Assassins (1990)

Strange as it may seem, this was actually my first Sondheim show.  Not Sweeney Todd, not Into the Woods, not A Little Night Music, not Sunday in the Park with George, but Assassins, the darkly comic musical about America’s actual and would-be presidential assassins.  During the 2004 Tony Awards, I fell in love with the Broadway cast’s performance and shortly thereafter bought the CD for the revival.  I discovered that Sondheim is tricky but supremely rewarding, that Doogie Howser has a nice set of pipes on him (this was pre-How I Met Your Mother – that’s weird to think,) and that, if Raúl Esparza couldn’t win best supporting actor in a musical for Taboo, the award was safe in the hands of Michael Cerveris as John Wilkes Booth.

The musical itself is deliciously theatrical.  It’s not so much a concrete story as it is a series of vignettes that flit through time, framed in a strange sort of limbo in which notorious figures from different points in history can interact.  It opens with a vaguely sinister carnival proprietor trying to entice assorted malcontent oddballs to try their luck at a game of chance:  “Shoot a prez, win a prize!”  It’s an interesting device, giving a festive backdrop to such awful events.  And yet, we lurch with the chaotic whirl, and we see the dark undertones behind the lights.

And really, the classic Americana imagery of the carnival motif also strikes an unsettling discord with the story of these assassins, regarded as some of the least American people in U.S. history.  The show’s other main narrative device, an itinerant balladeer who spins the assassins’ tales into song, is similarly all-American.  As the assassins try to speak for themselves and get us to understand their reasoning, they get increasingly frustrated with the balladeer’s tuneful interruptions.

Much of the music combines folk with Sondheim’s usual style, and the result is an intriguing musical potpourri.  All of the ballads are catchy, clever, and all-around fantastic, especially “The Ballad of Booth.”  In it, Booth rails against the balladeer’s more cavalier version of his story and tries to explain “why [he] did it;” it’s a song with a lot of depth, one that unflinchingly examines what can cause a man to turn to unforgiveable actions.  “Unworthy of Your Love” – a duet between John Hinckley Jr. and Squeaky Fromme, respectively directed to an absent Jodie Foster and Charles Manson – is as creepy as it is audacious.  I also love “Something Just Broke,” in which a collection of ordinary citizens recall what they were doing when they heard news of a president’s death by assassin.

Not to mention, this show makes for a great history lesson.  I’d never even heard of Leon Czolgosz or Charles Guiteau before Assassins, but now I have a good understanding of all four presidential assassinations and five unsuccessful attempts.  I’ve learned more about the history behind them and interesting bits of trivia related to each one – plenty of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moments!  I know that it doesn’t approach Sondheim’s greatest works, but I’ll always enjoy it as my first, and I’ll always appreciate it for its boldness, originality, and instructiveness. 

Warnings

Dark subject matter, violence, swearing (including one N-word,) and sexual references.

Top Five Songs: A Little Night Music

A Little Night Music has an exquisite score.  It’s meticulous, sumptuous, heartfelt, clever, and funny, and it’s one that pops up to say, “Hey, what about me?” any time I start thinking another Sondheim score is my favorite (not that I’m saying it is my favorite, just that it keeps the competition fierce.)  If I could only have five songs from this show, here’s what I’d choose.

(Pictures are from assorted productions.)

“Now” – The whole “Now / Later / Soon” sequence is fabulous, but you can’t beat Fredrik’s intro.  This fussy, pedantic number, which weighs the pros and cons of ravishing his young wife, is a riot.  It establishes Fredrik and his situation with Anne in a marvelously entertaining manner.

Best line:  “In view of her penchant / For something romantic, / De Sade is too trenchant / And Dickens too frantic, / And Stendahl would ruin / The plan of attack, / As there isn’t much blue in / ‘The Red and the Black.’”

“In Praise of Women” – Carl-Magnus might be my favorite character; this self-important, deluded philanderer is so amusing.  It’s fun to hear his mental gymnastics as he tries to quell his suspicions that his mistress is cheating on him, and I love his condescending “praise of women.”

Best line:  “God knows the foolishness about them, / But if one had to live without them, / The world would surely be a poorer, / If purer, / Place.”

