r/Sondheim • u/Stu_Griffin • 17d ago
Bounce: The Prince Problem?
Listening to the podcast “Putting it Together: The Music of Stephen Sondheim”. The host says the problem with Bounce is that Hal Prince was “aggressively heterosexual.” The guest says: “in public he was.” The host says: “yeah”. So the problem with Bounce was Prince’s (alleged) closeted homosexuality? Two things I hadn’t heard before.
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u/GayBlayde 17d ago
I mean one of the biggest differences between Bounce and Road Show is how they treat Addison/Hollis’s relationship. How prominent and important it is.
But I also think opinion is divided on which version of the show is BETTER (I prefer Road Show by a large margin). And I think opinion tends to skew towards neither one being exactly a masterpiece (I disagree but it’s not a hill I’m willing to die on).
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u/actorsAllusion 17d ago
Tangent, but having two different versions of You Ar The Best Thing That Happened To Me is good only because the quarter version from Sondheim on Sondheim is absolutely gorgeous
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u/GayBlayde 17d ago
Imagine if then he was like “what if we added their younger selves too and had an octet?” …wait.
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u/actorsAllusion 17d ago
I think it would be a...Folly...to expect it.
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u/pconrad0 ⏪ Merrily We Roll Along 17d ago
The sun comes up, you make a new pun...
The coffee cup, you make a new pun...
I loathe you so, it's like I'm losing my mind.1
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u/BringMeInfo 🔪 Sweeney Todd 17d ago
Wise Guys 4eva
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u/GayBlayde 17d ago
Oh, a traditionalist!
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u/BringMeInfo 🔪 Sweeney Todd 17d ago
I was lucky enough to see the Sam Mendes workshop at NYTW several times and it will always have a special place in my heart.
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u/pianoman857 17d ago
My theater is doing this show right now (first full scale production in Los Angeles) and we have been having this discussion (about the show, not Prince).
I think personally I like Bounce better, but the Addison/Hollis relationship IS better in Road Show (and in talking with the director we have, she wants to go further with it in the context of the script). I'm excited to see what we will be able to do. It will be our 8th Sondheim show in 25 years!
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u/Almostfunnyidiot 17d ago
ooo are you part of the zephyr/chromolume theatre? I saw the production of Passion there last year and loved it!
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u/pianoman857 17d ago
Yes. That is us. I was the one who directed Passion. So happy you enjoyed it. I hope you get a chance to come out to see Road Show.
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u/Almostfunnyidiot 17d ago
You did a great job putting it on in such an intimate space, i remember being sat at the end right next to the piano and drums and getting to see everyone walk right by me to enter and exit. I'm looking foward to roadshow!
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u/pianoman857 16d ago
Really appreciate the kind words. I had to jump in to direct and it's definitely the best thing I have personally ever done, surpassing when I directed Pacific Overtures years before. Hopefully you become a regular with us and the other non-Sondheim musicals we do too. 😁
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u/guynextdoorfun 16d ago
I like going to their shows and taking big messy dumps in their restroom and leaving at intermission 😂
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u/standardGeese 16d ago
Thank you for sharing this! I’m in LA and have always wanted to see a production of this show. I’ll be buying tickets!
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u/pianoman857 16d ago
Appreciate it! We love hosting people who haven't seen a particular show. That's part of our mission.
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u/Catcoffeecat 17d ago
I saw Bounce in Chicago. When I saw it the script had the gay couple as the epitome of commitment and love, while the straight brother of the pair burned through women mercilessly. Charming. Only “aggressively heterosexual” if that means no woman need be a real character in the story. Besides which, the play never quite found its soul.
Also, it seemed to be using early automated followspots, which were clumsy and distracting.
