Ivor Gurney
Remember before binge watching, once upon a time ago, one could see film double-bills at revival houses? Few left, if any. And a thought occurred, what if musicals could do a Sunday afternoon double bill. The cast of a Broadway show would then do a kinda City Center Encores of a semi-staged show. On the same set/same cast etc. So: Company (1970) then I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road (1978). Then all we need is Dennis Hopper et al to recite some poetry as an entr’act..oh, yes well, guess they’re all dead too. Well, Mr. Sondheim will just being haven’ a ball up there in the musical firmament. I do have some live John Giorno footage…
Do people change? Most certainly yes in some cases: emotionally, politically, spiritually. Others grow an extra emotional skin to heal their experiences. A crusty carapace easily confused with change.
I remember being that age feeling exactly the same about Sondheim’s work. What did make Stephen Sondheim a great engine of the musical theater? Two factors, firstly, great music will always find a place in the hearts of many. Or rather brain. When we are both 16 and 90 why is that so? Listening to Sondheim and his illustrious colleagues in later life, after all our experiences, isn’t the same as when one is 16. Many of us don’t want “someone to sit in my chair, ruin my sleep…[be crowded with love]” as go the lyrics of Being Alive from Company. Yet the emotional truth of that song is forever a rock (Come Scoglio) as is Lennon–McCartney’s Let It Be or Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence. The traumas many teenagers experience are absolutely real. Certainly not helped by social media.
Thinking back on our lives we wonder how could I possibly have behaved like that? Yet the emotional core of that behavior never really changes in us. The incredible bitter irony of Shakespeare’s King Lear when admonishing Cordelia: Thou shouldst not have been old before thou hadst been wise.
The second factor in Sondheim’s greatness was his bravery, both for choosing material and collaborators. Moreover his darkness. Many of his best loved songs are similar to Jerry Herman: simple chords, simple keys, simple lyrics- Good Thing Going, Send in the Clowns, Not While I’m Around, Children and Art. For me, Herman always walked in the light albeit somewhat melancholy. Sondheim almost always preferred a stroll in our shadows:
"You have to work on something that makes you uncertain - something that makes you doubt yourself," Sondheim said in 2017.
"If you know where you're going, you've gone, as the poet says. And that's death.”- BBC’s website.
A darkness nowadays somewhat a staple on Broadway: Jagged Little Pill, Dear Evan Hansen, Hadestown.
His earliest lyricist collaborations were undeniably bold: Gypsy, West Side Story. And there was something in the air back then with Bob Fosse, Sweet Charity, Cabaret. Then, what happened? Broadway went kind of tame. Sure there was the wild Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy. Sondheim, though, never stopped reaching into our emotional abyss. ‘What Happened to Us!’ should really be the title of Mr. Sondheim’s biography, his everlasting legacy for the musical theater.
Now it is just like all the other horses…It doesn't matter. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise…I'll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less - freakish ! …[They both laugh.] Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don't have horns.
After this production, it’ll be a very, very long time before ever again I can witness The Glass Menagerie: “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
[As a P.S.]
Not forgetting nor disparaging Broadway’s iconic great long-running shows of the 70s/80s and of course Pippin. The hits of Andrew Lloyd Webber always seemed operatic in conception (even Cats). And there is creative point where he and Sondheim do meet in portraying their characters’ emotional dilemmas: Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd. Few shows came close to being neighbors of Sondheim, Nine (1982), Blood Brothers (1983) and the short lived Carrie (1988). Then Sunday in the Park with George (1984} and Into the Woods (1987) just slugged that ball of imagination right outta the park.
Sondheim: "Couldn't you at least learn the lyrics to my funeral, d'damn it Miranda! Was that too much to ask?! Like, I do you a favor and -no-one is alone!
Havin' so much fun with JUDY (you know Smith;) up here. We're gonna nail these sons of beaches!"
Only in. Only in. ONLY IN.......
FOLKS!
Tony Bennett: "I remember the cat...I remember sky...
