Harold Prince Knew How to Make a Musical

As a college student spending a year in London in the late 1970s, I wangled a writing assignment from a New York magazine that got me into every rehearsal of Evita, a musical then in its first production. The excitement in London was over the new show’s authors—Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who had also written Jesus Christ Superstar. But for me, the best part was getting an up-close view of an idol: Harold Prince. He had produced shows from West Side Story to Fiddler on the Roof. And he was both producer and director of Company, Follies, and A Little Night Music, the Stephen Sondheim musicals that were the soundtrack of my adolescence.

Sitting on folding chairs in church auditoriums and various rehearsal studios in north London, I got to see at close range how Prince shaped a production. I also got to talk to Rice