Blog posts
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Oct 10 2008, 12:02 PMAssassins, A Little Night Music, etc. from Sondheim “The Story So Far”Posted by Sony BMG Masterworksat October 4, 2008By Daniel Felsenfeld
Personally, I like theatre to go to extremes. In college, I loved Tenessee Williams, Wedekind, Joe Orton, Howard Barker, Howard Korder, the Peter Brook production of Marat/Sade, and Bertolt Brecht (especially his collaborations with Kurt Weill). They seemed to not just show the same thing onstage that we could see in life but with snappier dialogue, but seemed to aim for a particular kind of catharsis that needed to be achieved through discomfort, if not actual pain. Sondheim skirts this kind of discomfort—Sweeney Toddis gloriously garish, but it is a horror movie; Companyraises issues that must have been really confusing to the chattering class in 1970s New York; Pacific Overturesdeals boldly with the Moloch of Americanization through Asian fable—but never really quite gets there, not, at least, until Assassins, which for this reason alone stands it as my favorite show by the great theatre genius.
The two tracks from this show included in The Story So Farscratch only the surface of how truly extreme this show really is. The first, “Everybody’s Got the Right to be Happy” features a carnival barker (shades of Lulu or Poulenc’s Mammeles perhaps?) begging the desolate souls who will come to be presidential assassins to come in and commit their crimes. He beckons, for example, John Hinkley, to “come and get the prize with those big blue eyes / skinny little thighs and those big blue eyes,” a reference to Reagan’s would-be assassin and his obsession with a certain actress in the film Taxi Driver. Gross, but entrancing; uncomfortable, yes, but makes a point, a beautiful one, about the way in which people are taught to think that the mere fact that “…everybody’s got the right to be happy” might entice the less sane among us to murder.
Even creepier is “The Ballad of Booth,” a soulful aria from the man who shot Lincoln. Booth is the star of Assassins(“here comes our pioneer” they all beam as he enters), his exploits being so important that he needs a balladeer to tell his tale. Like Kurt Weill jazzing up MacHeath in Mac the Knife (it has always baffled me as this clever little number about a brutal and unrepentant murderer has made the rounds, even announcing the fact that MacDonalds would stay open late countrywide; sometimes I feel we do live in a surrealist painting). S ondheim gives Booth cause, soul, and some of his most aching melodies. On the run, Booth the actor dictates to his sideman the reasons he shot the president (though the Balladeer disagrees: “…they say it wasn’t Lincoln John / you merely had a slew of bad reviews”). He begs for his story to told, how he “…killed the man who killed my country,” and how the “…nation can never again be the hope that it was.” But then he twists, “…how the union could never recover / from that vulgar, high-and-mighty, nigger lover / never” and wham! Sondheim has twisted the knife, led us down a particular path and then dumped some horrors from the mouth of he who sang it. We almost believe him, and it gets us to question a lot in ourselves. Booth loses us here, though he continues, but the lingering agreement we felt with him does not flee so quickly. Catharsis through discomfort. And then, Sondheim gives us another twist, as suddenly the Balladeer is able to mock Booth as a madman whose cause was asserted against him (“…Lincoln who got mixed reviews / because of you John now gets only raves”). Exquisite, morally complicated, all set to fingerpicking, old-timey music.
Other tracks on this set traffic in Sondheim’s trademark irony—“Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, one of the lovlies non-love songs ever written; “Pretty Lady”from Pacific Overtures, gorgeous trio about sailors finding “love” in a brothel; and “The Ladies who Lunch” from Company, a nice little light rumba about a dying breed of upper-crust bitches—but none so gloriously ugly as those from Assassins. I personally remember a planned revival in New York some years ago, called off immediately following 9/11. I guess people were not ready to be ironic about dead presidents.
