Jim Steinman - Dance Of The Vampires (2002 Preview Version Act 2 - Minskoff Theatre Live Recording)

1 Introduction Act 2 2 Vampires in Love 3 The Castle 4 Books, Books! 5 Carpe Noctem 6 For Sarah 7 Bedroom 8 Something to kill our Time 9 Coffins 10 Death is such an odd Thing reprise 11 Herbert 12 When Love is inside you 13 Sarah's room 14 Eternity 15 Graveyard 16 Confessions of a Vampire 17 Minuett 18 Never be enough 19 Flight 20 Braver than we are reprise 21 The Dance of the Vampires Creative Team Music:Jim Steinman Lyrics:Jim Steinman Book:Michael Kunze, David Ives, Jim Steinman Director:John Rando Choreography:John Carrafa Costumes:Ann Hould-Ward Lighting:Ken Billington Music Supervisor:Michael Reed Setting:David Gallo Orchestrations:Steve Margoshes Cast Graf Von Krolock:Michael Crawford Sarah:Mandy Gonzales Alfred:Max Von Essen Professor Abronsius:Rene Auberjonois Magda:Leah Hocking Chagal:Ron Orbach Rebecca:Liz McCartney Herbert:Asa Somers Boris:Mark Price Nadja:E. Alyssa Claar Zsa-Zsa:Erin Leigh Peck Madame Von krolock:Dame Edith Shorthouse The show started previews after technological and creative delays at the Minskoff Theatre on October 18, 2002. Initially, the seemingly final result was an altered version with a lot of campy humor that differed considerably from the original show. Although the show initially went well in sales based on Crawford's name (for a time, the show played to packed houses in previews, and was in fourth place in terms of high-selling Broadway grosses without even having officially opened), the humor received some laughter and much criticism. An attempt was made at arriving at a comfortable middle between the "two shows at war with each other," and original author Kunze was finally consulted for his opinion of what should be changed (far too late, in his view). Ultimately, thanks ironically to the German author of the original piece, the show arrived at much of its final form: during previews, 30% of the dialogue was cut to allow room to expand the score and arrive closer to the original almost sung-through concept; the vampire costumes were redesigned to look less freakish; a new staging of the shock ending set in modern times suggested by Kunze was inputted. Other suggestions, such as cutting a new dramatic death scene for the Count and restoring some of the original German lyrics, met with more dissension, and Kunze withdrew those suggestions, not wishing to cause any trouble. On a lighter note, entertainment mogul Howard Stringer, a friend of Crawford's, rang the final death knell for the weight-hiding costumes by telling Crawford he looked silly; from that point forward, the ruffled collars were gone. Those major changes aside, the show seen in previews was still in flux, and a show that changed huge amounts of its material nightly, which caused some trouble with the cast. Crawford was regularly changing his dialogue and inserting his own jokes, testing the strength of the material, to the point that co-star René Auberjonois became paranoid about all of his jokes being cut, and the two of them began trying to step on each other's punchlines.By the time of opening, however, this mutual tomfoolery seemed to have been reined in; producer Bob Boyett had no complaints about Crawford's behavior, calling him "a great star and a total professional" and saying that he "didn't find him to be difficult at all." Another unfortunate side-effect of the changing material was that with Steinman out of the picture, there was no one around to write new lyrical material as necessary in some cases, and so the English version (of necessity) borrowed a lot of new material from Steinman's lyrics for the previous English versions of what songs were recycled in the show.