“Every Day a Little Death” – Anne and Charlotte make a good team, since Anne is so naïve and Charlotte is so cynical.  I really like Anne’s wake-up call here as Charlotte opens her eyes to the reality of men, marriage, and infidelity.  The round is gorgeous, and Charlotte’s internal struggle between love and scorn is terrifically compelling.

Best line:  “He smiles sweetly, / Strokes my hair, / Says he misses me. / I would murder him right there, / But first I die.”

“Send in the Clowns” – Come on, I had to do this one!  Overexposure aside, it really is an excellent song, even more so in context.  Desiree’s quiet, wistful regret is beautifully heartbreaking, and I like the way she compares her ease onstage with her tumultuous real life.

Best line:  “Isn’t it rich? / Isn’t it queer, / Losing my timing this late / In my career? / And where are the clowns? / There ought to be clowns. / Well, maybe next year.”

“The Glamorous Life (Film Version)” – A bit of a cheat maybe, since this version isn’t in the show, but it’s so amazing that I couldn’t leave it out.  I adore everything about Fredrika’s ode to her famous mother, especially the stiff-upper-lip way she insists she’s okay with Desiree touring, gallivanting, and never being home.  The melody is so sweet and lovely, and the lyrics get me every time.

Best line:  “Ordinary mothers needn’t meet committees, / But ordinary mothers don’t get keys to cities. / No, ordinary mothers merely see their children all year, / Which is nothing – I hear. / But it does interfere / With the glamorous…”

Into the Woods (2014, PG)

This is a movie that had me feeling excited and apprehensive in almost equal amounts.  It’s a show I love so much that I was invested in seeing it done right – no small task for a movie musical.  As information started to come out and a number of the casting choices were so unobvious and intriguing (although, after I heard that Alan Cumming was originally considered for the wolf, it was so perfect that I couldn’t get it out of my head,) I knew that, regardless of how it turned out, I wasn’t going to miss it for anything.

As it happens, the movie is pretty terrific.  Is it as good as some of the productions I’ve seen?  No, but it’s better than a lot of movie musicals.  It’s properly cinematic; some adaptations fall into a trap of basically just filming the stage show and dumping it onscreen, which doesn’t work for the medium.  Others, however, seem embarrassed about the fact that they’re musicals and shoehorn in “excuses” to sing, which usually winds up feeling far more ridiculous than simply being a musical.  Luckily, Into the Woods knows what it is and owns up to it quite readily.

Right from the start, with the intricately-lyriced opening number, featuring layer upon layer of overlapping melodies, you can tell you’re in good hands.  The camera flits deftly from scene to scene, weaving the different locales together as the voices bridge the distance.  From there, we largely have a very capable, very thoughtful movie musical.  I especially applaud the devices used to break up the visuals on monologue songs like “Giants in the Sky” and “I Know Things Now.”

The art direction is terrific – the film looks gorgeous, and the magic is especially well done.  I like that, while we get dramatic wind effects, there aren’t a ton of bright lights or flashes of color.  Rather, things tend more to burst in and out of being.  It’s a simple but highly effective technique that feels very naturalistic.  When the baker says, “It’s the witch from next door,” you can really buy this strange, sinister woman as both an enchantress and a neighbor.

My biggest gripe, predictably, is what’s not there.  I know some things have to be cut for time, but the reprise of “Agony” shouldn’t be one of them.  In addition to being hysterical, it sets up what happens with Cinderella’s prince later in the film.  Also, “No More” is quite possibly my favorite of the whole shebang and, even without the mysterious man in the movie, I was gutted not to see it included.  Finally, the movie just feels a bit toothless compared to the show.  It still has an edge to it, and some of the dark humor and moral uncertainty is certainly there, but it definitely has fewer stakes and wades less into questions of right and wrong.

My votes for film MVPs go to James Corden and Emily Blunt as the baker and his wife.  Corden grounds the film with his funny, sincere performance as an ordinary man in over his head, and Blunt is fantastic as a peasant reaching for something better in her life (“Moments in the Woods” is a highlight of the movie.)  Runner-up would be Anna Kendrick’s beautiful turn as Cinderella, but there’s a lot of talent to go around.

