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Stephen Sondheim turns eighty this year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62B3...tertainmentNews

The concerts, on March 15 and March 16, will include songs and orchestral pieces from Sondheim musical theater favorites like "Company," "Follies," "A Little Night Music," "Sweeney Todd," "Merrily We Roll Along," "Into The Woods," and "Sunday in the Park with George," in addition to rarely heard material.

Tony Award winner Sondheim is considered by many to be the greatest Broadway composer/lyricist of his time. In addition to writing the music and lyrics for plays, he also co-composed the music for the film "Reds" in 1981 and wrote songs for the movie "Dick Tracy" in 1990.

Related item:

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/news/...once_25734.html

The New York Philharmonic's SONDHEIM: The Birthday Concert, to be held March 15-16 at Avery Fisher Hall, will be broadcast on PBS' Great Performances during the series' 2010-2011 season. Exact dates will be announced in the near future.

He must feel rather like the Last of the Mohicans.

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Stephen Sondheim turns eighty this year.

He must feel rather like the Last of the Mohicans.

And in what I'm guessing is no coincidence, NY City Center Encores will put on Anyone Can Whistle during April. This , with music and lyrics by SS and book by Arthur Laurents, was a huge flop when it opened (and quickly closed) in 1964, but afterwards became almost legendary, a kind of cult piece. It was too early for my theater going days, which started a few years later, but I saw performances in later plays by the three leads, Angela Lansbury, Lee Remick, and Harry Guarino and ACW was prominently mentioned in their resumes in the Playbill.

Possibly the piece was just ahead of it's times, as I believe SS's later show, Follies, was. I'm hoping to find out next month. The Encores performances are often

truly terrific events.

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I know someone who saw the original production (normally I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed this, but he's pretty reliable :off topic: and he said he could understand the show's failure - there were problems with the book and Guardino's and Remick's pipes. Fortunately, Goddard Lieberson was farsighted enough to record the original cast.

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I know someone who saw the original production (normally I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed this, but he's pretty reliable :) and he said he could understand the show's failure - there were problems with the book and Guardino's and Remick's pipes. Fortunately, Goddard Lieberson was farsighted enough to record the original cast.

Book problems are so often what sank musicals. Now I think the musical shows are produced more as spectacles so as to draw attention away from the book.

Sondheim adored Lee Remick and I believe fantasized about marrying her. He was devasted when she died of cancer while only in her mid 50s. As far as her singing, I heard her do Phyllis in Follies and she did well, but that music requires more a strong rhythmic delivery of the lyrics rather than soaring vocalism.

A few years back, probably at Sondheim's 75th birthday, I saw a tiny, fringe company do Merrily We Roll Along. I missed it when it was on Broadway and was always curious as to how a show's plot could work from end to beginning. Well, it does, and it's amazing to see characters "undevelop", or go from bogged down by life's struggles back to the optimism of youth.

Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim! :off topic:

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Yes, indeed. Happy Birthday, Mr. Sondheim!. :off topic:

Last season Sondheim came to our town to present "A Conversation with Stephen Sondheim," with musical illustrations by Kate Baldwin and with Sean Flahaven as a conversational partner. He looked and sounded great. Several thousand people, most of them old-time New York theater goers, were there. It was a warm gathering of people who knew Sondheim's music fairly well and , in a sense, were friends, or at least on the same wave length.

For me, the "best of Sondheim" is incredibly strong. Sondheim songs accompany me in the car or around the house very often. On the other hand, I can't think of any of the full works I've seen that work consistently well throughout the evening. Best for me is the score for Follies. (We had a long thread about Follies a year or so ago.)

Are there any Sondheim musicals which -- when staged in their entirety -- strike you all as truly great and enduring? Do any come close?

Or is that an impossibility and beside the point?

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Are there any Sondheim musicals which -- when staged in their entirety -- strike you all as truly great and enduring? Do any come close?

Or is that an impossibility and beside the point?

