the early seventies and authored several musicals, including The Dream Engine, Neverland and The Confidence Man, and also provided the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Whistle Down the Wind. After briefly considering a West End run, under the influence of Steinman and his manager David Sonenberg, it was decided to bring the musical (now titled Dance of the Vampires) to New York for the 1998 season, with Steinman translating and reshaping the German book and lyrics, Polanski returning as director, and original Viennese producer/Polanski manager Andrew Braunsberg serving as executive producer. Efforts to return Polanski to the United States proved fruitless, leading first to postponing the show's opening to Halloween 2000, and then to the decision (dated to roughly March 2000) to seek a different director if Polanski would not return. In October 2000, a tentative fall 2001 opening was announced, along with the declaration that Steinman himself would serve as the show's director, despite never having directed for the stage. Attempting to reassure doubters, Steinman asserted in interviews that "Half the show [in Vienna] I had to talk Polanski into doing, and did it behind his back a lot. He's a great guy but he had a totally different vision". As early 2001 approached, however, and a reading for potential producers and investors was announced in the news section of Steinman's fan website, things began taking on a more concrete shape. John Caird was to co-direct, and comedic playwright David Ives was helping to reconfigure the book with a view toward a more comic angle instead of a straightforward adaptation of the successful Austrian version, which was deemed to be written in a style no longer accepted by Broadway critics and audiences. As Steinman later put it, looking back with a more jaundiced eye, "We were told to put five jokes on every page". Signing on as producers were Sonenberg and the producing team of Elizabeth Williams and Anita Waxman, then known for the critically acclaimed revival of The Music Man. The new version, described by Steinman to the press as "a big, Wagnerian musical with lots of humor [...] a lot of it is pure Mel Brooks and a lot of it Anne Rice" and to the by-invitation-only audience as a musical for "people who think musicals suck," was met with a mixed reception. Potential investors and producers seemed to love the score, but felt the new