We'll Serve Anyone (Meaning Anyone) At All

I was rereading Macbeth this weekend and realized that the conceit of the Porter's first speech is basically the same as that of "A Little Priest" from Sweeney Todd -- making grimly satirical jokes about various British professions, that is, though in a context of damnation rather than cannibalism.

It's The Little Things, or Why I Don't Like Modernized Productions of "Company"

There’s an Onion article, frequently passed around by theater people, called “Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play in Time, Place Shakespeare Intended.” Well, I have an idea for a similar man-bites-dog headline: it would say “Production of Company Set in 1970.”

"You Could Drive A Person Crazy" in the San Francisco Playhouse production. Morgan Dayley as April, Michelle Drexler as Kathy, Teresa Attridge as Marta. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

I’ve seen Company three times: a student production at my college ten years ago; the PBS broadcast of John Doyle’s Broadway revival; and the production that’s currently running at San Francisco Playhouse. None of these productions made an effort to evoke 1970, the year the musical originally premiered; instead, all of them set the show in the present day. And there are plenty of other recent Company productions that feature cell phones and other 21st-century trappings (Terry Teachout reviewed one in Bucks County this summer), but not so many that acknowledge the show’s original time period. (One exception might be the 2011 New York Philharmonic production -- I didn't see it, but production photos show Stephen Colbert wearing a very '70s turtleneck.)

Certainly, this story of a 35-year-old commitment-phobic man, the five married couples he befriends, and the three women he half-heartedly dates, is still relevant for contemporary audiences. If anything, articles like "The Real Reason Women Freeze Their Eggs" suggest that commitment-phobic bachelors are even more of a problem now than they were in 1970. It’s easy to make arguments for why we should continue to stage and discuss Company. But that’s not the same thing as saying that we should set it in the present day.

Sondheim writes in Finishing the Hat, “God is in the details.” Or, to quote Company itself, “it’s the little little little things.” While the big-picture themes of Company are still relevant, dozens of little details in the dialogue and lyrics make clear that Sondheim and Furth are writing about a very specific milieu with specific cultural markers. And this is why I think it’s so hard to convincingly modernize Company.

It’s jarring to see characters wearing contemporary clothes and using cell phones, and then saying things that no thirty-something New Yorker in 2015 would ever say. Nobody these days drinks vodka stingers, or talks about being “square.” Marijuana is no longer an exotic drug, and we call it “pot” or maybe “weed,” but never “grass.” Marta would be crazy about some obscure pocket of hipster Brooklyn, not about 14th Street – and she wouldn’t say “I’ll call you in the morning or my service will explain.” Et cetera.

Over the years, Sondheim and Furth have made a few updates to the book and lyrics to keep them feeling contemporary. The “I could understand a person / if a person was a fag” line has been rewritten, and the dialogue now name-checks some post-1970 celebrities like Madonna and Oprah. But it would take a much more thoroughgoing rewrite to make Company seem like it’s truly a product of 2015. Chloe Veltman spends several paragraphs of her review of the Playhouse production arguing that the musical feels dated because all of the characters are heterosexual – and I agree that if someone in 2015 wrote a musical about modern marriage, they’d probably be sure to include a gay or lesbian couple in the cast. But since the rights holders of Company don’t allow you to change the characters’ genders, or any of the myriad references that sound odd in a 2015 context – why not just set it in 1970 already?

If Company is staged with 1970s costumes and emotionally honest performances, contemporary audiences will relate to it – they will see how what it has to say about marriage and commitment are universal, and they will accept the dated chatter about “optical art” and “telephoning my analyst” and all the rest. But if it’s staged with cell phones and contemporary fashions, the 1970s references can make it hard for an audience to suspend its disbelief.

Bobby (Keith Pinto) and Joanne (Stephanie Prentice) in the San Francisco Playhouse production. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

Oddly, I can’t think of any other play or musical from Company’s era that gets updated to the present day with such frequency; most other ‘60s and ‘70s shows are now staged as period pieces. This might be because, in its time, Company was considered groundbreaking and progressive. It’s kind of amazing to think that it premiered just two years after Promises, Promises – which the Playhouse revived this past winter, and whose whole story is predicated upon ‘60s sexism. I do think that Company’s portrayal of ditsy flight attendant April is kind of sexist, but most of the other female characters are smart, interesting, and sharply drawn. And because Company’s characters still feel modern and relatable, people think it makes sense to set Company in modern times.

But times change, and 2015 is not 1970. It seems ludicrous to suggest that the life of a man born in 1935 (Bobby’s birth year, if the show takes place in 1970) would be similar to the life of a man born in 1980 (Bobby’s birth year, if it takes place now). Or, since I'm a fan of Mad Men, I try to remind myself that when Company premiered, Bobby and his friends were basically of the same age and background as the younger Mad Men characters: Pete, Trudy, Ken, Peggy.

And that’s the thing: most people who go to see Company at San Francisco Playhouse will have watched Mad Men or other historical-fiction TV shows; or read novels that were published more than 10 years ago; or otherwise discovered that they can relate to works of art that take place in the past. The Playhouse’s slogan is that the theater is an “empathy gym,” where we go to “practice the power of compassion.” But their decision to set Company in 2015 suggests that they think people can’t feel empathy or compassion for these characters unless the story takes place in modern times. Have some faith in your audiences, San Francisco Playhouse. We can handle a slightly more challenging workout in the empathy gym.

One Midnight (of 2015) Gone

Happy 2015!

I spent the first afternoon of the year at the movies, seeing Into the Woods with my friend Corinne Proctor. She's a professional musical-theater actress who played Little Red Riding Hood at San Francisco Playhouse this summer; I'm a Sondheim junkie for whom Woods was the gateway drug. Needless to say, we were both "excited and scared" for the film adaptation!

After all, we'd spent December participating in Theater Pub's big Into the Woods blog-roundtable. Together with local theater luminaries Stuart Bousel, Brian Katz, Oren Stevens, and Nick Trengove, we analyzed the intricacies of this multi-layered show. Our discussion, in three parts:

• Part I, "Once Upon a Time" -- who we all are, why we love Woods, favorite moments and characters.
• Part II, "Honor Their Mistakes" -- the moments that we consider flawed or tricky, and whether we agree with certain frequently-heard criticisms of Into the Woods.
• Part III, "And Home Before Dark" -- thoughts on the meaning/significance of the show and the meaning of fairy tales in general.

And, now that the movie has opened, there will likely be a Part IV later this month, where we'll re-convene to discuss what worked and didn't work in the cinematic adaptation. So, while normally I'd write up my thoughts tonight as the latest installment of my Marissabidilla blog feature "Highly Anticipated Movie Reviews," you'll just have to wait a bit to find out what I thought of the film.

Also, if the above three links aren't enough Corinne and Marissa for you, she and I made an additional appearance on the Theater Pub blog in December, when I interviewed her about playing "Marge" in Promises, Promises at San Francisco Playhouse. Our discussion touches on vodka stingers, holiday movies, and glamorous stage names... as well as less frivolous matters like Corinne's decisions to join Equity and move to New York City. She'll be in S.F. for another week finishing out the run of Promises, Promises, and then heading back to the East Coast. I'll miss her -- it's always sad when a friend who loves Sondheim and Stoppard as much as you do leaves town.

A Sondheim Weekend

Listening to: NPR's stream of the new Follies CD (Bernadette Peters, Jan Maxwell, et al). I've only ever heard the truncated 1971 recording, so this is a revelation for me!  Reading the Follies chapter in Finishing the Hat, one can come away with the impression that this is the strongest set of lyrics that have ever been written for an American musical, due to Sondheim's dead-on pastiche of all of the lyric writers who came before him, plus his own inimitable genius.

