Prince of Broadway (Manhattan Theatre Club at The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre) by a multitude of the best and brightest #PrinceOfBroadway

Prince of Broadway is a title both accurate and honorific.  It is a love letter to one of theater’s all-time great producers, Hal Prince.  With heart and chutzpah he started young and in an on-going career spanning 7 decades has shepherded some of the best (and best-loved) shows in history onto the Great White Way.

If you are a theater fan, of any degree, you need to see this, with its beautifully rendered snippets of so many beloved shows.  The entire cast brims with talent and each vignette is fully rendered.  There were numbers that took my breath away and some that were wonderful fun; every single one deeply appreciated by my stage-door-johnnie’s heart.  These are interspersed with ‘Hal’ (played by, at some point, every cast member) reminiscing about this show and that, this writer and that, this lucky break and that. 

Chuck Cooper’s Tevye, singing “If I Were a Rich Man” was touching and funny and his Joe, singing “Ol’ Man River” was wistful, wise, wonderful.  I loved “You’ve Got Possibilities”, from a show I never had the pleasure of seeing, “It’s a Bird……It’s a Plane……It’s Superman”, sung with snap and sass by Janet Dacal’s Sydney.  Emily Skinner’s Joanne, belting out “Ladies who Lunch” from Sondheim’s “Company” is brash, brutalized, surviving; her Desiree’s “Send in the Clowns” is a gorgeous lamentation and a prayer.  Bryonha Marie Parham’s voice is heaven-sent with range, power and glistening beauty.  She is equally mesmerizing as Sally Bowles inviting you to the “Cabaret” and Queenie, who “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”.  Brandon Uranowitz is spectacular as both The Emcee with “Willkommen” and “If You Could See Her” from “Cabaret”, and Molina, “Dressing Them Up” from “Kiss of the Spider Woman”.  Michael Xavier’s “The Music of the Night” was simply gorgeous.

You will leave the theater after a couple of hours spent with this ‘Prince’ royally satisfied.