The Podcast about this show isn’t until January 20th, so I’ll be back to remind you then. Don’t miss it, as this really is an extraordinary piece of difficult theatre. With some really catchy tunes…
blog post from: http://blog.sonybmgmasterworks.com/broadway/assassins-a-little-night-music-etc-from-sondheim-the-story-so-far/
For more information on The Story So Far... visit www.masterworksbroadway.com/sondheim/
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Oct 10 2008, 12:01 PMStephen Sondheim’s “The Story So Far…”By Daniel Felsenfeld
I. Am. So. Excited! As a longstanding admirer of Stephen Sondheim, the great theatre genius who made poetry out of urbane bitchiness and who brought music of a certain harmonic spikiness to the mainstream, I was thrilled when this gorgeous boxed set arrived at my doorstep. Sony’s Sondheim: The Story So Far… is simply a beautifully packaged, carefully contrived tribute to a still-vital composer who changed the face of the American stage. Admirers of Sondheim run deep and wax rhapsodic—I recall being at a musicology conference some years ago and attending a panel devoted to his work in which hardened and often-stuffy academics who spend their life ferreting out Gregorian Chant or writing entire books on a few measures of Beethoven took the stage and beamed. A coming out party, in a way, as I’d never heard someone at a panel devoted to, say, Mozart, saying things like “I mean he’s just plain good.” Sondheim just inspires admiration on a certain level.
In later posts I will go into the specifics because honestly I cannot listen to this enough for me. But as a general overview, this box is pretty much aces. There are some obvious choices— “America” from West Side Story (the show that made him famous), “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music (his only bona-fide “hit”), and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy—but the box is best for its goodies, its nod to the fans (guilty!) who probably already have all these cast albums. For example, for years I’ve been dying to hear the entirety of the essentially-lost made-for-TV musical Evening Primrose. Much as I love the version with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, it is nice to hear it as it was written, for the composer’s close friend Tony Perkins. (If neither he nor Charmain Carr sing as well as Mr. Patinkin or Ms. Peters, that doesn’t really matter—this version of this odd little show is important to hear, as much a slice of a bygone era as a musical event; and this era should by no means be bygone.) And wow, to hear Mel Torme singing “Live Alone and Like It,” a song that never made it into the film Dick Tracy (am I right about that?), is worth the price of admission.
It is, of course, the real ephemera that gets this fanboy riled up. Disc Four is a Sondheim completist’s dream, containing music that has only until this point been lines of descriptions in this or that biography or available on this or that obscure compilation or concert album: Incidental music to Arthur Laurents’ play The Enclave, “Truly Content” from Passionella (though this is available on one of the two Sondheim Sings discs issued in the past few years on P.S. Classics—but you truly have to be a hardcore fan to own these…), “Water Under the Bridge” from the Rob Reiner movie Singing Out Loud (whatever happened to it?), and the incidental music to Invitation to a Waltz. I will get more into this because I am one of those people who looks for the extras. I like a rounder picture sometimes…
The Story So Far also contains a generous sampling of photographs, testimonials, and explanations of certain songs from the composer himself. The final product is, in short, delicious.
And as an added, interactive bonus, Sony is producing a series of Podcasts—the Masterworks Broadway Podcast Theatre—to coincide with this release. So allow me, your blogger, to inject a little of that smug, critical, I’ve-heard-this-which-is-unavailable-to-mere-mortals bluster to say that they contain some pretty remarkable stuff that will be rolled out as the months go on, through the beginning of February. Important people in the Sondheim-verse weigh in on things, from his musical collaborators like Paul Ford (a pianist who has worked with Sondheim for years) or Paul Gemigniani (conductor and orchestrator) to his theatrical collaborators like Patti LuPone, Elaine Stritch (who does still wear a hat, I discovered), Mandy Patinkin or a certain Angela Lansbury and another certain Bernadette Peters. Plenty of chatting with the man himself as well. It is a banner month for fans of both Sondheim and LeonardBernstein.
The first Podcast airs on Tuesday, September 30th, and it is a nice introduction to Sondheim. Fans of course will love it, but if you remain unconvinced (or just haven’t listened yet) this might be a good place to start. Sondheim speaks about his overall intentions in the theatre (to write things that are not confusing), with delightful and thoughtful endorsements by no less than Angela Lansbury, Frank Rich (the former “Butcher of Broadway”), Lonny Price, and Laura Benanti.
Much much more later…
Blog post from: http://blog.sonybmgmasterworks.com/broadway/stephen-sondheims-the-story-so-far/
For more information on The Story So Far... visit www.masterworksbroadway.com/sondheim/
