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Towering Broadway director and producer Hal Prince dead

FILE - In this June 4, 1995 file photo, Harold Prince holds his Tony award for best director in a musical for "Show Boat," at Broadway's Minskoff Theater in New York. Prince, who pushed the boundaries of musical theater with such groundbreaking shows as “The Phantom of the Oepra,” "Cabaret," "Company" and "Sweeney Todd" and won a staggering 21 Tony Awards, died Wednesday, July 31, 2019, after a brief illness in Reykjavik, Iceland. He was 91. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK — Harold Prince, a Broadway director and producer who pushed the boundaries of musical theatre with such groundbreaking shows as “The Phantom of the Opera,” ”Cabaret,” ”Company” and “Sweeney Todd” and won a staggering 21 Tony Awards, has died. Prince was 91.

Prince’s publicist Rick Miramontez says Prince died Wednesday after a brief illness in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Prince was known for his fluid, cinematic director’s touch and was unpredictable and uncompromising in his choice of stage material. He often picked challenging, offbeat subjects to musicalize, such as a murderous, knifing-wielding barber who baked his victims in pies or the 19th-century opening of Japan to the West.

Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press