Harold Prince Developing The Diamond as Big as the Ritz into a Musical with Thomas Meehan and Charles Strouse

Legendary director and producer Hal Prince is developing a Broadway musical based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. According to the The New York Post, the production will reunite Annie's composer Charles Strouse and librettist Thomas Meehan. Eric Price will serve as the co-lyricist.

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz tells the story of young John T. Unger, who is invited to visit a classmate, Percy Washington, at his impossibly lavish home in Montana. Gradually, Unger learns the sinister origins of his host’s wealth and the frightening lengths to which he and his family will go to preserve it. Meehan plans to change the narrator from a man to a woman and has written the first act, with Strouse having completed the first half of the score.

Strouse and Meehan last collaborated on Annie 2 in 1990. "I wanted to do one more show with Charles or maybe two or three more. And The Diamond as Big as the Ritz was his idea. But it certainly has its challenges," Meehan told the Post. "Hal brings his 20 Tonys to the job, so we listen to him. He's a wise man about shows."

Prince has won Tony Awards for producing and directing such Broadway shows as The Phantom of the Opera, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, A Little Night Music, Parade, Show Boat, Merrily We Roll Along, Evita, On the Twentieth Century and Sweeney Todd. As previously reported, his long-in-the-works musical The Prince of Broadway will have its world premiere in Japan.