Only 'Company' of the ones I've seen, at least in terms of 'great', because there's no other 'New Yorkish' show like it. As for 'enduring', no, it's a period piece, or has proved to be by its dreadful revivals thus far--that PBS thing one of the worst things I've seen in a long time. Most like 'Sweeney Todd' and think that's his masterpiece, but I dislike it, and quite intensely; I think it's false at its core (who cares about a mama's lullaby of 'Nothing's Gonna Harm You' from somebody in the human meat-pie business. and Sweeney is about as sympathetic to me as the non-tenured murderess of last month.) I find 'Sunday in the Park with George' pretentious and silly--the title sone about. 'By the cool blue triangular water

On the soft green elliptical grass

As we pass through arrangements of shadow

Toward the verticals of trees

Forever' is probably the kind of thing the true Sondheim fan likes, it's brittle and over-sophisticated, It wouldn't matter if I ever thought the characters were sexy, but they just talk about it all the time, as if to a shrink; and I can only think of 'Too Many Mornings' as being actually sexy. No, 'Barcelona' is pretty sweet-sexy too, and even 'Another Hundred People' is much like the way it is here (still).

If you expand 'Sondheim musical' to include those for which he wrote only the lyrics, 'Gypsy' and 'West Side Story', then you have a couple of masterpieces of the musical theater, but those probably can't be called 'Sondheim musicals'.

I do like 'Follies' quite a lot, so I guess I think that qualifies as 'great and enduring', even though it's as old today as the Ziegfeld Follies was when the show was made. Most like 'A Little Night Music', but I don't, and can't stand songs like 'A Little Death', which goes against my whole philsophy of La Dolce Vita; .or lyrics like 'I still want and/or love you', which I find the single most graceless lyric I've ever heard in a toney show. The old chestnuts like 'Send in the Clowns' and 'Comedy Tonight' are okay as stand-alone songs, and Streisand makes a number of the songs sound great, she's got a feeling for them, especially 'Being Alive' is superb, but even 'Pretty Women'.

My problem with Sondheim is that, although he's written more successful shows than Bernstein, Jule Styne and Harold Arlen, I don't think he is nearly the great composer that they are, with some exceptions of individual songs here and there. The music often whines and gets smarmy and neurotic, and is not muscular that way the above three are. I think his greater gift is usually that of the lyricist for composers with a greater musical gift.

I was interested that Sondheim 'adored Lee Remick' and was devastated by her death. I also recall finding it totally shocking and unexpected, and I was pretty crazy about her too.

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I think Company is a great example of its time, both in its topic and in its structure. It felt a bit dated to me for awhile (in the same way that we discussed about Dances at a Gathering) but I'm always happy to hear the score and glad to know of another production. I agree with papeetepatrick that the underlying premise of Sweeny Todd is indeed creepy, but then so is Dracula, and I love that too. The origins of A Little Night Music make the work seem a bit smarty pants (look what we can do!) but I think it's a beautiful score and am so appreciative of the wide range of ages for the women.

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Patrick and Sandik, I was thinking of Company, too. :off topic: I saw the original cast and also a revival earlier in the season. In 1970, the performers were just about my age or older. Now, they're mostly young enough to be my grandchildren. I remember thinking, to my surprise: this really does hold up very well; no dead spots or down turns; no place where you find yourself thinking, "Why didn't they update (or eliminate) that?"

Part of the charm of watching Company today is precisely that it IS a period piece. Those of us who are older can say: "Can we possibly have felt and acted that way?" Younger people can ask: "Can my parents (or grandparents) actually have felt and acted like that."

My problem with Sondheim is that, although he's written more successful shows than Bernstein, Jule Styne and Harold Arlen, I don't think he is nearly the great composer that they are, with some exceptions of individual songs here and there. The music often whines and gets smarmy and neurotic, and is not muscular that way the above three are. I think his greater gift is usually that of the lyricist for composers with a greater musical gift.
I don't have the experience or knowledge to discuss this, but somehow I FEEL that Patrick is right. What do others think?
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My problem with Sondheim is that, although he's written more successful shows than Bernstein, Jule Styne and Harold Arlen, I don't think he is nearly the great composer that they are, with some exceptions of individual songs here and there. The music often whines and gets smarmy and neurotic, and is not muscular that way the above three are. I think his greater gift is usually that of the lyricist for composers with a greater musical gift.
I don't have the experience or knowledge to discuss this, but somehow I FEEL that Patrick is right. What do others think?