Warnings

Dark themes, some violence, and a bit of innuendo.

Pacific Overtures (1976)

As a complete musical, this isn’t one of my favorite Stephen Sondheim shows (largely by default – when so many of them are exquisite, there’s a lot of competition for favorites.)  The book, while it makes an effort, is a little too obviously written by white New Yorkers to credibly tell a story about Japan.  Still, for its era, it does fairly well – just putting a show with an all-Asian cast on Broadway in the ‘70s couldn’t have been easy, and I appreciate where it’s coming from.

The show is set in 1853, on the eve of Commodore Perry’s arrival to a Japan that doesn’t open its doors to foreigners.  We see the response to the American ships from the great (the shogun and his court) to the small (Kayama, a samurai elevated to a higher position mainly to serve as a fall guy if things go south.)  A major theme is the divide between isolationism and expansionism – the pros and cons of each and the danger of adhering too devotedly to one.  The fruit born of change, the loss of tradition, and the clash that results when absolute change and absolute tradition try to reside in the same environment are all explored as Japan starts to let the West in.

There are definitely problems.  The book relies a bit too much on othering the Japanese, lingering on “exotic” details without incorporating them organically into the story.  Additionally, while the westerners are variously depicted as pushy, ignorant, and greedy, the Japanese characters don’t have a terribly active presence in their own story.  They do a lot of fretting about the approaching ships, but they don’t have many practical ideas about how to prevent their arrival, and when the Americans do land, the Japanese are mostly steamrolled by them.

The ending is more of a meditation than a resolution, but I don’t mind that.  It’s a show that’s more interested in the questions it raises than the story it tells, and that’s okay.  It doesn’t make a lot of definitive statements about good or bad, right or wrong, wise or foolish, but rather presents its scenarios without much moralizing and simply asks us to think about them.  And again, considering when it was written and the cultural background of its authors, it really does try to look outside the Eurocentric bubble.  Americans are involved, yes, but more than anything, their inclusion is about the wide shadow they cast, and the focus remains firmly on the eastern society with whom they come into contact.

All in all, a mixed bag.  The show’s one unimpeachable quality, however, is its score.  I just love the songs in this musical.  From the sensationally witty rhymes of “Chrysanthemum Tea” to the cheeky innuendo of “Welcome to Kanagawa,” from the lovely simplicity of “Poems” to the cross-cultural cacophony of “Please Hello,” from the reminiscent “Someone in a Tree” to the sinister-yet-achingly-beautiful “Pretty Lady,” I can honestly say I adore every one of them.  This was one of the first Sondheim scores I ever heard start to finish, and while the whole may not come together as cohesively or skillfully as some of his more famous works, all the songs are excellent on their own.  I imagine I’ll do a Top Five post one of these days on the score, and even though the show only has eleven songs in it, I’ll not sure how I’ll narrow them down.

Warnings

Some sexual content (including discussion of prostitution,) thematic elements, and some violence.

Top Five Songs: Sunday in the Park with George

This Stephen Sondheim score will own me forever – I just adore it.  There are Sondheim shows that I probably enjoy more, but that score… Throw in Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters on the original cast recording, and I’m a goner.  Here are five songs I can’t do without.

 

“Color and Light” – This sprawling duet beautifully, painfully encapsulates the divide between George and Dot, the reasons they’ll never fit together even though they love each other.  I especially love the repetitive, rapid-fire lines that punctuate George’s pointillism.

 

Best Line:  “And you look inside the eyes, / And you catch him here and there, / But he’s never really there. / So you want him even more, / And you drown inside the eyes - / I could look at him forever.”

 

 

“Finishing the Hat” – I think, more than any other, this song communicates Sondheim’s philosophy as a composer.  It’s transposed to suit George’s painting, but the sentiment is the same – the idea that any artist is consumed by their desire to create, and that the whole world can fall away but they won’t notice because they’re trying to get the last detail just right.

 

Best Line:  “Mapping out the sky. / What you feel like, planning a sky. / What you feel when voices that come / Through the window / Go / Until they distance and die, / Until there’s nothing but sky.”

