Sense of occasion

SOMETIMES A REVIVAL is better than the original. This is true not just of theater but of love and also of the Broadway titan Harold Prince's new memoir, "Sense of Occasion" - which is to a large degree his old memoir, annotated and updated considerably, but left with its fine patina essentially undisturbed. I didn't realize this until I paid $50 cash for a copy of Prince's out-of-print 1974 book "Contradictions" to a rabbi who produced it from a plastic shopping bag in his ophthalmologist's Upper West Side waiting room. Everything about this transaction recalled a vanishing Manhattan. But Prince is not crippled by nostalgia. With glasses pushed atop his head in this book's cover photo, he gazes fiercely forward - despite the recent revue "Prince of Broadway" showcasing his copious and varied career highlights, which closed on Oct. 29, maybe because no one needed reminding. "The Phantom of the Opera" is the longest-running show ever in New York and haunts theaters the world over. His decade-plus partnership with Stephen Sondheim is rightly regarded as an ultimate master class in creativity, with the thenflop that all but ended it, "Merrily We Roll Along," not only now in regular rotation but lovingly chronicled by its participants in a recent documentary, "Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened." ("Whewl " writes Prince, who "went to bed night after night bathed in flop sweat" during "Merrily"'s doomed initial run.) There is "Cabaret" and "Candide" and so much else he's had a hand in: the Sharks and the Jets and the Yankees and the Pajamas. But other pots are forever percolating. " I have plans," he declares in the last of 19 new chapters in "Sense of Occasion," a title that refers not to his impending 90 th birthday but to the feeling of hushed anticipation that precedes every curtain's rise. Secondary to these plans is his life story, which Prince tells with an economy of emotion that recalls the producing he did to leverage himself into directing. You keep strict accounts but get on with it. He doesn't discuss being adopted, by a stockbroker and his wife who nudged him into orchestra seats rather than baseball bleachers, but does mention a nervous breakdown at age 14, after a serious reduction in the family's circumstances during the Great Depression. Gone was the Pierce-Arrow motor car, the apartment near the Museum of Natural History. "If I didn't find a life in the theater, how the hell would I live?" young Hal worried. With a chutzpah that would be impossible in the age of Google he faked a resumé that led him to the office of the Broadway eminence George Abbott. Their relationship was interrupted only by the mentee's stint in the Army and the mentor's death in 1995 at 107. Watching the creators of "Fiddler on the Roof" trying to focus its theme, Prince learned the importance of metaphor. "Well, it's about this milkman marrying off his five daughters. ... Well, it's about the tough life of a Jew in Christian Russia." Jerome Robbins: "But what's it really about?" Sheldon Harnick: "Forgodsakes, it's about tradition!" And the rest is royalties. There are a few tantalizing glimpses of Prince's 55-year marriage to the former Judy Chaplin (daughter of Saul, the Academy Award-winning arranger and composer). She was a ballerina and pianist whom he met in Paris, and whose ambitions he regrets curtailing. There's also a perhaps inevitable cameo from Donald J. Trump. But those seeking gossip about, say, Patti LuPone on the set of "Evita" will be disappointed. This is a record of work. Where Abbott sought to entertain, Prince has striven to elevate. And the most important characters in his book and his world are not himself or the star actors, but his collaborators, who have always included the audience. This autobiography is not the grand chandelier crashing down as at the end of the first act of "Phantom," but a series of warming, twinkling lights. ? ALEXANDRA Jacobs is an editor for the Styles section of The Times. She is writing a biography of Elaine Stritch.

Producer, director, and playwright Prince has worked in show business since he was 19. Now 89, and with a career spanning seven decades, he has won 21 Tony Awards, including eight for directing and ten for producing. His first hit was The Pajama Game. He's had his flops along the way, but it's hard to fault the number and quality of his successes: West Side Story, A Funny Thing., Company, Follies, Phantom of the Opera. In 1974, after many years working on Broadway, he published Contradictions, a part memoir, part reflection on the state of theater and an expression of love for his difficult mistress, the theater. He's updated that book here, adding comments on the already published chapters and appended sections covering from 1974 to today. It's the type of book that could easily become hackneyed, a self-serving march through past triumphs. That it isn't is a tribute to this passionate, intelligent man who has had years of unparalleled access to the greats and near-greats of Broadway and wishes to share what he's learned. VERDICT Perceptive, fresh, and engagingly modest, this book will prove irresistible to theater lovers everywhere.-David Keymer, Cleveland © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.