Well, I think this is wandering into the area where the eternal question comes up: "Which comes first, the words or the music" Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics which Bernstein, Styne, and Arlen where primarily composes of the music ONLY. So I don't think it's a balanced comparison.

I think one of Sondheim's great, and yes I will use that word, strengths is his marriage of notes and text. To me it's a more impressive achievement.

And there's the whole "body of work" issue, to quote a term that was discussed a lot on the Academy Award thread. Sondheim's achievement here is impressive to me, a long list of wonderful shows: Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, etc. Sondheim's strength is not really writing catchy tunes, though, I'll admit.

Arlen and Styne composed the music to some wonderful shows , to be sure. But they were also writing in a genre that was not being questioned or challenged, they wrote during what I would call the golden period of the American musical and there was plenty of ore left to mine; by the time Sondheim came along, the old format

of catchy tunes had pretty much been exhausted, Jerry Herman saw to that, and Sondheim was left to redefine what the American musical actually was. And I think this was another of his great (to use the term again" accomplishments.

Bernstein was a genius to me, but a problematic one. And again he didn't write the words, just the tunes. I really think he only has two great works for the theater; West Side Story (lyrics by Stephen Sondheim!!!) and On the Town. The music for these two just knocks me over. But Bernstein couldn't really decide what he wanted to be when he grew up and he spread his talents a bit too thin. Plus as the years went on, he got just too bigged down in his own importance

and whatever he did became almost bloated. His operas were problematic, his symphonic pieces seem very thin to me.

And I dislike his late-in-life takes on two of his earlier works, the recordings of Candide and West Side Story (I really regret the overblown, operatic, approach he took to these two, but this isn't a really widespread opinion so I won't go on with it! :wink: )

So, yes, I'm willing to jump into the Sondheim boat and yes, to me he is a genius!

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Sondheim's strength is not really writing catchy tunes, though, I'll admit.

"Something familiar, something peculiar,/Something for EVERYONE, a comedy tonight!"

"Everybody ought to have a maid,/Everybody ought to have a serving girl,/A loyal and unswerving girl to putter around the house."

-A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

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Well, I think this is wandering into the area where the eternal question comes up: "Which comes first, the words or the music" Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics which Bernstein, Styne, and Arlen where primarily composes of the music ONLY. So I don't think it's a balanced comparison.

I think one of Sondheim's great, and yes I will use that word, strengths is his marriage of notes and text. To me it's a more impressive achievement.

And there's the whole "body of work" issue, to quote a term that was discussed a lot on the Academy Award thread. Sondheim's achievement here is impressive to me, a long list of wonderful shows: Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, etc. Sondheim's strength is not really writing catchy tunes, though, I'll admit.

I agree or disagree with most of that (to some degree), but absolutely disagree with the idea that 'it's not a balanced comparison'. Writing the works as well as the music is not necessary to compare one composer with another. Otherwise, this would be true in opera too, and Wagner the unquestioned champion (even though many think he is anyway). Verdi and Mozart and Puccini did not write their libretti, but if one wants, it is still a legitimate comparison to make between just the music in these works--and with that of Wagner. If you think Wagner is the greatest (unfortunately, for my argument here, I do think so), it still might be because you think it's the music itself that is the greatest (fortunately for my argument, I do think so.) Everything else you said may be a matter of subjectivity or taste or perception, but writing both words and music just means you sometimes (or all the time, if you love all his works, or most of the time, etc.,) were good at both, but you could still be the greater composer (most may think Richard Rodgers is greater than Sondheim, although I think there's only one major example of him as a lyricist of his own music, and that's a minor work.) Well, 'subjective' and taste, except for this one:

by the time Sondheim came along, the old format

of catchy tunes had pretty much been exhausted, Jerry Herman saw to that, and Sondheim was left to redefine what the American musical actually was. And I think this was another of his great (to use the term again" accomplishments.

