It was that innovation across his four-decade career that won Prince an astounding 21 Tony Awards. The Times once heralded him as “the master of the towering bridge (‘Evita’), the labyrinthine inferno (‘Sweeney Todd’) and the musical-within-the-musical (‘Follies’).”
His masterful experimentation with form, the larger-than-life shows he produced and directed, and his groundbreaking collaborations with some of the greatest composers of our time made him a tour de force — the tour de force — in his field.
Prince’s death Wednesday at the age of 91 leaves a massive hole on Broadway. The works he leaves behind, however, have unquestionably shaped the theater.
‘Cabaret’
It goes without question that “Cabaret,” a melancholy musical set in a nightclub during the rise of Nazism, wouldn’t be “Cabaret” without Prince.
With his first directing hit — which brought his first directing Tony Award — Prince, also a producer of the show, left his creative fingerprints on every aspect of it. The cast’s memorable centerpiece, the master of ceremonies, was a character entirely of Prince’s creation, inspired by his time spent in Stuttgart while in the Army.
“I had hung out in a club called Maxim’s in the basement of a bombed-out church, and there was a little MC with lipstick and eye shadow and false eyelashes, and he’d tell terrible tacky jokes,” Prince recalled last year in his interview series, “The Hal Prince Talks.” “And there were three very chunky girls in butterfly costumes dancing around him, and one drunk at the bar, and one drunk asleep at the table, and me in uniform, just thinking I’d been reborn and gone to heaven — this is it.”
‘Company’
Prince left a legacy in the shows he created, both as director and producer, with Stephen Sondheim. Prince was “the most important single figure” in Sondheim’s career, Meryle Secrest wrote in her biography of the storied composer.
Prince said the two met at the opening of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” in 1949, according to the book. Over coffee soon after, they set a mutual goal to be the next Rodgers and Hammerstein.
In 1970, Prince directed and produced “Company,” a reflection on married life in New York. In his New York Times review, Clive Barnes wrote that Prince failed to find structural unity between the scenes. But Barnes added, “I really believe a lot of people are going to love it.” (The show has since become a treasured classic.)
‘Follies’
Prince won a Tony for directing “Follies” in 1971, a show that nostalgically illustrated the grandeur of theater. The plot was centered on a group of former showgirls reuniting in a venue about to be demolished, but its larger themes were how we remember the past and make peace with the direction our lives have taken.
The production was exemplary of the concept musical format Prince was known for experimenting with: the idea of weaving a theme through a show’s elements rather than solely relying on the plot to tell the story.
In The Times, Martin Gottfried called the show’s experimental form monumental: “Its importance as a kind of theater transcends its interest as an example of a musical.
“Had it not succeeded so tremendously at what it was trying to do,” he added, “the attempt alone — the very idea — would have made it a landmark musical.”
‘Sweeney Todd’
“Sweeney Todd,” the gothic tale of a vengeful barber, brought Prince and Sondheim together again in 1978.
As the director — a role that brought him another Tony — Prince amplified the show's most grotesque elements, Richard Eder wrote in The Times’ review. The effects, famously including a decent amount of throat cuttings, were powerful — “sometimes excessively so.”
‘Evita’
Prince won a Tony in 1980 for his direction of “Evita,” a collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber that chronicled the brief life of Argentine political hero Eva Perón.
He helmed the show through its runs in London’s West End and on Broadway. Although critics didn’t revere the musical’s reliance on narration, it was Prince’s staging and leadership that propelled “Evita” forward.
“If your curiosity stays alive at ‘Evita’ in spite of all the undramatized hearsay that isn’t going to satisfy it, it’s due to the authoritative crackle of ringmaster Prince’s whip,” Kerr wrote in his review after the show made the jump to New York in 1979. “Listen, the whip says. You listen.”
‘The Phantom of the Opera’
“Phantom” certainly was — and still is — the most financially successful and longest lasting musical of Prince’s partnership with Lloyd Webber. Beyond the commercial, however, Prince’s creative influence has long left a mark on the production.
The show, a melodramatic backstage love story that Prince called “larger than life,” was a characteristic project of Lloyd Webber. But it was Prince — whom Times critic Frank Rich called “a prince of darkness in his own right” in his 1988 review — who elevated the show to a victory of dynamic stagecraft, Rich wrote. Lloyd Webber said in a statement Wednesday: “Farewell, Hal. Not just the prince of musicals, the crowned head who directed two of the greatest productions of my career, ‘Evita’ and ‘Phantom.’ This wonderful man taught me so much and his mastery of musical theater was without equal.”
‘Fiddler on the Roof’
“Fiddler on the Roof” stands tall among Prince’s producer credits. The story of a tradition-oriented Jewish family in a Russian village, drawn from the tales of Sholem Aleichem, won the Tony for best musical in 1965. (The show also won him a Tony for best producer of a musical, a separate category in that era.)
Prince also won a special Tony Award for “Fiddler” in 1972, when it became what was then the longest-running Broadway musical.
‘West Side Story’
Prince stepped in as a producer, with his partner Robert Griffith, on what would become a landmark musical — an urban adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” told through rival gangs in New York — after another producer dropped the project.
“West Side Story” wasn’t showered with awards at the time, but it has certainly stood on its own since. New adaptations, for the stage and screen, are both in the works.
“History is littered with great works of art that got terrible reviews originally,” Prince said in a 2008 interview. “And they survived.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.