Pushing boundaries: Broadway director and producer Harold Prince dies

Harold Prince, who has died at 91, directed such shows as Phantom of the Opera, Evita and Westside Story. Photo / AP

The Broadway director and producer Harold Prince, who pushed the boundaries of musical theatre with groundbreaking shows such as The Phantom of the Opera, Cabaret, Company and Sweeney Todd and won a staggering 21 Tony Awards, has died.

He was 91. Prince died after a brief illness in Reykjavik, Iceland. He was in transit from Europe to New York.

Prince was known for his fluid, cinematic director's touch and was unpredictable and uncompromising in his choice of stage material. He often picked challenging, offbeat subjects to musicalise, such as a murderous, knife-wielding barber who baked his victims in pies or the 19th-century opening of Japan to the West.

Emma Kingston, playing the role of Eva Peron, on stage during the 'Evita' media call oin 2018 in Singapore. Photo / Gett Images

Along the way, he helped create some of Broadway's most enduring musical hits, first as a producer of shows such as The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof.

He later became a director, overseeing landmark musicals such as Cabaret, Sweeney Todd, Evita and The Phantom of the Opera.

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber said it was impossible to overestimate Prince's importance to the stage.

"All of modern musical theatre owes practically everything to him," Lloyd Webber said.

Tributes also poured in from generations of Broadway figures, including composer David Yazbek, who called Prince "a real giant," and the performer Bernadette Peters, who called it a "sad day" . Seinfeld's Jason Alexander, who was directed by Prince in Merrily We Roll Along, said Prince "reshaped American theatre and today's giants stand on his shoulders".

Composer Jason Robert Brown hailed Prince's "commitment and an enthusiasm and a work ethic and an endless well of creative passion".

Cast members of The Phantom of the Opera perform on stage. Photo / Supplied

Prince, known by friends as Hal, worked with some of the best-known composers and lyricists in musical theatre, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, John Kander and Fred Ebb, and, most notably, Stephen Sondheim.

"I don't do a lot of analysing of why I do something," Prince once said. "It's all instinct."

Only rarely, he said, did he take on an idea just for the money.

- AP