 

 

“We Do Not Belong Together” – George and Dot part in this heartbreaking duet.  Dot is wrung out, exhausted from loving George without evidence that he cares for her, and for his part, George is hungry for her to stay but doesn’t know how to tell her.  Their world together ends, not with a bang but a whimper, as they quietly slide away from one another.

 

Best Line:  “We do not belong together, / And we should have belonged together. / What made it so right together / Is what made it all wrong.”

 

 

“Sunday” – After the years and happiness and sweat that George has given up for his painting, it’s only fitting that we see what it was all for, and Sondheim couldn’t have written a better song to accompany the painting coming together.  The soft choral melody, the haunting voices of the ensemble, and George’s gentle wistfulness… It gives me chills every time.

 

Best Line:  “Forever / On the blue purple yellow red water / On the green orange violet mass of the grass / In our perfect park / Made of flecks of light / And dark.”

 

 

“Moving On” – This song is the sole representative of Act II (because Act I is just too gorgeous,) an exquisite moment between George’s descendent and the shadow of Dot.  I love the message of moving forward on your own terms and not making decisions based on what others expect or demand.  Dot’s connection with young George is sublime.

 

Best Line:  “I chose, and my world was shaken - /So what? / The choice may have been mistaken, / The choosing was not. / You have to move on.”

Live from Lincoln Center: Sweeney Todd (2014)

 

Thank goodness for PBS.  In addition to giving me my regular Masterpiece fix and hooking me up with other great British imports like The Hollow Crown, it can always be counted on for televised Broadway events.  This concert production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, performed by the New York Philharmonic and a fine cast, aired a couple weeks ago, and it’s just terrific.

 

First, this is one of the best-staged Broadway concerts I’ve seen.  The cast quickly discards their music stands, librettos, and glitzy finery during the opening number, in an amusing “this ain’t yo’ grandma’s Sweeney Todd” moment.  With effective minimalist staging that incorporates the orchestra into the action, the actors perform in disheveled formal wear smeared with bloody handprints.  It’s an upfront, grimy production with an in-the-trenches feel that does an atmospheric job telling the story of the demon barber of Fleet Street.

 

Sweeney Todd, of course, finds the wrongfully-transported convict Benjamin Barker returned to London.  Welcomed back by meat-pie peddler Mrs. Lovett, his devoted downstairs neighbor, he reopens his old barber shop and, armed with his razors and a new name, plots his revenge on the lascivious hypocrite of a judge who ruined his life.  The penny-dreadful narrative is peppered with shaving contests, homeless lunatics, and lucrative cannibalism, but it revolves around the dark pair at its center – the newly-christened Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett.  As his quest for vengeance pulls Sweeney further and further from his sanity, the pragmatic and opportunistic Mrs. Lovett looks to use his instability to her advantage and, deludedly, hopes to secure his heart for herself.

 

As such, the actors playing Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett are the lynchpin of any production.  I have to confess my unfamiliarity with Welsh operatic bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, who plays Sweeney, but he’s fantastic.  His superb vocals sound effortless, and he cuts an imposing figure in the role; I can really see why Mrs. Lovett, despite her love for him, would fear him in his more unhinged moments.  And speaking of Mrs. Lovett, Emma Thompson is just incredible.  No, she’s not the singer that Terfel is, but she carries her melodic weight among the cast of predominantly stage actors, and more than that, she’s such a large, vibrant presence onstage.  Her acting brims with all the noise, deviousness, dark comedy, and vulnerability that Mrs. Lovett ought to have.  Over the course of the concert, I’m pretty sure I went from admiring her as an actor to having a confirmed platonic crush on her.  She and Terfel play beautifully off of each other – their wickedly funny “A Little Priest” is the highlight of the show.

 

While these two are my clear favorites, the others in the cast are no slouches.  The incomparable Audra McDonald appears as the beggar woman, Philip Quast (Pearse in Ultraviolet) is the despicable Judge Turpin, and Christian Borle (lately of Smash, where he deserved far better material) is great fun as Signor Pirelli.  I’m not familiar with anyone else in the cast, but they all put in some nice performances, especially Kyle Brenn as Toby. 

 

I just wish this had aired as part of Great Performances rather than Live from Lincoln Center, because it probably means we’ll never get a DVD.  Guess what’s not getting deleted from my DVR anytime soon?