Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Review - Passion Revival at the Classic Stage Company

One of the hottest tickets in New York right now is the Classic Stage Company revival of Passion, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. (The show has been extended through April 19th, although most of the remaining performances are sold out.)

As big of a Sondheim fan as I am, I've never really warmed up to Passion, and the current production didn't succeed in changing my mind about the show. Don't get me wrong, the CSC production is extremely professional. In fact, it's about as good a production of the show as we're ever likely to see, including the original Broadway production and televised concert version with Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone.

And yet, for me, the piece remains fundamentally flawed. Yes, the show has many sublime moments, mostly because of Sondheim's rich and cohesive score. I'm particularly fond of "Loving You," "Is This What You Call Love?," "I Read," and "I Wish I Could Forget You." These are gorgeous moments, full of melodic richness, nuance, and...well, passion. But a true appreciation of the show hinges on one key development, one that I have simply never bought in any of the show's incarnations. [SPOILERS BELOW] 

The director here is John Doyle, who crafts respectful, dynamic, and sensitive production, creating just the right atmosphere for the piece in terms of both the setting and the emotional feel of the show. One minor misstep on Doyle's part involved having the male ensemble members playing female roles by wrapping shawls around their heads and waists. It felt a tad ridiculous and inconsistent with the show's tone. 

The creators couldn't ask for a better cast for Passion, although I did see the show without Melissa Errico, owing to her extended absence from the show due to bronchitis. (Errico's illness has also necessitated a delay in the announced PS Classics recording of this production.) Standby Amy Justman made for a more-than-serviceable Clara in Errico's absence. The productions key assets are Ryan Silverman as Giorgio and Judy Kuhn as Fosca. Silverman has a golden voice, and his acting is a damn sight more convincing than that of original leading man Jere Shea. Kuhn broke my heart upon her very entrance, and she brings a far less harsh and considerably more sympathetic tone to Fosca than Donna Murphy did.

But Silverman and Kuhn are burdened by the central flaw of the show: two characters who fail to meet the authors' intentions. The main problem with the show is that Fosca isn't written as appealing enough to justify Giorgio's change of heart at the end. It's not that Fosca is physically unattractive, it's that she has few redeeming personal qualities beyond her propensity to evoke pity. She's selfish, unreasonable, and relentless. Yes, that's the point, I know. But I simply don't see anything in Fosca that would warrant Giorgio ultimately falling in love with her, or at least claiming that he has.

Likewise, the character of Giorgio feels like little more than a collection of surface characteristics, so it's difficult to discern at the end why he makes so many seemingly erratic decisions. Why, for instance, does Giorgio not tell the truth to the Colonel with respect to his relationship and intentions toward Fosca? Why the sudden stubbornness in a character that hasn't exhibited this characteristic throughout the rest of the show? Why does he turn down the transfer that comes through for him? Why does Clara's final letter prompt him to end their relationship? Why does he consent to actually having sex with Fosca?

Feel free to speculate as to answers for these questions in the comment area below. But my ultimate point is that the show, at least from where I sit, is ultimately frustrating because it doesn't make Giorgio's emotional journey clear enough to provide a satisfying conclusion. As I once heard Sondheim say in a live talk he gave at Harvard, musical-theater writers are allowed to challenge their audience members, but not baffle them.

I'm very sorry, Mr. Sondheim, but Passion baffles me. It always has and will very likely continue to do so.

Review - Into the Woods in Central Park - The Public Theatre

The idea of setting by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods in the actual woods may seem, at first, to be a stroke of genius, or at the very least an obvious but cool idea. It certainly seemed to work two years ago in England when the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre presented Into the Woods al fresco to considerable acclaim. This summer, the Public Theater is presenting a transplanted version of that London production at its Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The directors are the same: Timothy Sheader and Liam Steel, the latter of whom also choreographs. So there was every reason to believe the magic would make the leap across the pond with them.

As reports came out of the cast members that this American version of Into the Woods was amounting, excitement among theater cognoscenti, and Sondheim aficionados in particular, rose to a feverish pitch: Donna Murphy as The Witch; Denis O'Hare as the Baker; Jessie Mueller as Cinderella; Gideon Glick as Jack; Johnny Newcomb in the ensemble. (Sorry, that last one was mostly exciting to those of us at the Boston Conservatory, of which Johnny is a recent grad. BoCo, represent!) And then, perhaps most exciting of all, came the announcement that Oscar-nominee Amy Adams would play the Baker's Wife. Suddenly, Into the Woods became the absolute must-see show of the summer.