Reading: Look, I Made a Hat, volume 2 of Sondheim's collected lyrics, which came out on Tuesday.  It is just as full of odd, interesting insights as Volume 1 and is going to have an equally prized place on my bookshelf.  I brought it to a Thanksgiving party of theater people on Thursday, where it was a big hit. As a friend of mine says, "The only thing better than having these books by Sondheim is if we also had a book by Shakespeare titled How I Wrote My Plays."

and

Ring Round the Moon, the Jean Anouilh/Christopher Fry play that Sondheim and Hal Prince wished to adapt into a musical. When they were unable to obtain the rights, they adapted Smiles of a Summer Night instead -- it has a similar theme of romantic entanglements at a European country house.

I found Ring Round the Moon completely delightful. Its witty aphorisms made me laugh out loud several times, and I love the idea of having one actor play the identical twins Hugo and Frederic. (You'll recall that the one-actor-playing-twins was my favorite part of my experience working with Un-Scripted Theatre last summer!)

My copy, above, is an adorable 1950 edition, I believe the first American edition, which I found at Readers Café and Bookstore. Why do I never hear anyone talk about this used bookstore? It has some amazing items (I once saw a 1910 edition of Playboy of the Western World there!) and the proceeds go to a good cause.

Speaking of supporting a good cause: In 1981, Stephen Sondheim founded Young Playwrights Inc., to foster the work of American playwrights 18 and under. In 2006, I won their National Competition with my first play, Deus ex Machina.  And last week, the Young Playwrights office, on Fifth Avenue in New York City (right across from Lord & Taylor) was gutted by a fire.

This news is very sad, especially because Young Playwrights, like many arts nonprofits, always seemed to be a bit of a shoestring organization and, I know, was having difficulties in our current economic climate. (Young Playwrights used to present full productions of the plays that won the contest, but they have not been able to do that for several years.)  As they rebuild, they are taking donations through PayPal.

In order to thank them for the amazing two weeks that they gave me five years ago (a workshop of my play in New York, tickets to 10 shows, a downtown hotel room with a balcony...) and to support them in their rebuilding efforts, I'm going to give Young Playwrights some money this holiday season. Would you consider doing the same?

Playwriting Books - The Real, The Rare, The Imaginary

I've been wanting to write about how I find most playwriting books unsatisfactory. You see, most playwriting books are written for the broadest possible audience -- geared toward people who've never written a play before, nor have thought much about dramatic structure. Which is understandable; publishers will sell the most books and make the most money if they publish for neophytes.

But, see, if you've taken a playwriting class or read one or two standard playwriting texts, you already know all the stuff that's in them -- Drama is Action, Drama is Conflict, Drama is Choices, Dialogue Reveals Character, etc. (Of course, sometimes it takes years of practice to fully integrate these lessons into one's own writing. But at least one has been exposed to these fundamental principles.) Also, the typical playwriting book will teach you how to write a play that is impeccably crafted and formatted, but that is not the same thing as teaching you to write an interesting play.

So what I want is not a book on Playwriting 101, but Playwriting 202 or 303. My ideal playwriting book would also take into account the way that some plays these days have a really freewheeling structure and others are structured on intricate, formal lines -- rather than assuming that every play will tell a realistic, linear, chronological story. It would also include examples of scenes from classic and modern-classic plays that, in the opinion of the author, do not work, in addition to examples of scenes that do.

This book would include such chapters as:

• Unconventional Punctuation and Layout: Pretentious or Poetic?
  
• If "Drama is Conflict," Is There a Place for Direct Address? If "Drama is Storytelling," Why Do You Need All That Dialogue? An Investigation
  
• Realism and Magical Realism: When Should an Angel Crash through the Ceiling?
  
• Political Correctness and the Theater: Colorblind Casting, Race-Specific Roles, And All That Tricky Stuff
  
• Writing the One-Act Play: The Art of the Gimmick
• Structural and Linguistic Tricks: Can a Play Be "Too" Clever?
  

OK, most of these questions have no "right" answer, which is why most playwriting books don't choose to address them. No one wants to issue a definitive ruling on any of these questions. But, you must understand, I like really opinionated books. I want the author to set himself up as an authority. Even if the author ends up arguing a point that I vehemently disagree with, I want him to support his arguments well and make them as forceful as possible, so that I can take even more pleasure in arguing against him. I want a playwriting book written by a well-read, witty, but fundamentally cranky person. (The same goes for etiquette manuals. I hate how etiquette books have gone from saying "Use this fork, don't use these slang words, and for heavens sake don't slouch," to saying "It doesn't matter how you eat and talk and gesture, as long as you are friendly and considerate!" The whole point of an etiquette book is to learn exact codes of behavior!)

This is all influenced by my just having read Stephen Sondheim's guide to lyric-writing, Finishing the Hat. Sondheim writes such direct and straightforward prose -- he's eighty years old, he's a certified genius, he's got nothing left to prove, so he's just going to call everything like he sees it. He's incredibly opinionated, and not afraid to provoke disagreement; for instance, plenty of people are taking issue with his claims that Alan Jay Lerner and Ira Gershwin were bad lyricists. However, it is these kind of pronouncements that make the book such a compelling read, and a future classic. Sondheim offers precepts, and arguments, and refuses to accept received wisdom, and doesn't repeat the same-old same-old. I guess I want a playwriting book that will do the same.

As a postscript, however, let me say that I recently heard of a playwriting book that sounds like the exact opposite of the "ideal" book I just described, and which I am now clamoring to read. It is The Human Nature of Playwriting, written in 1949 by Samson Raphaelson. I saw it mentioned on the Onion AV Club, recommended by TV critic Todd VanDerWerff. Writes VanDerWerff:

Samson Raphaelson was the screenwriter for, among others, The Shop Around The Corner, and in the spring of 1948, he met with a bunch of students at the University of Illinois to teach a class that was ostensibly about being a playwright, but ended up being about much more, like why we construct fictions, and the worth of personal experience in made-up stories. The book The Human Nature Of Playwriting collects nearly everything said in the classroom, and it becomes so much more than a writers’ guide. Raphaelson and the students almost become characters, the experiences that make up their plays become very real, and the bonds they form are unshakable. It’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to pursue any sort of career as any kind of writer.

Well, it is so rare to see a playwriting book recommended in a mainstream publication (OK, The Onion AV Club likes to think of itself as "alternative" rather than "mainstream," but it's not a specialty theater website, is my point) that my interest was piqued at once.

Unfortunately, The Human Nature of Playwriting is long out of print, revered by all who read it, frequently stolen from university libraries, and thus available only for the high, high price of $350 on Amazon.com. Damn!

As described by VanDerWerff, Raphaelson's gentle, humanistic playwriting book sounds like the opposite of the cranky, opinionated playwriting book that I described above. But it also sounds sui generis, possessed of a unique, honest voice... and I guess that's what I really look for in everything I read, be it plays or playwriting manuals or etiquette books. Most playwriting books in existence are impeccably crafted (and somewhat boring), and they'll teach you how to write an impeccably crafted (but perhaps boring) play. Maybe I'd rather have messy, opinionated books and messy, soulful plays.

"Sooner or Later," I'll Write Better Blog Posts. In the Meantime...

An old favorite: Stephen Sondheim

A new favorite (after seeing Scapin at ACT last night): Bill Irwin

So I have to post this video of Karen Ziemba singing, and Bill Irwin clowning, to Sondheim's "Sooner or Later," from Dick Tracy. Enjoy!

Things That Are Making Me Ridiculously Happy

NOW, AND IN THE NEAR FUTURE

• Today is my 2-year anniversary of moving to San Francisco. I love this city and feel so grateful for my life here--my apartment, my neighborhood, my roommates, my new friends, my old friends reconnected-with, my finding my way into the theater community here, the supportiveness of that community and the great art they make...
• Speaking of which, the premiere of my play at Theater Pub on Monday night was a huge success. I couldn't have asked for a better cast, director, or venue in which to make my local playwriting debut. I'm still kind of on a high from Monday evening, which is why I haven't blogged about the experience yet... in the meantime, I'm looking forward to the 2 other performances! August 23 and 30th, 8 PM (but get there early!)
• A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is finally out in paperback, so I finally am reading it! I started it Monday morning and am about 200 pages in (out of nearly 900). There are a ton of characters and I'm excited to find out what happens to all of them. It's the longest book I've read in quite a while; it's the most excited I've been about a new novel in quite a while; I'm enjoying it so far.

IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS

• I just bought my tickets for a long weekend in NYC at the end of October--my first trip back there since graduation! I look forward to the East Coast autumn, to traveling, to catching up with old friends... Now I've just got to decide what show to get tickets for.
• The day after I return from NYC, Stephen Sondheim's book about lyric-writing will be published! 480 pages of (as the subtitle has it) "Collected Lyrics, with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes." Not sure I'll be able to wait for the paperback with this one...

IN THE MORE DISTANT FUTURE

• Whit Stillman, of Metropolitan fame, is preparing to shoot another movie! Working title is Damsels in Distress, a comedy about a "charming, eccentric clique of stylish but possibly quite mad" college girls, whose values "appear to derive from the late lamented Zelda Fitzgerald." Sounds like vintage Stillman (and one of my friends recently described me as "Zelda Fitzgerald without the insanity," so it is any wonder that the description of this new film has me ridiculously excited?)
  

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Stephen Sondheim

So yesterday was Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday (and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 62nd) but I was too busy hanging out with the wonderful people who attend the San Francisco Theater Pub to write a blog post in his honor. At one point in the evening, about 11 PM, someone pointed out that the day ought to be an official holiday for theater lovers, and we drunkenly sang "Happy Birthday, Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber!" I may also have broken into a tipsy version of "The Ladies Who Lunch."

Two years ago I went to see Sondheim and Frank Rich's lecture tour when it came to Portland. (It was a few days before he turned 78 and the audience sang "Happy Birthday" to him then, too.) Here are a couple of posts I wrote at the time:

• A selection of my favorite Sondheim lyrics
• My lengthy report on the evening with Sondheim and Rich

Now, for years, I had wanted to write a letter to Sondheim; not only is he a genius whose songs touch my soul, but he also, in 1980, started Young Playwrights Inc., whose national playwriting contest I won in 2006. I wanted to thank him for that (and I knew that I could ask Young Playwrights to deliver my letter to him directly). Seeing him in Portland was what finally pushed me to write that letter that I'd been planning for years.

And I got a response back!--I still remember the excitement I felt when I opened my mailbox at college to discover the envelope. Sondheim still uses a typewriter for his correspondence, and fine Crane letter-paper. I'm not going to reveal what the letter said... but it is one of my most treasured possessions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that not only is Sondheim a brilliant composer and lyricist, he also seems like a truly good man--because he is so indebted to the great artists, like Oscar Hammerstein, who mentored him when he was young, he gets the importance of nurturing future generations of writers and composers. I admire the way that he refuses to publicly comment on the works of living composers (including his co-birthdayist's) because he realizes that people in the American musical theater tend to take everything he says as though it was the word of God, and he wants to use his power in a positive way. Yes, he's famed for writing songs about ambivalence and negativity. But he doesn't come across as a grouchy old man! At his appearance in Portland, he was engaging and enthusiastic and emotionally open (crying when telling a touching story about Hammerstein).

Still, though, for those of us who can't get enough of the "word of God," it is wonderful news that Sondheim has a book coming out in October: Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. I know what I want for Christmas!

And now for a few of Sondheim's many dazzling compositions. First, Bernadette Peters will rip your heart into pieces singing "Not a Day Goes By" from Merrily We Roll Along:



And here is Peters, with Mandy Patinkin, in the original production of Sunday in the Park with George, singing "Move On." This is one of those songs that I can always, always, return to and find a deeper wisdom in it. The struggle of my life is a struggle to live out the message of this song.



This just barely scratches the surface of what Sondheim has done, though, so I really enjoyed reading this Playbill feature in which younger composers and lyricists select their favorite Sondheim songs. It is easy to concur with just about every one of their choices!

Thank you for everything, Mr. Sondheim.

Solace from Foote and Sondheim

I wrote last week that all this theater-blogosphere activity was making me feel panicky and impotent, but I'm getting over that. Indeed, would I prefer that everyone kept silent? I'm grateful that such impassioned conversations are taking place... even if these conversations move so quickly that it's hard to keep up at times!

And a few quotes from grand old men of the American theater have recently come to my attention and given me a measure of solace. They prove that it has never been easy to be an artist--now, you might say that that is even more reason to despair, but it comforts me to know that people in other eras have gone through the same things that I'm going through now.

First, from Horton Foote's autobiography (excerpted in The Play That Changed My Life), describing how he came to New York in the '30s after studying acting in Pasadena:

I began to learn lessons about a part of theater the Pasadena Playhouse had not prepared me for: how to survive in an economically depressed city where the phenomenon of talking pictures, having decimated both vaudeville and winter stock companies, was now beginning to make inroads on Broadway itself. There were losses, losses everywhere.

The first thing I did when I got to New York was to make a pilgrimage to [Eva] Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in 14th Street. When I got there, I found it occupied by a left-wing theater group called "Theater Union." The Theater Union, I was to soon learn, claimed to be part of "the new theater movement." How often have I heard through the years, "This is the new theater?" This also is a truism about theater; suddenly there appears from nowhere a new concept, a new approach to acting, to directing, to producing.

It all meant little to me at the time. I wanted to be a part of the "old theater," the theater of Belasco, Frohman, Sam Harris, Winthrop Ames, and Arthur Hopkins. I wanted to be an acclaimed actor-manager, have a New York season, and then tour the country; or I wanted to be idealistic like Miss Le Gallienne and be part of a repertory company. It seemed to my young mind that the "old theater" was invincible.

Swap out these 1930s names for their contemporary equivalents, and doesn't this sound like it could have been written yesterday? After all, Foote is talking about how to make one's way in the theater when it is under assault from the threat of "new media" and the country is economically depressed. Also, I relate to what Foote says about having wanted to be part of the "old theater" (which for me I guess is the LORT system), attracted to the romance and the history of it... then gradually realizing that the "old theater" is much more diseased than the general public is aware of, and that one is going to have to make some compromises, get involved with little "new theaters" with shoestring budgets, because that is the only place where renewal ever happens.

Then, a few days ago while I listened to my iPod on Shuffle, "Putting It Together" from Sunday in the Park with George came on. I must've listened to this song dozens of times, but it's so dense and wordy that I always seem to hear it afresh. I wish I could link to it, but there's no good video of it on YouTube. Anyway, it's sung by George, a young artist in the 1980s (he builds things with sound, light and lasers) as he rushes around a museum cocktail party, trying to schmooze with patrons, vaguely hating himself for needing institutional approval, but realizing that the only way to get ahead is to play the game and chase the money:

Link by link
Making the connections
Drink by drink
Fixing and perfecting the design
Adding just a dab of politician
Always knowing where to draw the line
Lining up the funds but in addition
Lining up a prominent commission,
Otherwise your perfect composition
Isn't going to get much exhibition.

The song gets very busy at the end, as the other people at the cocktail party join in with their own chatter--so much so that, until this week, I'm not sure I ever heard George's line toward the end of the song:

Everything depends on preparation
Even if you do have the suspicion
That it's taking all your concentration

In other words, George has gotten so caught up in the game, schmoozing and laying the groundwork for his career, that he worries that he's no longer able to just make art anymore. And sometimes I worry that that's happening to me, that my head is spinning with so many people's opinions about what's wrong with theater in this country that I no longer know what I should do next, with my own art, in order to try to fix these multifarious problems.

In which case I should struggle to follow that advice from Anne Bogart that Megan posted recently: "Do Not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom. Do Not wait until you have enough technique. What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances, will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors. And at the same time, be patient."

Links & Thoughts, November 12

Some suggestions of things to check out:

• My recent "Remake Breakfast at Tiffany's" post inspired a friend of mine to watch the film--the conversation continues over at her blog.

• Stephen Sondheim on classical music (h/t Terry). My love of Sondheim is what got me to start listening to Ravel a few years ago--now I will have to check out some of the other pieces he mentions!

• Blogging, rumors, the new-media paradigm, and play submissions. (via Parabasis)

• 99 Seats does a post about casting non-white actors in roles where the character's race isn't specified, something that I was thinking about a few months ago...
  

