Paradise Found - A Lost Cause?

Sometimes I marvel at the human capacity for self-delusion. In a recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, storied theater director Harold Prince spoke about his recent production of Paradise Found at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London. And some of Prince's comments really got me scratching my head. Most of them in fact.

As you may know, Paradise Found was by all accounts an unmitigated disaster. Granted I didn't see it, but we're not talking mixed reviews here, but outright hostile pans. The fabulous West End Whingers were unrestrained in their disdain. "We're still a wee bit shell-shocked, to be honest..." The delightful SarahB at Adventures in the Endless Pursuit of Entertainment wondered at the end whether it was just an "elaborate joke."

Well, according to Prince, the problems with the production stemmed from the fact that the theater and the cast were too small:

The material is great. But it should be big...Now I have to do it somewhere where there's a large chorus. We had wonderful actors...but everyone was doubling and tripling...That's not what the material demands...I'm meeting with the authors the week after next, and we’re going to aim for it.

Again, I didn't see the show, but none of the reviews that I read said that the venue or the cast size were at fault. No, most of them seemed to focus on the material itself, which one reviewer called "[A] pastiche Arabian Nights fable of unbelievable coarseness and vulgarity."

I know that some creators refuse to read reviews, but I can't imagine that Prince was completely insulated from the critical drubbing that Paradise Found received. But I was simply floored by his contention that the show just needed to be bigger. No, Hal. Great shows work in small paces and with small casts. John Doyle's recent productions of your Sweeney Todd and Company certainly come to mind. The idea that all you really need to do is throw some more money at Paradise Found for the project to work is ludicrous.

Of course, this is probably an academic discussion, because Prince is highly unlikely to find investors clueless enough to open their purse strings for a full-scale production of Paradise Found. Yes, this is the man who made millions on Phantom of the Opera. But he's also the man who gave us Lovemusik. And Roza. And Grind. And A Doll's Life. And Bounce.

You get the point.

Comments

[Spencer]

Paradise Found was a tragic mess. The music & script were terrible. On the night I saw it, almost HALF of the audience left at intermission. When you are in a small theatre like the Chocolate Menier, it was so obvious... I wonder how the actors felt.

Last night, two people left our production of RENT and I felt bad - I'm not sure if I could continue if more than half of the audience left.

Tragic, tragic mess.

My full review: http://wp.me/pGUNN-oB

[Scott Miller]

Remember that Hal Prince (as much as I love much of his work) was the one who insisted that both Sweeney Todd and Evita be massive productions even though both shows' creators intended them to be small, intimate chamber musicals...

[ccaggiano]

Scott, it's funny but that was one of the things I was going to address, but it must have slipped my mind. And Sweeney certainly worked on a more intimate scale. And the Evita revival in London was very strong, and owed very little to Prince's original.

[Geoff]

Perhaps the problem is that Prince started thatrical life in the era of Big Broadway. His formative years of theatre going had to have been informed by the lavish scale of Broadway production standards of the 1930s and 1940s. His work as a director has, for the most part, always featured size and sweep. Now, I know nothing of "Paradise Lost," other than what I've read in a series of extremely hostile reviews, and I'm not saying that Prince isn't deluded or that larger is necessarily better, but...

I sure do love me some size and sweep. Prince's original staging of "Night Music" was unbelievably opulent and gorgeous which only makes the current revival look more than a little cheap. Sweeney may certainly "work" on a more intimate scale, but the original production, overblown as it might seem to some, played like gangbusters. And there is simply no earthly reason why this greatest of Sondheim scores should be played by anything less than a large orchestra with a full complement of strings. I mean Patti Lupone with a tuba? Oh, come now.

I honestly don't know if Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice intended for "Evita" to be an intimate theatrical experience or not. Their concept album for the show doesn't sound very intimate to me. I do know that nobody had a clue how to put it on a stage until Prince showed up. I don't know about you, but I think they were extremely fortunate to land Prince and get that mammoth production which, once again, was absolutely spectacular. Do smaller "Evita" stagings work? Yes, I (reluctantly) suppose so, but I always miss the epic staging elements which seem so inherent to the story.

Now before I'm accused of being a latter day Mike Todd, I fully admit that form should follow function, that not all musicals require a Broadway-style treatment, that "bigger isn't better" (to borrow a phrase from Michael Stewart), and that many small, intimate musicals die in cavernous Broadway houses which seem to swallow them whole. I am saying, however, that I'm sick to death of classic musicals being performed in intimate (read impoverished) settings in the name of art, when we all know it's simply just a matter of economics. Nothing wrong with acknowleging the primacy of Broadway economics -- it is commercial theatre after all -- but let's be honest and call a spade a spade. Cheap is as cheap does.

So will Prince get his large-scale "Paradise Lost?" Probably not. From everything I've read, the material seems truly inferior, but I'll bet he's probably right that the show would play better in a large scale setting. Enough to make it work? Who knows? Was it Sheldon Harnick who had that line about washing garbage? Something about how you can wash garbage all you want, but at the end you're still left with garbage.

[SarahB]

Hal Prince could stage this thing in a super bowl and it wouldn't help. He's wrong to blame the size of the venue and band. The book is ridiculous. Most of the lyrics are ridiculous. The story itself is ridiculous! However, there's nothing really wrong with the music itself - come on, it's Strauss orchestrated by Tunick (although Johann Strauss isn't really my cup of tea, had it been Richard Strauss then maybe it would have flown). Plus, I'm glad I had the chance to hear Kate, Shuler, Judy, et al singing full on a la operetta. But Hal Prince is delusional if he thinks this thing has a chance at another life. I can't understand why any investor thought this was worth spending a dime on in the first place.

[Tom]

Didn't see Paradise Found, but when I heard what it was about I immediately thought of "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" and that kind of comparison could cripple any New Musical right off the bat. I like all the actors in it and the story certainly doesn't lack ambition, so I will be disappointed if it can't be fixed, if fixing is what it needs.