The resulting show, however, was a pretty significant disappointment. I saw one of the previews, toward the end of the first week of performances, and at that point there was very little magic happening on stage. In fairness, there were still quite a few technical glitches in evidence, in particular with the sound system, the lighting cues, and vocal entrances during quite a few on the numbers, so I made allowances for the fact that the production probably needed some time to gel. But based on the critical response now that the show has officially opened, it would appear that, although the technical glitches may have cleared up, the main problems with the production itself remain: uneven casting and a decided lack of emotional power.

From where I sat (which was row P, considerably far away from the action), a huge part of the problem with respect to the show's emotional impact was the elaborate jungle gym of a set, designed by John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour. The set comprises a visually impressive but somewhat imposing series of walkways, staircases, and balconies reaching 50 feet into the air. Directors Sheader and Steel spend so much time trying to utilize all the different playing areas that very little of this highly emotive show took place downstage center. Also, because of the breadth and height of the set, it often took a second or two to figure out where to focus, and the lighting and sound design didn't much help in this matter. In total, the production design had a distancing quality, which works against the very concept of the show.

The casting choices at the center of the show served to exacerbate this affective disconnect. The emotional core of Into the Woods should ideally come from the Baker and his Wife. However, Denis O'Hare and Amy Adams displayed very little chemistry, as if they barely knew each other. Their "It Takes Two" was all mechanical movement and forced conviviality. Of course, Adams is primarily a movie actress, but what works for the camera doesn't always play in a 1,900-seat amphitheater. Vocally she seemed to hold her own, despite sharping on some of her high notes, but she seemed to be constantly distracted throughout the show. (Perhaps it was the hideously exaggerated wig she was forced to wear in this production. Yeesh.)

As for O'Hare, it's beginning to seem as though he won that Tony for Take Me Out basically for playing himself; he really hasn't deviated much since from that mannered, quirky sprite that brought him so much acclaim. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to cast Chip Zien, who originated the part of the Baker, as the Mysterious Man. Zien is laser sharp, with a radiating warmth that only serves to emphasize what was missing from O'Hare's performance.

As for the rest of the cast, the usually sensational Donna Murphy had at least three very noticeable lyric flubs, two in "Last Midnight" alone, but from other reports it would seem that Murphy gained her footing as previews progressed. Two major standouts were Sarah Stiles as Little Red Riding and Gideon Glick as Jack, both exhibiting strong voices, clear focus, and a wonderful sense of individual character. Ivan Hernandez is also strong as Cinderella’s Prince and the Wolf, playing each role with clear choices and a firm sense of the inherent comedy. Jessie Mueller, who was such a knockout in last season's unfortunate On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, has a decidedly individual take on Cinderella, playing her with much more of an earthy, grounded countenance than others who've played the role.

Another factor in the overall emotional disconnect of the show may have come from the fact that the directors seemed more focused on being clever than in bringing out the richness of the characters. Admittedly there's some pretty fantastic stagecraft on display here. The way the creative staff handle Granny's bed in the scene with Little Red Riding Hood and the Wold is pretty frickin' cool. Jack's beanstalk magically appears through the use of a spiral staircase and a bunch of green umbrellas. And the manifestation of the giant is nothing less than a coup de theatre. It's funny, though, all the clever stagecraft in Peter and the Starcatcher doesn't seem to impede the audience connecting with the characters, but with Into the Woods, I walked away admiring the production elements while not being particularly moved.

And then there's what seems to have become obligatory in modern musicals: the framing device. The show starts with a young boy screaming at his parents and being sent to his room. The boy enters the stage fulminating, and eventually he starts to tell the story of the show, seemingly making it up by cobbling together stories he's heard before.

Two problems here: first, the moral that comes at the end of the show ("Careful the things you say. Children will listen.") is rather sophisticated, and is even stated from a presumably adult point of view. (Note the word "children" in the lyric.) This makes it unlikely that the boy would come up with this notion on his own. Also, there's quite a bit of sexual innuendo and outright lewdness in this staging of Into the Woods, and I don't recall being quite that salacious when I was ten. (I must say that when we discover the true identity of the boy at the end of the show, it makes for a really nice surprise. But it would have been even sweeter if the proceedings leading up to it were more emotionally charged.)