Even though I'm not anywhere near on the Sondheim boat the way you are, I definitely think Sondheim wrote at least some songs that are light-years greater than anything Herman ever wrote, se he cannot have exhausted the 'catchy-tune pool'. Even if I only truly love songs like 'Another Hundred People', 'Two Many Mornings', in that I think they are as great as any musical-show songs ever written, I those alone outclass anything by Jerry Herman, although that's a bit cruel to say. I always wince when I think how good the title song of 'Hello, Dolly' is, and how that odd gentleness in the first phrase was something he had to settle out of court. But, when I was doing my survey on here of 'Musical Show Scores' a few years back, I found 'catchy tunes' in Cy Coleman's last two shows, 'City of Angels' and 'The Life', as well as in 2001's 'Urinetown'. Also, a great tune might not qualify as 'catchy tune'. 'Send in the Clowns' works as a fine tune as well as 'catchy tune', and is easily Sondheim's most popular stand-alone song. The two I named above are masterful songs, but they don't really move out of the show too well. But if I find many of Sondheim's later songs rather overdone and virtually psychiatric, I do find Herman's hokey and unsophisticated in the other direction. They've both written good shows. I like parts of the score of 'Pacific Overtures', to be sure, although I don't remember single songs. It was supposed to have been a beautiful production, a big paper ship or something opens up at one point, and that was before the 'spectacle for spectacle's sake' of the 80s and the Lloyd Webber dinosaurs.

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Sondheim's strength is not really writing catchy tunes, though, I'll admit.

"Something familiar, something peculiar,/Something for EVERYONE, a comedy tonight!"

"Everybody ought to have a maid,/Everybody ought to have a serving girl,/A loyal and unswerving girl to putter around the house."

-A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

I think richard53dog's point was that Sondheim isn't known for his hits, something which is partially because of the changes in pop music that took place in the last half of the twentieth century and, it must be said, he may just not have the knack, or let's say he matured in a theatrical environment where he did not have to cultivate it.

Everything else you said may be a matter of subjectivity or taste or perception, but writing both words and music just means you sometimes (or all the time, if you love all his works, or most of the time, etc.,) were good at both, but you could still be the greater composer (most may think Richard Rodgers is greater than Sondheim, although I think there's only one major example of him as a lyricist of his own music, and that's a minor work.)

I'm inclined to agree. Rodgers could write lyrics just fine, but he was clever enough to know that there were others who could do it better and work with them. It's a special talent when you can do both on more or less the same level but I don't think it affects his status as a composer that he did not insist on doing his own.

I think one of Sondheim's great, and yes I will use that word, strengths is his marriage of notes and text. To me it's a more impressive achievement.

I agree, to a point. Sometimes for me Sondheim reads better than he sings, but it's probably just my taste.

Very nice discussion, everyone. :wink:

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Sondheim adored Lee Remick and I believe fantasized about marrying her. He was devasted when she died of cancer while only in her mid 50s. As far as her singing, I heard her do Phyllis in Follies and she did well, but that music requires more a strong rhythmic delivery of the lyrics rather than soaring vocalism.

I do like her singing on the Anyone Can Whistle cast album, though,especially the title tune. She knows how to "act" a song so well. We lost her too soon. I always liked her.

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Sondheim adored Lee Remick and I believe fantasized about marrying her. He was devasted when she died of cancer while only in her mid 50s. As far as her singing, I heard her do Phyllis in Follies and she did well, but that music requires more a strong rhythmic delivery of the lyrics rather than soaring vocalism.

I do like her singing on the Anyone Can Whistle cast album, though,especially the title tune. She knows how to "act" a song so well. We lost her too soon. I always liked her.

I had a real soft spot for Lee Remick. I mentioned seeing her in Follies but I had seen her on the stage once before, many years earlier in the stage version of Wait Until Dark. I was just barely a teenager and very, very impressed; well more than that, I was enthralled with her. And maybe I was just very impressionable, but the play itself was thrilling.

Going back to Sondheim, one of my points, and maybe I didn't describe it all that clearly, was that the structure of the musical changed starting in the mid 60s.

Jerry Herman seemed to have finished off the old standard book musical which was the accepted format for about 30 years. Sondheim was one, perhaps the leading, writer that developed and defined the form the genre took as it went into the 70s, 80s and 90s. And the form always stressed the importance of a match of lyrics and music, I don't think the person who wrote the music was ever the one "in charge", or the "important one".