• Movie recommendation: Metropolitan (written & directed by Whit Stillman). I watched it for the first time last night and loved it. The screenplay is amazing. Quotable, witty, and far more charming than it has any right to be, considering the subject matter: Upper East Side debutantes and their escorts going to Christmas parties in the late 1980s. At the start of the movie, you feel overwhelmed by all of the hyper-literate WASPy characters; by the end, you feel like you know every character intimately. (Therefore your experience watching the movie mirrors the experience of its protagonist, Tom, a "poor" Upper West Side boy who joins the debutante crowd almost by accident.) If you happen to have the same Comcast package that I do, it's free on demand until the 17th--otherwise, go out and rent it! It's a little gem.

• Metropolitan is also one of the 400 Criterion Collection DVDs that are half-price at Barnes and Noble right now. I'm tempted by at least half a dozen of them...
  

• Bay Area Playwrights' Pub Night is coming up this Saturday! Looking forward to it!
  

Tonys 2008: A Latin hat at that

In an ideal world, I'd have seen many more Broadway shows this season than I actually did--at the very least, Sunday in the Park with George, South Pacific, and In the Heights--but I had to watch the Tony Awards anyway! Some thoughts, post-ceremony:


Favorite moment: Lin-Manuel Miranda rapping his Best Score acceptance. He was obviously so exhilarated and overwhelmed--you could tell it was a bit of a struggle to get the words out--but he kept on going and gave a memorable, emotional speech. And of course, I loved the Sondheim shout-out.

Also great: how the Broadway community seems to support Mr. Miranda and wants him to succeed, hoisting him onto their shoulders after In the Heights won Best Musical. Now, it's probably easier for a young composer/lyricist to get this support than a young playwright, since there are not many musical theater composers these days compared to the number of playwrights...but still, I find it heartening. Also heartening, or at least a moment when I said "right on!": Tracy Letts' speech that said, basically, "You produced a new American play on Broadway without any movie stars in the cast--imagine that!"

I know there's no better way to divide it up, but I still think it's weird that the award for Best Play goes to both the writer and the producers. It becomes most jarring with something like The 39 Steps, which by all accounts is a wonderfully entertaining piece of theater but, as a comic adaptation of a film script, seems out of place with the other nominees in its category. I wish, too, that they'd allowed the writers their moment in the spotlight by announcing their names and filming their faces when reading the Best Play nominees.

But nope, it was Musicals Night, with the producers seemingly attempting to cram in mentions of every show currently running on Broadway. My reactions to the added musical numbers:

• The Lion King: I know it's Disney, but that is some awesome, awesome theatricality right there.
• The Little Mermaid: Too bad that theatrical magic isn't in this number. And notice that they filmed the actress in close-up, because otherwise we'd see how silly her mermaid costume really looked.
• A Catered Affair: Terrible. A banal, rambling mess of a song--and this is the best they could do for national television?
  
• Young Frankenstein: A one-joke song ("Deep Love") with a predictable melody/chord pattern, but at least the actors were selling it with great conviction. Is it just me, or is the tune a little reminiscent of "The Impossible Dream"?!
  

Thoughts on other musical performances:

• I was surprised to like the dancing from Grease. When you cast a girl from a reality show there's no guarantee that she'll be able to do the splits and high kicks.
• The dance number from Cry-Baby is very Susan Stroman in its use of props but if I hadn't read that the men were tap-dancing with license plates, I don't think I would have been able to tell what was on their feet.
  
• Riddle me this: If Passing Strange has got such great reviews, why have I never been able to work up an interest in seeing it? And why did I not get pulled in by their Tony performance? Why do people claim that Stew is a great lyricist, when the line "I've found a place where I can be / That thing called me" (or something like that) actually made me wince?
• I very much liked the In the Heights number and the way it told a story through music and lyrics, except at the end when too many of the lyrics got lost in the muddle.
  
• Ooh, I wish I could've seen Sunday in the Park. The projections looked gorgeous, and Daniel Evans had so much emotion singing "Move On" (and looked so happy to be there!). My friend was rooting for him instead of Paulo Szot.
• South Pacific looked good, too, though. Just-for-fun prediction: next time Kelli O'Hara gets nominated for a Tony, she'll be the front-runner to win it. She's come on so strongly over the past few seasons (Light in the Piazza, Pajama Game, South Pacific) that she nearly feels overdue.

What with Gypsy, and Sunday, and Lin-Manuel's shout-out, and his own special-achievement Tony, this felt like Stephen Sondheim's night, though he wasn't even there. Leave it to him to stick up for playwrights and librettists, thanking all of his collaborators in a letter (meanwhile, Best Book wasn't even awarded on the telecast!). What a classy and generous man. But I feel for him, too. Really, it must be lonely at the top--to be the most feted artist of the American musical theater for over twenty years, with people expecting miracles every time he writes a song. I wrote him a letter this spring after hearing him speak, to express my sincere gratitude for his songs and his creation of the Young Playwrights Festival--but I have to wonder if letters like mine just increase the pressure he feels of crushingly high expectations.

Photo from broadway.com

Moi, I'm Calm

Whenever I have a song stuck in my head, I need to figure out how it got there. Usually the answer is simple: I heard it earlier that day. Or I heard somebody say a phrase that reminded me of a lyric in the song that I'm now humming.

But sometimes, hearing one song will cause a different song to get stuck in my head, revealing a surprising subconscious link between them. Sometimes the connection is lyrical. One of my housemates was obsessed with the song "All the Wasted Time" from Parade, and a couple hours after she played it for me, I found myself humming "Too Many Mornings" from Follies. Why? Because "Too Many Mornings" has a lyric that goes "All the time wasted / Merely passing through."

More rarely, I make a connection between two different songs because of their melodies...which happened to me today. I had heard "C'est Moi" from Camelot because I was watching some Youtube videos of the Camelot concert that got broadcast a few weeks ago, and then, somehow I got it mixed up with "I'm Calm" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Now, I'm not suggesting musical plagiarism on Sondheim's part (Forum opened two years after Camelot) but melodically/rhythmically, the songs have enough similarities that I understand why I started off singing "C'est moi" and ended with "I'm utterly under control." Regard:

c'est MOI, c'est MOI
i'm FORCED to ad-MIT
'tis I, i HUM-bly re-PLY
that MOR-tal WHO
these WON-ders can DO
c'est MOI, c'est MOI, 'tis I.

versus

i'm CALM, i'm CALM
i'm PER-fect-ly CALM
i'm UT-ter-ly UN-der con-TROL
i HAVE-n't a WOR-ry
where OTH-ers would HUR-ry
i STROLL.

The rhyme and scansion is very similar except for the last line, and with the re-jiggering of a few words, they could be sung to the same tune. Except, of course, that the subtle differences in their melodies help to define these characters. Lancelot's jaunty, swaggering music would be inappropriate for Hysterium, and Hysterium's hyperventilating waltz would never do for Lancelot.

Sondheim Week: Favorite Lyrics

In his fifty-year career Sondheim has written so many clever or profound lyrics that it's easy to have a dozen favorites. Sometimes his lyrics do not even yield up their brilliance at first glance: nobody ever ranks "Love, I Hear," from ...Forum with Sondheim's greatest ballads, but I once read an article (perhaps this one?) calling my attention to the line "Today I woke too weak to walk." A simple declarative sentence, you think at first. But when you realize the woke/weak/walk alliteration, and the repeated "to-day/too/to," and the implied pun on "weak" and "week"--it becomes mindboggling!

I blogged about some lyrics from "Epiphany" (Sweeney Todd) a few months ago...here are additional favorites. I've avoided some of his most clever and intricately rhymed songs like "A Little Priest" or "I'm Still Here" because I can't possibly choose an excerpt--also his philosophy-of-life songs like "Move On" or "Now You Know" because there, too, the effect is cumulative and I can't very well quote the whole song.