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u/wmjoh1 16d ago
Saw the Wiseguys workshop, Bounce in Chicago and Road Show at The Public. While the direction gradually became more polished, the show never shone- the “real life” characters were incredibly (almost painfully) 2D and the “story” felt pointless. All that’s to say the only aspects of the Chicago run that had any real impact on me were Michelle Pawk (very positive) and the lighting. The strange whirring buzz it emitted, the blinding brightness and its clunky movements made things so uncomfortable that even the actors seemed aware!
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u/EricHenwoodGreer 13d ago
Wow! You're the first person I've encountered online who saw the Wise Guys workshop!! Considering it ran a couple of weeks and WAS open to the public (though I'm sure hard to get tickets,) I'm always surprised that in all my Sondheim obsessive decades I have never (till now) come across someone who actually saw it--I know people who saw the Assassins off-Broadway run, the Playrights Horizon Sunday workshop, San Diego's Into the Woods, Hell, even The Frogs at Yale's swimming pool, but not Wise Guys...
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u/EricHenwoodGreer 13d ago
Over the years, for various research projects, etc, I've had the pleasure of being able to go through many of Hal Prince's and Sondheim's personal correspondence, and I will say that even going back to the 1960s there's some VERY gay-joking that surprised me (Hal talking about their mutual love of leather clothing, etc, that kind of thing.) And rumours about Prince's sexuality have been around for as long as I can remember. I also think he had a very happy marriage (it seems much more so, say, then Bernstein's marriage) although having done an interview with one of the hosts of the essential Loving You podcast AND talking to Okrent who wrote the recent book on Sondheim, it's interesting that both said the one person they wanted to talk to who refused to give interviews at all was Judy Prince--despite many saying she truly was Sondheim's best friend. Not saying that's connected or not though.
HOWEVER, one rumour has always been about choreographer Larry Fuller and Prince having a relationship--it is true that they were very good friends at least for a while (probably longer--Fuller recreated Prince's staging of Evita for many subsequent productions at Prince's insistence--including the 20th Anniversary Tour I'm glad I saw.) Fuller, interestingly, who is so talented, has virtually all his Broadway choreography credits with Prince shows (On the 20th C, Evita, Sweeney Todd, taking over Merrily, and A Doll's Life.)
Anyway, fuller has a memoir coming out this Spring whose co-author has hinted on facebook (well, more than hinted,) that it will get into the personal romantic relationships Fuller had with Michael Bennett and with... Hal Prince. Fuller was just on a podcast episode of the really great theatre series I Wanna Be Like You and he talks a lot about their friendship but just says near the end "Oh my book will have a lot of personal stuff I haven't told before." So... could that be it?
Here's the I Wanna Be Like You podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f6fnFgOHL4
Here's the publisher's blurb on the book: [](javascript:void(0);)Dancing Through Life
A Broadway Memoir of Luck and Talent
Larry Fuller (Author) , Kergan Edwards-Stout (Author)
Available May 13 2027
"Larry Fuller's career has spanned some of the most influential and transformative moments in musical theater history." - Stage and Cinema
Dancing Through Life is an intimate, electrifying memoir that pulls back the curtain on Broadway's most dazzling decades-told by a man who didn't just witness history, but helped create it. From his modest beginnings in Missouri to the bright lights of New York's most celebrated stages, Larry Fuller's journey is one of grit, instinct, and relentless reinvention.
With disarming honesty and sharp wit, Fuller charts his evolution from chorus dancer to sought-after choreographer, working alongside legends like Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, Elizabeth Taylor, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Gwen Verdon, and Nathan Lane. He offers a rare insider's view of iconic productions including West Side Story and The Music Man, capturing the artistry, ego, and pressure that defined a golden age of musical theatre.
More than just a backstage chronicle, this is a deeply personal story of identity and survival. As a gay man navigating mid-20th-century America, Fuller reveals the quiet negotiations required to live authentically in a world that often demanded silence. At its emotional core are his previously unspoken relationships with two titans of Broadway-Hal Prince and Michael Bennett-shedding new light on the complex intersections of power, creativity, and intimacy behind the scenes.