We've recently heard reports of a possible Broadway transfer for Into the Woods. Perhaps in redesigning the show to fit in a Broadway house, the production staff could minimize or eliminate the distancing factor of the set design. Perhaps they could also bring in James Lapine to do some table work with the cast and help them find the heart of the show. I have to wonder if Amy Adams would transfer with the show; most likely she has movie offers awaiting her. But if she didn't make the transfer, would anyone outside the theater community want to attend?

Review - Merrily We Roll Along at Encores

There have been quite a few musicals over the years that just kind of break your heart. Usually, these shows sound great on their cast recordings and make you wonder how, despite such terrific scores, they simply didn't work in the theater. Mack and Mabel is among these shows, as are Chess, Candide, and The Baker's Wife. All have truly remarkable scores, but theatrical productions of these shows have been problematic at best.

Another trait these heartbreaker shows share is that their creators, as well as other people, seem to continually come back to try anew to make them work. Sometimes these efforts are successful, as was the case with the recent Mary Zimmerman production of Candide. (Read my review.) Other times, we get [shudder] the most recent concert version of Chess. (Read my review.)

Of course, Stephen Sondheim has more than his share of heartbreakers. There's Anyone Can Whistle, of course, and Follies. But my personal favorite has always been Merrily We Roll Along, which is probably due to the fact that the cast recording came out while I was in high school and just starting to develop what has become a life-long obsession with musical theater in general and Stephen Sondheim in particular.

And Merrily more than fits within the heartbreaker category, not merely because it was a notorious flop in its initial Broadway engagement, but also because Sondheim and company have continually returned to the show to tinker and futz and try to fashion a stage version of the show that even comes close to the raw emotion, searing intellect, and palpable regret of Sondheim's score.

Which is why I was so excited to hear that Encores would be presenting Merrily as part of its current season. And I wasn't he only one excited. Anticipation was so high for the concert presentation of Merrily that the folks at Encores added a second weekend of shows, which I believe is unprecedented for Encores. There has been much speculation in the social-media-sphere that the Encores engagement might serve as a launching pad for a Broadway revival for the show. No word yet on whether any such Broadway transfer will materialize.

Stephen Sondheim has said that this particular version of Merrily We Roll Along, which incorporates revisions from a number of productions subsequent to the show's Broadway run, is the one that he's the most satisfied with. Merrily librettist George Furth passed away in 2008, so director James Lapine provided the concert adaptation for this version of the show. The result, I'm happy to report, was a libretto that is more efficient and effective than any previous version, bringing out more credible drama and complex emotion.

One problem with Merrily has always been that the characters seemed more like placeholders than real people. The central character of Franklin Shepard, in particular, has always felt more like a cypher than a flesh-and-blood human being. Casting the fresh and engaging Colin Donnell as Frank certainly went a long way toward making the character more sympathetic. Donnell, who's currently appearing as Billy Crocker in the hit revival of Anything Goes, has a comfortable stage presence and a laser-sharp singing voice, and managed to turn Frank from a cardboard villain into a believably flawed human being.

Equally appealing was Celia Keenan-Bolger as Mary Flynn. Frankly, when I heard that she had been cast as Mary, I was skeptical. The part seemed to require more of a whiskey-soaked, world-weary countenance than I had seen from her before, but she brought a spunky freshness to the role, while still evincing the jaded quality the part requires.

The major hole in the cast for me was Lin-Manuel Miranda as Charley Kringas. Based on his performance in In the Heights, I just didn't see him as the uptight, nebbishy Kringas. And whereas Celia Keenan-Bolger defied my expectations, Miranda merely confirmed them. His "Franklin Shepard, Inc." was forced, breathless, and contained numerous lyric flubs. What's more, his intonation was significantly off throughout the show. When Miranda was singing the second-act "Good Thing Going," Colin Donnell joined him less than halfway through the song. Sure, it would make sense that composer Frank would join lyricist Charley as they present their new song at a party thrown by the future star of their show, but it really seemed that Donnell joined Miranda because the latter couldn't handle the vocals on his own.

