"The Secret Silk" is the third in a series of musicals written for Princess Cruises by Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz and will be performed on three Princess ships, starting with the Royal Princess.
It tells the story of an old Japanese couple who take in a stranger at their door, the daughter they never had. She spins marvelous silks — that the couple grows rich on — but always in private, thus the title of the show.
The first two Schwartz originals for the line were "Magic to Do" and "Born to Dance." If audiences take away one thing from "The Secret Silk," it will probably be the puppetry developed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
Henson was the creator of the Muppets. "The Secret Silk" starts with crane puppets flying above the audience onto the stage. A crane is a central figure in the story, but there are at least a dozen other creatures that skitter through the production, including one very large, dark, terrifying horse puppet.
The audience will likely be unfamiliar with the story behind "The Secret Silk," which was developed from a Japanese folktale called "The Grateful Crane." This is either a bonus, because the audience will encounter something new, or a burden because they're unfamiliar with the material.
Schwartz, a winner of multiple Academy Awards and Grammys who wrote "Godspell" and "Wicked," said creating original musicals is a risk on a cruise ship, or anywhere else for that matter. Playing it safe seems to be the order of the day in theater, he said.
"Just to see a piece like this that is original and daring … particularly compared with the level of safety that is more and more being exercised in the commercial theater; for example in New York, where most of the shows are getting safer and safer. To see something reach like this is very exciting for me," Schwartz said.
To make it a little less of a reach for some in the audience, most of the score of "The Secret Silk" uses pop songs, including "I Believe I Can Fly" (R. Kelly), "Angel" (Sarah McLachlan) and "All Night Long" (Lionel Richie). An exception is "Sing to the Sky," a song written for the show.
The 50-minute show develops several themes, such as the rewards and perils of intergenerational sacrifice, the mutuality of the animal and human worlds and the enduring need for compassion.
Princess plans to bring the show to the Island Princess and the Diamond Princess, which sails in the summer from Japan. At that point, the line will have Schwartz shows on nine of its 17 ships. Schwartz is expected to write at least one more show for Princess to stage in 2019.