broadway hit-maker has had a long and difficult time aborning. Originally announced for a 2012 Broadway opening, preceded by a tryout premiere in Toronto, Canada, the show was struck with funding problems.

Further dates fell through as well, but a production, less elaborate than originally planned, finally saw the light of day in Japan in 2015, paving the way for this one, brought to Broadway under the auspices of the non-profit Manhattan Theatre Club.

After all the retrospection, Prince of Broadway ends with an original song by Brown, the entire company joining in. We’ve been told that Prince likes to spend the day after a show opens to get to work on a new one. The song aims to sum up his modus operandi; it’s entitled ‘Do the Work’. And musical theatre aficionados everywhere can be glad – more than glad – that Prince did exactly that.

Ron Cohen

Readers may also be interested in:

New York Musical Festival – shows aplenty on the horizon – Review