Overall, James Lapine's direction for this Merrily was taut and efficient, but the show started with a significantly unfocused opening number. As you may know, Merrily We Roll Along, much like the 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart upon which it is based, travels backwards in time, starting with the final dissolution of the relationship between Frank and his two old friends Mary and Charley, and ends with their optimistic introduction some twenty years prior. This reverse construction has famously confused audiences since the musical premiered in 1981, and Lapine seemed to be making a concerted effort to solve this problem once and for all.

As many New York theatrical productions do these days, this Merrily features liberal use of digital projections, including an extended reverse-chronological montage during the opening sequence. It's as if the creators are impatiently saying, "Get it? The show goes backwards. Now can we just move on and watch the god-damned show?" Fortunately, the projections, as well as the ham-handed presentation style, fade into the background as the show actually gets going.

What really struck me as I sat watching this Merrily is how intensely moving the score is in context. Quite a few of the show's numbers have made their way into cabaret shows, revues, and the rep books of musical-theater folks the world over. But it was striking to me how powerful, for instance, "Not a Day Goes By" can be in the context of the show, particularly as rendered here by Betsy Wolfe as Frank's wronged first wife Beth. Even more devastating was the song's reprise, which is sung by Beth and Frank, but also by Mary, who watches helplessly as the man she so desperately loves marries another woman. The staging for this scene was a bit static, but the moment itself was stunning.

It may be because the original cast recording is so imprinted upon my consciousness, but I have never really warmed up to Sondheim's changes to the score, particularly "That Frank," which to me pales next to the original "Rich and Happy." And "Growing Up," although it features an interesting use of the "Good Thing Going" motif, is rather inert and virtually tuneless.

As I sat watching the show, I initially found myself in analytical mode, trying to figure out why the show has never worked and guage whether it was was coming closer to working this time. But, late in the second act, I found my analytical impulses receding in the face of the sheer power of the score, the characters, the performances, and my 30-plus years of fascination and affection for this show. It's funny: just as I began to write in my notebook how the show's central conceit was intellectually interesting but emotionally hollow, the first chords of "Our Time," the show's final number, began, and I became overwhelmed with emotion.

Maybe Merrily We Roll Along works after all.

Review - Follies Revival on Broadway

Someone is always trying to bring Follies back to Broadway, or at least it seems. There was talk of moving the 1998 production at Papermill Playhouse to NYC, but apparently backstage politics put the kibosh on that move. The well-received 2007 Encores production also had people calling for a Broadway transfer, but that never materialized either.

So more than a few folks (including me) were at first skeptical at talk of bringing the recent Kennedy Center production to Broadway, but, lo and behold, this time it actually happened. And the results, while somewhat mixed, are thrilling enough to warrant a huzzah or two from the Sondheim faithful (including me).

The first sight that theatergoers encounter when entering the Marquis Theatre for the current production of Follies are the various gray tarps covering all of the walls in the auditorium. A number of people have quipped that the notoriously sterile Marquis has never looked better, but the tarps create an appropriately oppressive atmosphere. Follies does, after all, take place in a decrepit theater that is about to be torn down.

Thankfully, director Eric Schaeffer has made no apparent attempt to reinvent Follies, focusing instead on bringing out what makes the show compelling: Stephen Sondheim's powerhouse of a score and the two central - though overlapping - relationships between Buddy and Sally Plummer, and Ben and Phyllis Stone. The more I hear Sondheim's score for Follies, the more enamored I become of its complexity, its leitmotivs, and the way the songs are paced to alternate showstopping uptempo numbers with heartbreaking introspective ballads.

There's really not a bad number in the mix, making it all the more perplexing that Sondheim saw fit to augment the score with a handful of fascinating, but ultimately unnecessary new numbers for the 1987 West End production. (Including "Country House," which sounds more like 1980s Sondheim than 1970s Sondheim; the delightful "Ah, But Underneath," which has become a standard of sorts with cabaret singers and drag queens everywhere; and the clearly autobiographical "Make the Most of Your Music," which is completely inappropriate for Ben, who doesn't speak in musical metaphors.)