It takes trust
It takes just
A bit more
And we're done
We want four
We had none
We've got three
We need one
It takes two

"It Takes Two," Into the Woods. This lyric has a patterning kind of like the "today I woke too weak to walk" lyric discussed above--with its "four/none/three/one/two" finale. Mathematically precise, and perfect.

Ladies in their sensitivities, my lord
Have a fragile sensibility
When a girl's emergent
Probably it's urgent
You defer to her gent-
Ility, my lord
Personal disord-
Er cannot be ignored
Given their genteel proclivities
Meaning no offense, it
Happens they resents it
Ladies in their sensit-
Ivities, my lord!

"Ladies in their Sensitivities," Sweeney Todd. This is the song I am most annoyed they cut from the Sweeney Todd movie--it's got clever lyrics like this one, and it turns into a musically gorgeous Quartet.

I'll get Leontyne Price to sing her
Medley from "Meistersinger"
And Margot Fonteyn to dance "Giselle"
Won't it be perfectly swell?

"Bobby and Jackie and Jack," Merrily We Roll Along. One of my favorite Sondheim trick rhymes. (By the way, how do you think Sondheim feels about how his own name doesn't rhyme easily with anything? Even trick rhymes--what do you get? "Wand-heim?")

De Maupassant's candor
Would cause her dismay
The Brontës are grander
But not very gay
Her taste is much blander,
I'm sorry to say,
But is Hans Christian Ander-
Sen ever risqué?
Which eliminates A!

"Now," A Little Night Music. Sets up the joke perfectly, but at the same time, the rhymes are so intricate that it's impossible to predict the punchline.

As I've often stated
It's intolerable being tolerated.

"Later," A Little Night Music. One of my favorite "angsty" Sondheim lyrics. I liked this one a lot when I was in high school.

He flies off to California
I discuss him with my shrink
That's the story of the way we work
Me and Franklin Shepard, Inc.

"Franklin Shepard, Inc.," Merrily We Roll Along. Sondheim does have a reputation as the poet of angst and neurosis. What I love about this lyric is how Charley deftly skewers Franklin while also skewering himself ("I discuss him with my shrink") for putting up with Franklin for this long.

You said you loved me
Or were you just being kind
Or am I losing my mind?

"Losing My Mind," Follies. Makes the seemingly innocuous words "just being kind" sound absolutely devastating.

I'm still puzzling over whether there's a rhyme for "Sondheim" and I think I may have found one--which also sums up his talent in writing lyrics:

The words of Stephen Sondheim
Are pleasing far beyond rhyme.
They zing and sting and linger
Delighting listener and singer.

What's that you say? That "Sondheim" doesn't perfectly rhyme with "beyond rhyme" because according to the rules, you can't insert that extra "r" sound in there--it only works with "beyond-heim" or "beyond-I'm"? Oh well, that just proves why he is the master and the rest of us are left far behind.

Sondheim Week: The Man Himself

Note: This write-up is done from memory and all quotes are paraphrased to the best of my ability, as opposed to verbatim.

What a thrill it was to see Frank Rich interviewing Stephen Sondheim onstage at the Schnitz last night! The audience was so warm and appreciative, even humming along to the Sondheim songs that played over the speakers as we filed in. Portland Arts and Lectures has tried for over ten years to bring Sondheim to town, but he refuses to do lectures, only q&a sessions. Finally, they persuaded Frank Rich to persuade Sondheim to agree to an interview, and it turned into a short West Coast tour between these old friends.

The organizers set up a fake "living room" onstage, with armchairs, a lamp, and a table with a big bouquet of flowers. Sondheim seemed in good health and spirits. My parents guessed that he was only about 70 years old and I had to inform them that he will celebrate his 78th birthday this month!

Many of Rich's questions dealt with Sondheim's younger years, when he was writing West Side Story and Gypsy and working with some of the best theater artists of the previous generation. Sondheim began by telling the convoluted tale of how he got to write lyrics for West Side Story: he originally auditioned and was hired as lyricist for another Bernstein-Laurents-Robbins project that then fell through. Months later, he ran into Laurents at a party and learned that the three collaborators were about to start a modern version of Romeo and Juliet. "Who's doing the lyrics?" Sondheim asked, out of sheer curiosity, not because he hoped to get the gig himself. Laurents smacked his forehead and said "Why didn't I think of that? I didn't like your music much, but I like your lyrics." Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who originally wanted to write the lyrics, were in Hollywood and unable to break their studio contract. So Sondheim auditioned once again for Bernstein, who seemed disappointed that he did not have any "poetic" lyrics in his arsenal, but nevertheless, gave him the job. Sondheim didn't want to accept it, because of his desire to write both lyrics and music, but his mentor Oscar Hammerstein told him it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance and he'd better take it.

Sondheim said that he had a pleasant working relationship with Bernstein, because they were both fans of crossword puzzles and "cutthroat anagrams," and could thus release their tension by playing anagrams instead of yelling at each other. He called Jerome Robbins, though, "one of the two most difficult men I ever worked with," and told of Robbins' attempt to cut "Little Lamb" from Gypsy without consulting the authors, and how the Dramatists' Guild had to intervene. (Sondheim's other "most difficult" collaborator was Richard Rodgers, but he did not elaborate on that.)

Still, Jerome Robbins was responsible for fixing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by adding "Comedy Tonight." That show originally had had a funny opening number, but director George Abbott cut it because he didn't think it was hummable, and Sondheim replaced it with something called "Love Is In the Air"--"a charming song, but it made the show seem more like A Little Night Music than a baggy-pants farce." The show got terrible reviews in Washington, D.C. (a preteen Frank Rich got an excellent orchestra seat because it was playing to near-empty houses), and, at their wits' end, the collaborators called in Robbins for advice. Sondheim showed him the original funny song that Abbott didn't like, and Robbins said "That's just the kind of thing you need--now write another song that Abbott will approve. And don't put any jokes in it, because I'm going to create the jokes with my staging." Sondheim confessed that he thinks "Comedy Tonight" has "a very boring lyric--it's just a list" but because of the physical gags that Robbins choreographed, it became "one of the most brilliant opening numbers I've ever seen."

Oscar Hammerstein died before Sondheim achieved his greatest success, but had already seen enough to be very proud of his student. Sondheim talked about playing "Maria" for Hammerstein--"and it's not one of my favorite lyrics, but it's a very Hammerstein lyric, in its simplicity"--and seeing tears in his mentor's eyes. The whole audience smiled warmly and said "aww." "If you think that's touching," said Sondheim, "there's something else... When Oscar knew that he was dying, he invited his children and me to dinner... Oh God, I'm going to start crying... and on the piano he had a whole stack of photographs of himself, and asked us all to take one. And I asked him if he'd sign mine, which is a little strange, like asking your dad to autograph something... But he did, and when he handed it back I saw what he'd written... 'To Stevie, my friend and teacher,'" Sondheim finished through his tears.

"That really reminds me of his lyric from The King and I, 'By your pupils you'll be taught,'" Rich remarked.

Sondheim also talked about his encounters with Cole Porter. At 18, he wrote a Cole Porter pastiche song, called "The Canasta-Tico," for a Williams College revue, and was invited to play it at Porter's house in Williamstown. Filled with trepidation, even afraid of tracking mud onto Porter's spotless white carpets, Sondheim played his song. "That's not bad," said Porter, "but you know, I usually try to extend the endings of my songs a bit more... Let's see what we can do." And he showed Sondheim how to make his pastiche even more Cole Porter-ish. "What a generous man," Sondheim said to us.

About ten years later, when Sondheim and Styne were writing Gypsy, Ethel Merman invited them to play their songs for Porter, who had just had his second leg amputated and was feeling very depressed. Sondheim played "Together Wherever We Go," singing the quadruple-rhymed lyrics of the bridge:

Wherever I go, I know he goes
Wherever I go, I know she goes
No fits, no fights, no feuds and no egos
Amigos
Together!

And when Sondheim got to the "amigos" line, he heard Porter give a delighted gasp. "He hadn't seen it coming!" crowed Sondheim, still thrilled at the memory nearly fifty years later. "He didn't know there was going to be a fourth rhyme! And when you realize that Cole Porter loved to use foreign words in his own lyrics--it's a real Cole Porter rhyme! To this day--I'm not kidding--it is my proudest moment of lyric writing."