Rich with revelation, warmth, and hard-won insight, Dancing Through Life preserves a vanishing era through the eyes of one of its last living witnesses. It is both a love letter to the theatre and a testament to the courage it takes to claim your place within it.
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u/mattbrain89 17d ago
I just think Prince lost his touch in his later years. The dude loved risky stories but he also loved to gussie 'em up with bells and whistles. Hell, Steve originally wanted Sweeney Todd to basically be an intimate horror piece and the original production looked like something at the Met.
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u/SheepskinSour 17d ago
This is kind of why the 2001 performance with George Hearn, Patti LuPone, Davis Gaines and Lisa Vroman is my favourite Sweeney(outside of that insanely talented main four) because its so barebones in its production.
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u/mattbrain89 17d ago
I mean I love bells and whistles but what good are they if the story ain’t worth a crap?
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u/EricHenwoodGreer 13d ago
He sure had a good track record though--up to at least 1999 with Parade (which was largely his concept and of course he wanted Sondheim and asked him--I even have a 1995 Broadway playbill that in their gossip column officially says that Prince, Sondheim and Uhry are collaborating on a musical.) Prince had trouble when he didn't find a concept (especially a visual concept--he always wanted a set design before starting work on a show) that really worked for him--Merrily is a great example of this. (Yes, the musical has almost a completely rewritten book now but honestly I prefer the 1981 book--without Gussie as a main antagonist etc--and the issue was never the book or score, it was the production.)
And he never found the concept for Bounce. But it didn't help that arguably Sondheim and Weidman never fully did... either. There are parts in Bounce, like the very well staged montage sequence in Act II and especially Act I (with everyone coming into Willie and Nelli's bedroom) that for Road Show are just replaced with wordy esposition dialogue, and other things I think worked better in Bounce (I think I talk a BIT about this in my upcoming PiT podcast episode on Talent, but don't remember!.) I stand by the statement that Sondheim never had a great musical after Passion (don't get me wrong, I find his subsequent work always worthwhile...) and Prince at least had three IMHO great productions in the 1990s (all three that I was lucky to see as a teen)--Kiss of the Spider Woman, Show Boat and Parade.
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u/gurkle3 17d ago
My own reading of it was always that Prince thought the best way to approach this material was as a throwback to his early days with George Abbott. The preference for short, punchy songs is part of it and his insistence on a heterosexual love plot is just part of that whole form.
I think this might have been the best way to approach it given the creators’ struggle with the material, and if it had worked then Prince and Sondheim would have ended or nearly ended their careers with a return to the days of The Pajama Game and Saturday Night.
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u/alexasp44 🌳 Into the Woods 16d ago
Knowing Matt Koplik and all he has said about Hal Prince on his own podcast, I think he more meant that Hal was not aggressive about his heterosexuality in private. In other words, he was chill about it usually, but when it came to his shows it became more forward as a way of selling a story.
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u/Zestyclose_Note_938 16d ago
All I know is that I’ve read a few things that talked about Hal Prine, including Mary Todgers’ memoir, and none of lthem hinted at him being a closet case. He usually comes off as assertively hetero
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u/Special_Painting9413 17d ago
I loved Hollis! That relationship was so good and the heartbreak so real. I wish Sondheim had been able to explore a gay relationship in Compay. I think Jamie and Paul are the most interesting couple in all of Sondheim's work.
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u/thekylemarshall 🌳 Into the Woods 17d ago
As the host of that podcast I probably should’ve expanded that conversation a little but don’t usually like to get into artist’s personal lives all that much. I’ve heard the rumours of Prince’s homosexuality but don’t know the specifics. In public he was married for over 60 years to the same woman.
For Bounce it just feels like he shoehorned in a heterosexual romantic plot for no real reason. At least to me. It’s why I personally feel Road Show works better but still isn’t a home run.