The form has changed once more, I have to admit I'm not too interested in many of the shows put on today, they seem more spectacles and/or adaptations than anything else. A new Sondheim show today would probably be as hard to accept as the shows Styne wrote after Funny Girl.

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Are there any Sondheim musicals which -- when staged in their entirety -- strike you all as truly great and enduring? Do any come close?

My old standard answer to this was Sweeney Todd which I think is still a fanfastic piece all around, but as I get older I am increasingly impressed by Sunday in the Park with George. I was not terribly fond of Sunday when I was younger; I found the book overly talky, and I thought the music was opaque. But in the last few years, I've seen a number of revivals of Sunday, and I've found each of them incredibly touching, personal and emotionally intimate in a way that I've found very rare in theatre. It just worked, even the stripped down, bare-bones incarnation of the Sundaythat I saw in Los Angeles, and I didn't think that that was even possible, given the nature of the piece.

I also have to stick up for Passion, which is one of my personal favorites though it divides even sondheads. Musically, it's my favorite Sondheim.

Sondheim's strength is not really writing catchy tunes, though, I'll admit.

Sondheim can write catchy tunes, but more often than not, he chooses not to. The pastiches in Merrily We Roll Along are very catchy, but I think "Opening Doors" from that show is also his commentary on the "hummability" question. (Personally, I think he may have been scarred by working with Richard Rodgers.) Ironically, I think more songs from Merrilly have become cabaret standards than any other Sondheim show ("Old Friend," "A Good Thing Going," "Not a Day Goes By," and "Our Time.")

I know someone who saw the original production (normally I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed this, but he's pretty reliable and he said he could understand the show's failure - there were problems with the book and Guardino's and Remick's pipes.

You are very wise, dirac. :huh: And yes, the book of Anyone Can Whistle is extremely problematic. I've seen a recording of the BC/EFA concert with Madeline Kahn, Bernadette Peters and Scott Bakula, and even with the cast and the music, it's very hard to sit through the whole thing, even with a cut-down book. It makes you feel like you've been trapped by Arthur Laurents at his most lecturey while at a neverending cocktail party.

Sondheim adored Lee Remick and I believe fantasized about marrying her.

Yes, I've heard many times that Sondheim had a very profound relationship with Lee Remick, and that she was the only woman he seriously contemplated marrying (I'm not sure where that leaves Mary Rodgers). There are great stories about them together.

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as I get older I am increasingly impressed by Sunday in the Park with George. I was not terribly fond of Sunday when I was younger; I found the book overly talky, and I thought the music was opaque. But in the last few years, I've seen a number of revivals of Sunday, and I've found each of them incredibly touching, personal and emotionally intimate in a way that I've found very rare in theatre. It just worked, even the stripped down, bare-bones incarnation of the Sundaythat I saw in Los Angeles, and I didn't think that that was even possible, given the nature of the piece.
sidwich, I had a similar negative reaction when I heard it around the time of its opening. You make me hope for the opportunity to re-visit it. (I wonder whether I'll find the title song -- repeated quite often during the evening, as I recall -- less annoying. :huh:
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I attended the Sondheim Birthday gala at Avery Fisher Hall last night. The NY Philharmonic was, as always, brilliant. The performance was conducted by Paul Gemigniani. It was an incredible evening. Among the performers were Patti Lupone, Audra McDonald, Marin Mazzie, Elaine Stritch, Bernadette Peters, Mandy Patinkin, Donna Murphy, Jason Danielly, Joanna Gleason, Michael Cerveris, and on and on... David Hyde Pierce was the host, and sang one number. Maria Ricetto and Blain Hoven from ABT performed a pdd to the music from the film Reds. At the end, current Broadway performers from all Broadway shows flooded the stage and the aisles of the theater to sing a Sondheim song ("Sunday" from Sunday in the Park w. George). Then at the end, Sondheim himself took the stage and said a few brief words. The concert was being filmed, and it will be on public television in September, I believe. It was a very pricey event, but it was truly a spectacular concert.

