A Believer in Big Breaks

Long ago, before “West Side Story,” ’Fiddler on the Roof” or “The Phantom of the Opera,” 19-year-old Harold Prince wrote to legendary producer-director George Abbott seeking a job. Not only would he work for free, he wrote, but if it looked as if he was working for free, they were to fire him immediately.

Prince got the job at Abbott’s office in New York’s Rockefeller Center and soon took home $25 a week. By the time he was 26, he won his first Tony, for co-producing “The Pajama Game” in 1954. Nineteen Tony Awards later-and still in Rockefeller Center-it’s now 73-year-old Prince who’s taking the chance with promising young people.

His current bet on the future is “3hree,” an evening of one-act musicals opening at the Ahmanson on Wednesday. Conceived by Prince and three teams of relative newcomers, the trio of musicals was developed in the Harold Prince Musical Theatre Program of New York’s Directors Company and had its world premiere last fall at Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theater. And just in case that wasn’t enough of an imprimatur, Prince is directing one of the musicals himself.

“I wanted to redress the balance of what’s getting done in the commercial theater and to get new musicals up on the stage,” Prince says. “I think my biggest frustration is the absence of opportunity for the next generation, and this piece triples the number of people you introduce to the public in one night.”

Prince joined the directing team in part to make sure “3hree” had a nice-sized budget and added publicity. The extra money, he says, made it more feasible for each show to have its own director-one of them Prince’s assistant, Brad Rouse-as well as its own writers, choreography, set, costumes and overture. The result, says Prince, is “you get the sense of occasion of a single musical, only three times in one night.”

The man who directed musicals about Eva Peron, South American prisons and the lynching of Leo Frank chose gentler fare this time around. “3hree” sets to music the stories of an exterminator’s illicit love affair (‘The Mice”), a Southern belle’s ghost story (‘Lavender Girl”) and a New Jersey guy’s determination to send his Wal-Mart lawn chair and himself skyward (‘The Flight of the Lawnchair Man”).

At a recent rehearsal for the Ahmanson production, Prince is lit with enthusiasm. He applauds, laughs out loud, dictates notes. Be more irritated, he tells one actor. Rougher. Be more casual, he tells another. Don’t think so much. But after nearly every criticism he tosses off a line like, “Hey, guys, it’s just great.”

Prince’s enthusiasm persists whether he’s speaking about his conductor son, Charley, and director daughter, Daisy, or lavishing praise on such “3hree” family members as lighting designer Howell Binkley and the nine actors playing more than 30 parts. He cares about every one of them and takes pride in their work.

Prince’s frequent collaborator Stephen Sondheim has referred to him as “one of the very few champions of new work in the commercial theater,” and it’s something he’s done since he first started as a producer back in the ‘50s. His first hit, “Pajama Game,” launched the composing team of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, in addition to choreographer Bob Fosse. The pattern continued through Sondheim on “West Side Story” in 1957, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick on “She Loves Me” in 1963 and John Kander and Fred Ebb on “Flora, the Red Menace” in 1965.

“I don’t know anybody with the consistent track record of Hal Prince in terms of giving young people their break,” Ebb says. “Looking back, Hal more or less invented us. Johnny had an unsuccessful show on Broadway, and I had an unsuccessful show off-Broadway, and he gave us a chance to write an unsuccessful show on Broadway together-’Flora.’ With that kind of theatrical history behind you, you have to believe that nobody would ever hire you again, but Hal put the lie to that by offering us ‘Cabaret.’ I very much feel that without Hal, we might never have been hired again.”

Years later, Prince saw choreographer-director Susan Stroman’s work at a tiny off-off-Broadway house in 1987, then asked her to choreograph “Don Giovanni,” the opera he was about to direct. He saw playwright Edward Gallardo’s work at the Puerto Rican Travelling Theatre, then gave him a shot writing 1994’s “The Petrified Prince.”

Stroman says one never knows where Prince will turn up, and these days his reach is extended by his children, who often funnel new talent his way. John Bucchino, one of the composers of “3hree,” was introduced to him by daughter Daisy, who sang a song on Bucchino’s album, “Grateful-The Songs of John Bucchino.” So were Michael John LaChiusa, who wrote music and lyrics for “Petrified Prince,” and Jason Robert Brown, the composer-lyricist Prince hired for 1998’s “Parade.”

“Hal takes a lot of pride in finding people and bringing them up,” says Brown, who won a Tony Award at age 29 for his “Parade” score. “But it’s not just that he gave me an opportunity to write a show. He gave me exactly the kind of show that I wanted to be writing. He had an instinct for what I would love and respond to, and he forced me to be good enough to earn it.” It works both ways, Prince responds.”Why wouldn’t I support the concept of introducing composers, lyricists, whatever? It’s work for me, and it’s more fun. I don’t like abrasion while I’m working. I don’t thrive on chaos. I enjoy what I’m doing, and it seems to work better when I am enjoying it.”

Besides, he adds, mentorship is an obligation. “There used to be a whole community of people who had a generosity of spirit, and the nurturing process was so much more in place for the next generation. The morning after I did ‘She Loves Me,’ there was a note on my desk from Cole Porter, who I had never met and never did meet. It said ‘Welcome. The evening was great.’ ”

The director still has that letter and many more. Correspondence is a key responsibility of one of the three young people working in his front office, and assistant Rouse says Prince doesn’t start the day until the mail is done. Prince says he answers every letter he gets, questioning just how busy other people are that they can’t do the same.