One of the things I liked most about Sondheim's talk was that his lessons for musical-theater writing also apply to non-musical playwriting. The "Comedy Tonight" anecdote illustrates the importance of telling the audience exactly what to expect within the first five or ten minutes of a show. From Robbins, Sondheim also learned that songs must have an action: Robbins was at first disappointed with "Maria" because it's just a guy standing center stage singing for three minutes about how he's in love. And Sondheim's own favorite songs among his oeuvre tend to be complex musical scenes like "Someone in a Tree" ("the way it dealt with time onstage has, I think, never been done before or since"), "Opening Doors" ("my most autobiographical song, and I love how it compresses two years in the characters' lives"), "God, That's Good," and "A Weekend in the Country" ("like a puzzle--it took me a week to figure it out"). These are not necessarily Sondheim's most musically gorgeous songs, or his funniest, or his catchiest, and they're certainly not the kind of songs you can extract and put in a musical revue. But that's why he loves them: for their specificity, for the amount of dramatic action that takes place within them, and for how they musicalize and dramatize character relationships. Sondheim, it seems, has the soul of a dramatist, more than that of a composer. Perhaps that is what makes his work so innovative.

"As for songs qua songs," said Sondheim, "something like 'Finishing the Hat'" is among his favorites, for its in-depth portrait of the creative process and the toll it takes. Still, a song like "Finishing the Hat" is equivalent to a monologue in a straight play, whereas "A Weekend in the Country" is equivalent to an entire scene. And I know that in my own writing, I am much prouder when I perfect a very complex scene with lots of characters, than when I complete a monologue that could easily be lifted from the play and used as an actor's audition piece--so I understand where Sondheim is coming from.

At the beginning of the interview, Rich and Sondheim remarked that the Schnitz, a former movie palace with ornate plasterwork and chandeliers, "would be the perfect place to do Follies," and eventually the conversation turned to that musical. Sondheim revealed some of the composers that he tried to pastiche: "One More Kiss" is Victor Herbert/Rudolf Friml, "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow" has a Jerome Kern verse and Burton Lane chorus, "Lucy and Jessie" is Cole Porter, and "Losing My Mind" is a straight take-off on the Gershwins' "The Man I Love." He denied, though, trying to say anything specific about these songwriters through pastiche--he just chose composers that were popular at the time that each female character sang in the Follies, and attempted to recreate their style.

As he has been doing for the last several months, Sondheim praised Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd film for stripping away every song that didn't further the action, and leaving only what was cinematic. Asked which of his other musicals he thinks have the potential to make good movies, he named Company and Into the Woods. Company because it is a "vignette-style" show, like the successful Chicago, and Into the Woods for just the opposite reason--because it is so full of action and plot.

At the end, Rich took some questions from the audience. Though many people wanted Sondheim to name his favorite songwriters of the younger generation, he politely declined, because he doesn't want to go on record as anointing his favorites, and make all the other young songwriters disappointed or jealous. It is nice that he realizes his power in the American musical theater, and wants to use it for good, not for ill.

Someone else asked, "As New Yorkers, could you please give us some insight on what is going on with your governor" --Sondheim burst out laughing-- "and whether you think it would make a good musical." "You know who would have made it a musical, would be the Gershwins," said Sondheim, "a 21st-century Of Thee I Sing."

Next question: Would Sondheim consider writing a show for Elaine Stritch? Sondheim replied that she is one of his favorite performers, but he would write a show "for her" only if he found a story that he wanted to dramatize with a role in it that Stritch should play. He does not write pure "star vehicles."

Another person asked if Sondheim had any anecdotes from his years living next door to Katharine Hepburn. He certainly did! As a younger man, he tended to compose very late at night, and at the time he was writing Company, Katharine Hepburn was in New York rehearsing the musical Coco. In the wee hours of the morning, as he slaved away over "The Ladies Who Lunch"--making a lot of noise because of the primal scream moment, "IIIII'LL drink to that!"--he heard a knock at his door, and there was Katharine Hepburn, in nightgown and babushka, barefoot in the dead of winter, ready to chew Sondheim out for keeping her up all night. (Sondheim tried to do a Hepburn imitation for us, but admitted he is not very good at it.) Sondheim later learned from Michael Bennett, who choreographed both Coco and Company, that Hepburn had been using "that young man next door who keeps me up all night" as an excuse to get out of rehearsal early. "And that's why she was a star," concluded Sondheim.

Rich ended the evening with the perfect audience question: "Can we sing 'Happy Birthday' to you?" And so the entire huge auditorium sang "Happy Birthday, dear Stephen" in honor of his upcoming 78th. It was not a very pretty sound--I think the orchestra section started singing before the balcony section caught on--but the spirit of it was genuine and it made everyone feel warm and happy.

Before that, Sondheim had answered the age-old question about whether he prefers writing music or lyrics. "I love music," said Sondheim. "It's easy. You play a chord, it sounds good--and I love dissonance, so you play a wrong note, it sounds good, too! Lyrics--sometimes the perfect phrase will just come to you, but usually, it's a lot of sweat-work."

But no wrong notes were struck last night--and I will treasure the memory of this evening, and many of the stories Sondheim told us, as much as I treasure so many of his songs.

Further links: An interview between Rich and Sondheim done eight years ago for the New York Times Magazine; my friend Marc actually met the man last night!

Sondheim Week: "Opening Doors"

I've decided to make this Sondheim Week on my blog, because I am going to see Frank Rich interview Sondheim tomorrow night and I could not be more excited. (If you're in Portland, tickets are still available--it's at the Schnitz.)

Stephen Sondheim has been my favorite Broadway composer-lyricist since I was in high school. I have tons of opinions about his work, tons of his songs remind me of moments in my own life--and I am also grateful to him for starting Young Playwrights, Inc., whose national contest I won in 2006.

As a young Sondheim-holic, I was especially thrilled to see a revue of his songs called Opening Doors, presented at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, in October 2004. It was my first semester at Vassar and my first weekend trip to New York. I traveled to the city on Saturday, saw The Frogs at Lincoln Center that night, sang "Stormy Weather" at a dessert-piano bar, stayed with my cousin in Brooklyn, and the next day, saw Opening Doors for just $10! The Frogs isn't Sondheim's best work, but that didn't matter, because Opening Doors left me feeling so happy. And like a real New York arts lover, a real sophisticate. Before that weekend, I'd barely seen any Sondheim performed live, and none since I'd become a devotee--just a high-school production of Into the Woods and a few West Side Storys.

Victoria Clark (top), Gregg Edelman and Kate Baldwin in Opening Doors. Photo from theatermania.com

I loved Opening Doors so much that I made copious notes after it was over (why I waited so long to start a blog, I don't know), and I'll spare you some of my freshman-year effusiveness, but I thought it a good basis for my first Sondheim Week post. It included many of his greatest hits (some in fresh interpretations), some more obscure pieces, as well as slide shows accompanied by recordings of Sondheim talking about his life and work.

Opening Doors featured five performers: Kate Baldwin, Victoria Clark, Jan Maxwell, Eric Jordan Young, and Patrick Wetzel (filling in for Gregg Edelman). Baldwin was the youngest, a perky ingenue with a clear mezzo/belt voice. Maxwell received the best mention in the New York Times, but I thought she was the weak link in the cast: her low alto voice did not have much range, and she overacted in her solos, waving her arms around. IMO, Clark was the standout, with her expressive voice that switches easily from chest tones to soprano, and her excellent acting. (I loved her even more in The Light in the Piazza the following spring.) Wetzel's voice was a little thin and nasal, but I had immense respect for his ability to step in as an understudy for an hour and a half of singing, dancing, and acting Sondheim. Young had a rich African-American baritone voice, and was also a talented hoofer.