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The concert was being filmed, and it will be on public television in September, I believe.
Great news! Thanks for that report, abatt. I love that kind of tribute (i.e., when there's a real body of work, as well as a remarkable artist, being celebrated.) So many people on that stage have reasons to be grateful to Sondheim.
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Thanks for that report, abatt. I love that kind of tribute (i.e., when there's a real body of work, as well as a remarkable artist, being celebrated.) So many people on that stage have reasons to be grateful to Sondheim.

One thing that was noted at the Gala on stage by Sondheim's long time colleague was that Sondheim never repeated himself. Each work is substantially different from his other creations. In particular, I would say Bernadette Peters has reason to be grateful to Sondheim. He made her a star, and she was his muse. Peters' rendition of Not A Day Goes By from Merrily was shattering. This song, with its poignant lyrics, now takes on special significance for her since her husband died a few years ago in a plane accident.

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An aside: I loved Lee Remick in "The Competition", one of my all-time favorite bad movies. She was so good-humored and professional about being in such a bad movie :huh:

Off topic: I too love to hate The Competition. Remick charges through it, Sam Wanamaker is fabulous and I would cheerfully sign up for duty as one of his conductor groupies, and you can pass the time trying to decide whether Dreyfuss or Irving is more annoying. The pianos are gorgeous.

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But only Dreyfus won a Razzie for it :huh: Sam Wanamaker was fabulous, and I loved his scenes with Remick. But my favorite scene still is when Remick describes to a surprised Irving how Remick created an audition tape for the competition by impersonating Irving's qualities.

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An aside: I loved Lee Remick in "The Competition", one of my all-time favorite bad movies. She was so good-humored and professional about being in such a bad movie :)

She was always like that, even in much cheaper products. I thought she was wonderfully funny as Kay Summersby in the old miniseries 'Ike'. and she was absolutely sensational as Frances Schreuder in the miniseries about the NYCB board member family murderess. I remember the way she said on the phone 'I mean it IS the New York City BALLET!' And hilarious costumes in her fantasy (not quite like the real Frances, as we know, Lee looked way too glamorous, and we didn't get to see her in prison doing commisaary rackets or whatever it was, smuggling in whiskey, etc.) It was always the sensitivity in the eyesl especially, the best still being 'Days of Wine and Roses', but also those Southern things she was originally stuck in worked well for her, although one can understand why she wanted to be done with those. I never saw her in person, and I think only have heard one example of her singins,I believe there's a very old TV musical version of 'Damn Yankees', that has a lott of animation. I'd forgotten about it, because I had thought it so horrible I could barely remember she was even in it.

as I get older I am increasingly impressed by Sunday in the Park with George. I was not terribly fond of Sunday when I was younger; I found the book overly talky, and I thought the music was opaque. But in the last few years, I've seen a number of revivals of Sunday, and I've found each of them incredibly touching, personal and emotionally intimate in a way that I've found very rare in theatre. It just worked, even the stripped down, bare-bones incarnation of the Sundaythat I saw in Los Angeles, and I didn't think that that was even possible, given the nature of the piece.
sidwich, I had a similar negative reaction when I heard it around the time of its opening. You make me hope for the opportunity to re-visit it. (I wonder whether I'll find the title song -- repeated quite often during the evening, as I recall -- less annoying. :unsure:

Lots of people were raving about the original show when it came out, and I saw that. As I mentioned before, Streisand can make some of these songs work out of context, and has managed to get good arrangements, as with 'Pretty Women' and 'Art Isn't Easy' and 'Putting it Together'. Obviously, the latter is not going to get a wide audience no matter who sings it, but I much preferred it out of context as she sang it, than in that New York are gallery opeing party scene in the show, which even in 1984, seemed like a leftover from company. Too much writing for 'the smart set'. Probably some of the same objection I have to Woody Allen. i'd never really thought about hos Streisand does seem to have a way with Sondheim songs sung as stand-alone songs, but she seems to emphasize the drive in his nervosity (and even Elaine Stritch and others used to talk about how fast he talked in person, a good bit of neurosis clearly apparent, and some of the obsessive sounds in the songs reflect this, as in 'company's' 'I'm Not Getting Married Today'.) Because when Babs sings things like 'Some Enchanted Evening', you get this tarted-up thing with just mordents and turns and embellishments of every identifiable kind. All of the Sondheim songs I can think of right now she sings pretty straight, without getting too mannered, a tendency she does often five into elsewhere. Of course, 'The Ladies Who Lunch' will work well as stand-alone, it's catchy, and although it's the lyrics that make the tune distinguished, that is an example of when he does 'marry the words and lyrics' perfectly. Other singers may have also been successful at getting his songs to work out of context (I hammer on this a little, because they usually are seen to work best in the show), and I'm sure 'Losing My Mind' is one of these, but Bobby Short's super-blase version was not one of the successful ones to my mind, but then I was not a fan of his style.

