As he jokes when setting up for our interview, this isn’t Stephen Schwartz’s first rodeo.
The award-winning composer and lyricist is responsible for some of the most well-loved songs and productions of modern times, be they musicals such as Wicked, Godspell and Pippin, or the soundtracks to Pocahontas, Enchanted or The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
And, of course, DreamWorks’ 1998 classic The Prince of Egypt, the show he hopes to see make its mark on the West End during its 39-week run at the Dominion Theatre.
Schwartz and Philip LaZebnik, the duo responsible for the screenplay and songs in the original, have teamed up once more to bring a new version of the iconic animated movie to the stage.
But fans of the film shouldn’t expect to see a carbon copy when they walk through the doors.
(Image: Nathan Johnson)
“I think there are big and, frankly, exciting differences between the stage musical and the film and they sort of are in two areas,” says Schwartz when asked.
“First of all, film is an extremely literal medium, so if the Red Sea is going to part, or two brothers are going to have a chariot race, that’s what you are going to see.
“If you’re going to do those on stage, you have to find a very theatrical way of telling that story, and so we use physical theatre, the actors create everything with their own bodies, so it’s an extremely physical show, and that’s obviously quite different than the film.
“And also, you know a movie, and particularly a hand-drawn, animated feature is two-dimensional. Here we’re dealing with three-dimensional actors in a three-dimensional space and we hope characters that are more well-rounded and nuanced than we were able to do in the film.
“So I would say that’s the other part of it, is that one has the opportunity to go into more depth and complexity with the characters and how they relate to one another.”
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When asked if he approached writing for the stage to screen any differently, Stephen explained: “We just approached it as a completely new work.
“If we’re telling this story for the stage, how do we do it? And what are the incidents that we want, and how are those incidents to be musicalised?
“Now since the story is obviously not dissimilar, in fact it’s very close to the story in the movie, a lot of the things we were able to do and use in the movie came into play here.
“So there are five of the songs that were in the movie that are being used here, although none of them is exactly the same as it is in the movie, but then there were many other places in the story or in the development of the characters which called for musicalisation and therefore a lot of new songs and new music was written.
(Image: DreamWorks)
“If I looked at the screenplay side-by-side to the dialogue in the show, I would think about 90% is new. I’m not sure there’s really any dialogue from the movie in the stage version and if there is, it‘s pretty minimal.”
Director Scott Schwartz who has been part of the stage piece since its inception, also viewed it as a completely new show.
“Obviously a lot of material in the script is the same as its been in previous productions because with each developmental step we’ve worked on it and tried to improve it and as things work we set them.
“And in terms of the staging, Sean Cheeseman (the choreographer) and I have been developing that language for three years, the basic concept and physical set are pretty close to what we’ve done in the past, but we’ve really looked at it completely fresh and there are many many things that are different and that was very exciting.
“It’s really truly a new, world premiere production.”
(Image: Kevin Depinet / DWA LLC)
The sound of the stage show will also be different to that of the movie.
“It was very important to me that the sound of the music feel appropriate for the culture and the area of the world in which it takes place, and therefore we are using in the orchestrations and in our orchestra some instrumentation of the region,” explained Stephen.
“It’s not really ancient, people are still playing Ouds and Turkish clarinets, but I felt that that was something that I wanted to explore for the score of the show, different than the score of the movie, so that was an important choice.”
The Prince of Egypt seems to merge the stories of both the Bible and those we know of Egyptian history, and that move was very deliberate on behalf of the creative team.
“Neither Philip nor I wanted to do a Bible pageant,” says Schwartz.
“Neither of us wanted to tell a story that basically said my God is better than your God, or my culture is superior to your culture, I just don’t believe in that.
“Obviously the original Bible story is basically my God is better than your God, so we wanted to take a different point of view towards it, and be more balanced and even-handed in terms of the motivations of the various characters and how much they were affected by the society into which they were born – which is after all an accident of fate – and how much ultimately they are willing to challenge their own society.”
(Image: The Prince of Egypt Musical)
The show itself feels very typical of Schwartz, featuring characters that don’t quite fit in, or need to find their place in a world that seems just a little off.
“I’m attracted to stories about people who feel themselves outside of society, kind of start out with a longing to be part of it and then have to wrestle with the degree to which they’re willing to give up parts of themselves in order to fit in.
“And this is true – though in a sort of different order of events – in The Prince of Egypt, because you have the story of someone who believes that he is one of the sons of the King.
“He lives this extremely privileged life, and at the same time has within him this sort of longing and sense that there is something more to life, but this is who he is and so that’s what his life is going to be – and then he discovers of course that his entire life has been a lie, and that actually he is the son of Hebrew slaves, and that his own family remain slaves and obviously that makes a big change in how he chooses to live the rest of his life and what he wants to do with it.
“So that’s a similar story of someone who discovers that he doesn’t fit into the place he thought he did – what does that mean for the rest of his life?”
(Image: Darren Bell / DWA LLC)
Fans can definitely expect a cast recording as it’s already been recorded, with plans afoot to have it released as close to the show’s official opening night as possible – but what comes next for The Prince of Egypt after its initial run is as yet unknown.
“We just have to wait and see what happens with the show,” says Schwartz.
“It could have any number of afterlives or no afterlife, we just have to see how it’s received here.”
And as for Schwartz himself?
“I don’t really have an absolute certainty as to what my next project is going to be, I have a few things that I have been working on.
“There’s another stage musical that I’m in the very early stages of working on, and a couple of movie musicals, but the reason I’m being vague about them is that I don’t know for sure if any of them is going to come to fruition.”
Given what’s he’s produced so far, we’re hoping to see all of them some time very, very soon.
The Prince of Egypt is scheduled to run for 39 weeks at the Dominion Theatre in London; previews began on February 5 and its official West End premiere was February 25.
For more information about the show such as ticket prices, performance schedule and details concerning access performances, please visit the show’s official website: The Prince Of Egypt Musical.