I fell in love with the show during the third number, a medley of "Move On," "Everybody Says Don't," and "Take Me to the World." I wrote, "It was staged so that the other four performers sang "Move On" and "Everybody Says Don't" to Young, as if they were instructing a child on how to live in the world. Then he faced front and sang "Take Me to the World" solo. At the end, the other themes came back, and Young held the note on "for our own," and the three others held the note on "don't be afraid," and Victoria Clark's gorgeous soprano cut above the rest to sing "Stop worrying where you're going, move on," it was incredible. I got chills and almost cried!"

The show was loosely structured as a passage from innocence to experience, explaining why this medley appeared early in the show. It was followed by Baldwin singing "I Know Things Now" as though she were a neurotic young woman who had just gotten out of a relationship with a slimy guy, i.e., figuratively eaten by a wolf. Other re-interpreted songs included "A Weekend in the Country" sung in swing/jazz rhythm instead of waltz time, and "Barcelona" with the genders reversed and Patrick Wetzel singing in an over-the-top Spanish accent.

The Sondheim interview segments also helped to structure the show. For instance, after he discussed life in New York, the performers sang "Who Wants to Live in New York?" "What More Do I Need?" "Uptown, Downtown," and "Another Hundred People." Act One ended with Sondheim talking about friendship and the performers singing a medley of "Old Friends/What Would We Do Without You/Side By Side."

The first act of the show was energetic and cheerful--the performers wore business-casual outfits and the lighting featured lots of magenta and red. The second act became quieter and more introspective, with blue-purple lighting and the performers in cocktail/evening wear. It featured two love song medleys, one for the women, one for the men. When Maxwell sang "Loving You," Clark sang "Not a Day Goes By," and Baldwin sang "So Many People," it was a perfect matching of song and performer. Less exciting was Young singing "Goodbye for Now" and Wetzel singing "I Wish I Could Forget You." But at the end, the men made eye contact and you suddenly realized that they were singing about each other. I wrote at the time, "A nice way to include the fact that Sondheim is gay without clobbering you over the head with it."

More upbeat moments in Act II included an absolutely rip-roaring rendition of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" by Victoria Clark--literally a showstopper. Clark had to hold her final pose for the longest time as we kept applauding and applauding. And Baldwin and Young did a dynamite dance routine to "That Old Piano Roll." Still, by the end, the show ended with more pretty medleys, emotionally moving harmonies, and grand statements about life: first a "No More/No One Is Alone/Being Alive" medley, then "With So Little to Be Sure Of/Our Time."

Noteworthy quotes from Sondheim (paraphrased, of course) during the interview segments included:

• On youthful crushes: "I was always the youngest, and the smartest, in my class" (something I can relate to!) "which meant that I always hung out with older kids—they took me under their wing, kind of like a mascot. I remember when I was about fourteen, hanging out with this one senior and his girlfriend…Was that a crush? I don’t know."
• On friendship: As he gets older, the few lifelong friendships he has are the ones who can "endlessly surprise" him.
• On love: Sondheim considers himself a romantic, in the sense of believing in big, grand, sweeping, passionate statements, “as I think even a cursory listen to Sweeney Todd would prove.” Still, he knows very few couples who can be happy together for an entire lifetime, and that is why he has never had such a relationship.
• On actresses: Bernadette Peters, Angela Lansbury, and Lee Remick are his favorites for acting while singing, while Glynis Johns and Elaine Stritch are his favorite “personality singers.” Meanwhile, the conventional wisdom about Ethel Merman was that she couldn’t act, but Sondheim and Styne realized that her comedy skills came from some real anger in her soul, and wrote songs to tap into that anger.
• On posterity: Sondheim doesn't think much about it, because he'd prefer people to discover and consider his work while he is still alive.
• On writing and life: Asked what he would tell his “younger self,” Sondheim's advice on writing was to write what you feel, not what you think you should feel. He used the lyric from "Move On," "Anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new" to illustrate his point. His advice on life was to go after what you want, but be sure it's really what you want (which is the theme of Cinderella's storyline in Into the Woods, of course!). He introduced the singers' rendition of "With So Little To Be Sure Of" by reciting its first lines...it must mean a lot to him.

The New York Times accused Opening Doors of being too upbeat and cheery, and maybe that's true. Songs from shows like Sweeney Todd and Assassins were under-represented, while Merrily We Roll Along and Company, two of Sondheim's most brassy, "Broadway-sounding" scores, were over-represented. And maybe, now that I'm no longer a starry-eyed freshman, I'd find myself agreeing more with the Times. But back then, when I felt so wholeheartedly transported by Opening Doors, the bad reviews made me angry, and made me wonder whether I was wrong, or the newspaper was. To reassure myself, I wrote, "I may not have a good eye yet for judging first-class productions of Sondheim. I may like cheaply witty or overly perky renditions of his work. But at least I’m not buying tickets to Mamma Mia." And "So other people have higher expectations for Sondheim songs than I do. But I’m glad I’m not jaded yet, like these New York theatre critics. I thank God that I could enjoy it as much as I did. Since it was the best ten dollars I ever spent. Really."

Whither sophisticated lyrics?

Last week one of my friends asked me if I had ever considered writing musicals and not just plays. "I used to think that that was what I was going to do," I replied. "In high school I even tried writing a musical version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. But I don't know enough about writing music, or music theory...so I gave it up. I'd still be interested in writing lyrics though, if I could collaborate with someone else."

"I think you'd be good at it," said my friend, "especially coming up with sophisticated rhymes and allusions--you know, like Dorothy Fields."

This led us to discuss why the art of writing "sophisticated" lyrics peaked around the 1930s and has been in decline ever since. We thought of Fields' "Never Gonna Dance" (admittedly the lyrics are a bit odd, but the song as a whole works wonderfully):

Have I a heart that acts like a heart,
Or is it a crazy drum,
Beating the weird tattoos
Of the St. Louis Blues?
Have I two eyes to see your two eyes
Or see myself on my toes
Dancing to radios
Or Major Edward Bowes?

or her absolutely delightful "I Won't Dance":

When you dance, you're charming and you're gentle
'Specially when you do the Continental
But this feeling isn't purely mental
For heaven rest us,
I'm not asbestos

And that's why
I won't dance, why should I?
I won't dance, how could I?
I won't dance, merci beaucoup
I know that music leads the way to romance,
So if I hold you in my arms I won't dance

or any number of lyrics from Ira Gershwin (here, "They All Laughed")

They all laughed at Rockefeller Center
Now they're fighting to get in
They all laughed at Whitney and his cotton gin
They all laughed at Fulton and his steamboat
Hershey and his chocolate bar
Ford and his Lizzie
Kept the laughers busy
That's how people are

or Cole Porter (with "You're the Top" perhaps the all-time pinnacle of this kind of lyric writing):

You're the top
You're an Arrow collar
You're the top
You're a Coolidge dollar
You're the nimble tread
Of the feet of Fred Astaire
You're an O'Neill drama
You're Whistler's mama
You're Camembert

But this style of lyric seems to have become less and less frequent, perhaps to have died out entirely. Yes, Stephen Sondheim has written sophisticated, clever, perfectly rhymed lyrics long after Fields, Gershwin and Porter stopped, but his are sophisticated in a different way. Maybe "The Ladies Who Lunch" is Sondheim's version of a Cole Porter-ish urbane list song, but it originates out of Joanne's drunken self-loathing, rather than just being a witty showpiece like "You're the Top." In general, Sondheim's songs are too psychologically acute to be mistaken for these popular hits of the '30s.

My friend and I thought of several reasons why these kind of lyrics have died out. First, there are just fewer musical comedies being written; for a long time in the 1980s and 1990s, the most popular shows were Lloyd Webber-style pop operas. There are perhaps a few clever lyrics in those shows (we thought of Evita's "They need to adore me / So Christian Dior me") but in general they don't allow much humor.

The musical comedy was revived with The Producers, but it, and many shows that followed, are set in past decades, so they can't make contemporary allusions. I feel that Mel Brooks would write some gleefully vulgar lyrics incorporating names of current celebrities, if only The Producers wasn't set in the 1950s and Young Frankenstein in the 1930s. Hairspray and Little Shop of Horrors find some clever rhymes in their early-1960s setting, but I'd love to hear what the lyricists of these shows could do with a story set in the 21st century. (Or could have done. RIP Howard Ashman.)