I thought some of the score of 'Passion' was certainly adequate, but I find the show unbearable. I can't think of any of the shows that will revive really well except 'Follies', for my taste, although if you like 'Sweeney Todd' and 'A Little Night Music', they're clearly revivable.

Richard53dog's thesis on the evolution of the musical after the 60s has definitely merit, the problem is less what it moved out of than what it may have pointed the way into, if it did move the musical onward beyond Sondheim's own: in the early 80s start the biggest Lloyd Webber/Schonburg works, followed by the big Disney things. I have never found any of these especially meritorious in these for myself ('Miss Saigon' was all right, but pretty blah to me), although they are all enormously popular, so they've 'got what it takes' for whatever audiences they've found (and hugely). I do recall that people were saying the 'musical is dead' was far back as the 60s, but it's certainly not, no matter how you judge it. I just no longer pay attention to any B'way opening, unless I hear some really big hoopla. That fell to 'Spring Awakening', which I found a boring score after all, and 'In the Heights', which has some good stuff. 'Billy Elliott' probably has merit, and people have praised it here. But even if you think Sondheim is a genius and the most important artist in the musical theater in the last 40 years, the 'evolutionary' part ends up with what we have today, although I wouldn't really know how much that has to do with him. Certainly, Lloyd Webber can write what some would call 'catchy tunes', as 'Music of the Night', and 'Memory' from 'Cats'. or

'As If We Never Said Goodbye', but even Streisand can't sell his to me (maybe the last one a little, if I don't think too much about Ms. Desmond's saga, which I've never thought had any business being a musical.)

Edited to add: 'pretty women' is from 'Sweeney Todd' and 'Art Isn't Easy' is part of the 'Putting it Together' piece in SITHPWG.

Should also add that, as per Sidwich's remark about "merrily we roll along" songs in cabarets, I can see how Sondheim songs would work well in cabarets and do. They're often a bit world-weary, and the 'smartness' and extreme sophistication is appropriate for cabarets.

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This morning's NY Times has a nice piece on the concert, with photos of (among others) Patti LuPone, a.k.a. next season's Anna I in NYCB's new production of 7 Deadly Sins. (Per our discussion on another thread.) :unsure:

A Little Birthday Music for Sondheim

In recent years the tributes to Mr. Sondheim have come so thick and fast that they have begun to blur. While such celebrations tend to be messy affairs, “Sondheim: The Birthday Concert” (directed by Lonny Price), was a model of organization, with a suave host (David Hyde Pierce) and witty leitmotifs woven into its structure. Performances by an all-star guest list that included Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Elaine Stritch and Nathan Gunn proceeded at a brisk pace; there was no speechifying.

[ ... ]

Recent revivals of Sondheim shows using chamber orchestrations have shown how sturdy his music is, even in drastically reduced arrangements. But Monday’s concert demonstrated that there is still no substitute for a force as mighty as the New York Philharmonic (conducted by Paul Gemignani) playing songs conceived and orchestrated (most often by Jonathan Tunick) for a symphonic palette. The major songs from “Follies” and “A Little Night Music” in particular, are far-reaching ballads with melodic lines that sweep to the horizon.

P.S. One of the photos shows Sondeim humbling acknowledging applause. The hands are held close to the chest, with palms together, fingers pointed up. When, I wonder, did that particular gesture of piety and prayer -- obligatory for children in Roman Catholic churches during my childhood long ago -- become a standard way of acknowledging audience adulation? Does it have a long show-biz history? Or is it a new development?

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