Frequent Sondheim collaborator John Weidman, for instance, wound up writing Broadway shows rather than legal briefs after Prince responded to his letter back in the ‘70s. Librettist Weidman had met Prince as a child-his father was Jerome Weidman, co-librettist of “Fiorello!” (with George Abbott)-and wrote him from Yale Law School asking if Prince hired law students during the summer. He didn’t usually, but Prince was intrigued by Weidman’s postscript that he was writing a play about Commodore Matthew Perry and the opening of Japan. Prince invited Weidman in, listened to his notion, then took a $500 option on the first draft of the yet unwritten “Pacific Overtures.”

“That made the whole thing seem real to me,” Weidman recalls. “All I had was what I thought was a good idea. The fact that Hal supported the idea and me was entirely responsible for the fact that I went away and wrote the play and that my life took the turn it took. The reason I have a career in the theater is Hal’s support for that first tentative gesture of mine.”

“What’s missing in the musical theater is producers willing to nurture new work, raise the money and put it on,” Prince laments. “There are too few of them, and they’re far more willing to mount a revival. Almost everything I’ve done over the years that worked is staring at me again, and whatever hasn’t happened in the last couple of years, or this season, is coming next season and the one after that. It’s flattering, I suppose, but it’s not where I live. It’s good to have revivals. It’s bad to have all revivals.”

Remember, Prince cautions, he’s not “some sort of impractical, self-indulgent artist. I was a producer, and early in my career, a lot of potentially dangerous, innovative and controversial material paid off at the box office. That was very good not just for me and my colleagues, but for the theater, and we need a little more of that now. Do I think that ‘West Side Story’ would get on today? No. They’ve just done a new production of ‘Follies’ at the Roundabout Theatre. Would the Roundabout Theatre do ‘Follies’ if I brought it to them originally? The answer is no. Nobody would have the courage.”

Courage is a word Prince uses a lot-the courage of flying blind when you’re young and the lack of courage he sees all around him. Get him going on producers, and his otherwise mellow demeanor changes, his voice rising, his blue eyes burning. “I’m too aware that the same thing culturally has cut across the theater that has cut across movies: We have our version of bodies hurtling through plate-glass windows. Most of the big money people don’t know what would interest an audience if you did it. They only know what interested the audience last time.”

“3hree” is just Prince’s latest effort to launch new musical-theater talent. Following what he calls six “fallow” years in the ‘80s when he couldn’t please audiences or critics, Prince turned away from Broadway first to join Andrew Lloyd Webber in crafting “Phantom,” then to lend his name and prestige to a program called New Musicals. Attempting unsuccessfully to develop new material away from public viewing, New Musicals lasted only briefly at State University of New York’s Purchase campus. But “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” which was developed there, went on to win seven Tony Awards in 1993.

Prince also got involved with New York’s Directors Company, whose Harold Prince Musical Theatre Program began in 1992 to develop new musical-theater directors. Prince, who has done considerable mentoring there, says with great pleasure that last season alone, five of the shows developed in the program were given premieres in first-class theaters.

One of them was “3hree.” Philadelphia’s American Music Theater Festival named its new home the Prince Music Theater in March 1999, and Prince wanted to direct something for his namesake. Worried that an original two-act musical could take years to develop, Prince thought an evening of one-acts would take less time. That May, he sent word to various people he and Rouse knew or knew about. By the time Prince came back from a summer away, he had a stack of possible projects.

Prince selected three creative teams, which then wrote librettos, brought in songs and occasionally drew on him for feedback. Sets are by Walt Spangler and costumes by Miguel Angel Huidor, both recent Yale School of Drama graduates. Huidor actually used his work on “3hree” as his graduate thesis.

After a reading last spring for an audience of about 100 people at the Directors Company, Prince took his show to Philadelphia. The premiere there last fall earned good reviews, strong ticket sales and enough buzz for a possible Broadway run next fall.

Prince, meanwhile, is involved in two major projects. First is “Hollywood Arms,” which he expects to go into rehearsal about a year from now. He’s been working for almost two years, he says, with Carrie Hamilton and her mother, Carol Burnett, on their play about three generations of Los Angeles women in the ‘40s. Right behind it is a yet-unnamed production, reworking “Wise Guys,” a new musical from Sondheim and Weidman.

That musical would be his 10th with Sondheim as producer or director. “Steve and I took a 19-year vacation from each other,” says Prince, “And with John, it’s longer since we did ‘Pacific Overtures’ together. But there’s a nice thing that happened. We sat down to start work, and it was very familiar.”

Prince plans to use both the set and costume designers of “3hree” on the new show. “Part of what Hal enjoys is being in the presence of new talent and new energy,” says Weidman. “It’s not just an act of generosity. It’s something that keeps him excited about the work.”

You bet it is. Prince, in fact, calls it the George Abbott legacy, saying, “As you get older, you know more and more based on your experience, and you have more to share with people who haven’t had that experience. But it’s an even exchange, because while you’re focusing them and giving them craft, they’re sharing contemporary taste. So you’re prolonging your creative years. You’re staying younger, thanks to that compact.

“I don’t doubt that was precisely what my value was for Abbott, who intensely enjoyed the company of young people, and so do I. The irony of my life is that I was the young guy in the collaboration, and now there are young guys in collaboration with me. It’s one huge closing of the circle.”

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* “3hree,” Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Additional performances April 29, May 6, 13 and 20 at 7:30 p.m, May 24, May 31 and June 7 at 2 p.m. Ends June 10. $35-$70. For more information: (213) 628-2772.