Third, the art of making rhymes about contemporary events, celebrities, and trends has been taken over by rappers. From Kanye West's "Jesus Walks": "The way school needs teachers / The way Kathie Lee needed Regis / That's the way I need Jesus." Now, that's not a perfect rhyme, but it's in the spirit of the 1930s lyricists and their clever allusions to current cultural phenomena.

In the end, the only modern musical-comedy song we could think of that sort of replicates the 1930s lyrical style is "Great Big Stuff" from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And it's a rap song--as if the only way to get away with these lyrics nowadays is to set them to rap music.

A house in the Bahamas
Paisley silk pajamas
Poker with Al Roker and our friend Lorenzo Lamas
[...]
Chillin' in the city
Sittin' pretty in the Caddy
With P. Daddy
Or Puff Diddy
Or whatever!

These lyrics require contemporary knowledge to get the joke (Mr. Sean Combs' ever-changing nom de rap) and shamelessly cite D-list celebrities just for the sake of a rhyme--not far off from what some '30s songwriters were doing. Indeed, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is an interesting test case for how to write a musical comedy set in the present day. It takes place on the sophisticated French Riviera and blends skilled old-fashioned songwriting (sincere ballad "Love Sneaks In," peppy charm song "Here I Am") with modern-day vulgarity and pastiche (gross-out "All About Ruprecht," power-ballad parody "Love Is My Legs"). Perhaps even its plot--classy European Lawrence vs. crass American Freddy--reflects an insecurity about the form a modern musical comedy should take.

As a thoroughly modern girl*, it annoys me that so many musical comedies take place in the nostalgic past. It seems to bespeak a dissatisfaction with our own time: "Nothing these days is worth writing songs about, so let's all reminisce about an era when musical comedies were the pinnacle of taste!" But I firmly believe that the art we make helps construct the world we live in. So if we wish the 21st century was more sophisticated--well, why not write sophisticated songs and stories that take place in 2008, and hope that life imitates art?

Because, if you think about it, the 1930s wasn't all-sophisticated either--there was that nasty little event known as the Great Depression. But we remember it as sophisticated in large part because of the work of songwriters like Fields, Porter, and Gershwin. Songs like "You're the Top" help preserve 1930s ephemera that otherwise might have vanished. We need to preserve our own era in song. We need to create a second Golden Age instead of pining for the first one.

*How can Thoroughly Modern Millie be thoroughly modern when it is doubly nostalgic: a 21st-century musical based on a 1960s movie set in the 1920s?

Epiphanies of all sorts

Sweeney Todd's "Epiphany." Photo from vh1.com

Happy Feast of the Epiphany! This has always been one of my favorite religious holidays, for its name and the promise it brings of revelation and renewal. The Three Wise Men, the star, and the gold, frankincense and myrrh provide it with interesting imagery. And if you're in France, getting to eat delicious almond King Cake (and possibly getting crowned if you receive the lucky piece) is lots of fun, too.

"Epiphany" is also the title of one of the key songs in Sweeney Todd (saw the movie about a week ago, and enjoyed it). The former pastor at my church had a nasal tenor voice and occasionally sang something as part of his sermon. Once, oddly enough, he chose "Not While I'm Around," from that same musical. And if you divorce that song from its original context of a traumatized child singing to a cannibalistic pie-maker to warn her of a mad serial-killer barber, while meanwhile the pie-maker is plotting to kill the child... then yes, it does work rather well in a Catholic sermon. (I think the priest's point was something about God's love and care.)

A little while after that sermon, it was Epiphany. In the foyer after Mass had ended, I again told the priest how much I had enjoyed "Not While I'm Around" a few weeks earlier, then added, "But it's a good thing you didn't sing 'Epiphany' today!"

You know, the song that has one of my favorite Sondheim lyrics in it (oh, who am I kidding, I have about a hundred favorite Sondheim lyrics):

No, we all deserve to die
Even you, Mrs. Lovett, even I
Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us death will be a relief

The way this quatrain sums up a whole philosophy of life (or rather, of death) is breathtaking. It divides the world neatly into two groups of people--"the wicked" and "the rest of us" who are abused by the wicked--and argues, with chilling logic, that death is the right answer for BOTH groups--it's like the thought process of a religious fanatic. "Yes, I can go on a Crusade, or a suicide bombing mission, to kill my wicked enemies...and if any innocents get killed in the process, it doesn't matter since they'll go straight to heaven!" It is incredibly rich. And all in only 32 words.

Actually, presenting the song in this context, it could form part of a sermon on fanaticism or negative utilitarianism... but otherwise, it's not something you want to hear on Sunday mornings from the pulpit.

But whether you are having an Epiphany filled with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, or more of a "they all deserve to die" Epiphany, I wish you the very best.

Into the Woods: Now and Hence and Ever After

There's a wonderful tribute post on Into the Woods up at Edward Copeland on Film right now. The show opened 20 years ago today and, while it was somewhat overshadowed that season by The Phantom of the Opera, the intervening years have shown it for the truly clever, entertaining, moving work of art that it is. Woods will be around for a long time to come...Phantom has already turned into a joke.

And Into the Woods will always hold a special place in my heart because just a year ago, I played "Lucinda" (one of the stepsisters) in the Vassar production. It was a thrill to fulfill my dream of performing in a Sondheim show before I give up acting to focus wholly on playwriting. In a way, I don't want to act in any other show, because it would feel anticlimactic after Into the Woods. I like the idea of going out on a high note surrounded by knotty Sondheim harmonies. I don't want the magic to vanish!

Gee, Officer Ramone

It's not just tight jeans and leather jackets they have in common. West Side Story photo from citizenofthemonth.com. Ramones photo from modpoppunk.free.fr

Took a road trip this week, tooling down the Columbia River Gorge listening to a Ramones compilation CD. It's only recently that I got into the Ramones; for a long time, I avoided them. I'd always heard them described as "loud," "tough," "punk," "attitudinal," etc.--and I have delicate sensibilities! But what no one ever told me is that, deep down, the Ramones are pop. I love how they take chords, choruses, and other motifs from old girl-group and bubblegum pop, rev them up and play them with a gleeful irony. They may be loud and tough, but their songs are always catchy-melodic and their playing always precise. They may sing "Beat on the brat with a baseball bat," but you never honestly believe that they are going to break into your nice suburban neighborhood and beat up your kids, the way you fear that death-metalheads will kidnap your children and use them in satanic rituals.

I'm surely not the first person to mention the pop antecedents of the Ramones--for instance, that the first two lines of "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" virtually copy the Beach Boys' "Fun Fun Fun." But I bet I am the first person to hear the song "We're a Happy Family" and say "It's just like 'Gee, Officer Krupke' from West Side Story!"

Stylistically and thematically, the two songs are close cousins. In both, tough New York street kids sing about their hilariously messed-up family lives in a tone of faux innocence. The Jets interject "Golly Moses!" and "Leapin' lizards!" and pretend they're blameless. The Ramones insist "We're a happy family!" despite all evidence to the contrary.

Here's some excerpts from Action and the Jets (via Stephen Sondheim):

Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!

Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough.
With all their marijuana,
They won't give me a puff.

My father is a bastard,
My ma's an S.O.B.
My grandpa's always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress.
Goodness gracious, that's why I'm a mess!

And here are Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommy:

Sitting here in Queens
Eating refried beans
We're in all the magazines
Gulpin' down thorazines

We ain't got no friends
Our troubles never end
No Christmas cards to send
Daddy likes men

Daddy's telling lies
Baby's eating flies
Mommy's on pills
Baby's got the chills

I'm friends with the President
I'm friends with the Pope
We're all making a fortune
Selling Daddy's dope

I doubt this similarity is intentional--more likely it's just something in the New York City air and attitude. I've heard the Ramones called the first urban rock band. And West Side Story might have been the first urban (as opposed to urbane) musical. You can hear it in both these songs.