The show is already front-loaded with concept (the ghosts of the characters haunt their modern-day selves throughout the show), so Schaeffer lets the big picture take care itself and instead concentrates on bringing out the complex emotional content with small but evocative directorial touches. Early in the show, Phyllis reaches for Ben just as Ben is walking away to put down his drink. At the end, as Sally and Buddy exit, Buddy moves to put his arm around the small of Sally's back, but pulls it back at the last second. Both moments are easy to miss, but are nonetheless indicative of Schaeffer's precision.

I've seen Follies many times, but I don't remember ever sensing the subtext as keenly as I did while watching this production. This is especially true during "The Road You Didn't Take" and "In Buddy's Eyes," which perhaps is not coincidental, since both songs feature Ben and Sally, and both emphasize Sally's as yet unspoken agenda.

If there's any justice, come Tony time, Jan Maxwell (Phyllis) and Danny Burstein (Buddy) will finally receive their long-overdue recognition. Maxwell and Burstein are always reliable, frequently inspired performers, and it's a pleasure to see them finally getting their due with this production. Maxwell brings both a stately elegance and a brittle edge to Phyllis, and her "Could I Leave You" was a national treasure. Maxwell spat out the words and raged across the stage during the number, and in the hands of someone of lesser talent, this might not have worked, but Maxwell is self-assured and laser sharp even when her character is on the verge of losing it.

Maxwell even makes some of James Goldman's clunky dialog work better than it deserves to. The script for the current production takes the 2001 version and adds in a few lines cherry-picked from the original. At the very end of the show, Phyllis turns to Ben and says, "Hope doesn't grow on trees; we make our own and I'm here to tell you it's the hardest thing we'll ever do." Oy. Who thought that was a line worth reinstating? It sounds like something from a bad, forgotten World War II Hollywood melodrama. But, again, Maxwell sold it, which is a testament to her inestimable talent.

Burstein is no less a wonder as Buddy. Schaeffer shrewdly places Buddy on the scene to witness much of Sally's attempts to rekindle her long-imagined romance with Ben, and Burstein's heartrending facial expressions vividly convey the tortured feelings of this man caught between the woman he loves and the woman who loves him (who are not necessarily one and the same).

The one misstep in Burstein's performance was actually not his doing. Warren Carlyle's choreography for "The Right Girl" seemed woefully out of place. Most of the dances, and in fact the songs, in Follies are diegetic: the characters are actually dancing in the context of the show, as Follies girls or performers, as opposed to dancing as their characters. It's not clear why Buddy would be the only character in the show to dance in a non-diegetic fashion, to break into a dance monologue, as it were. Yes, there's dance music in the song, or at least an orchestral section, but this could have been used for evocative staging as opposed to a jazz speciality.

As for the other two stars, Bernadette Peters has been getting mixed reviews as Sally, and I would be inclined to agree. There were times when Peters was a suitably frumpy housewife, but there were other times when it was just too much of a feat for her to pull it off. Her singing was mostly strong, although her breath control has lost some of its power over the years. Her final moment, however, was positively stunning. Sally stands staring out at the audience, while Buddy waits patiently to take her home. The sense of despair on Bernadette's face will remain for me an iconic moment, full of gravity, pathos, and eventually resignation. Simply breathtaking.

As Ben, Ron Raines has a rich and characterful voice, but some of his acting seemed a bit summer stock-y. He started off promising: his "The Road You Didn't Take" was remarkably powerful, yet full of restraint. But he seemed to abandon this restraint as the performance progressed. Phyllis makes numerous references to Ben's impassive nature, and that one of her key frustrations is that she finds him difficult to read. Whereas Raines wasn't difficult to read at all. In fact, he displayed his heart quite openly, on both of his sleeves, as it were.

The supporting cast was, for the most part, top-notch, from the electric Terry White to the joyous Jayne Houdyshell. A genuine standout for me was Rosalind Elias, making her Broadway debut at the age of 82 as Heidi. Heidi is meant to be an aging operetta star, and her song "One More Kiss" typically reeks of poignancy when Young Heidi enters and reminds both Heidi and the audience of the beautiful voice that this woman once had. With Elias, both Heidi and the number maintain that poignancy, but Elias still possesses a vocal control and richness of tone that women half her age would kill for. A song that often becomes a throwaway number became, for me, a thrilling centerpiece.

My one major complaint with this production lies in the "performance" of Elaine Paige. Yes, Paige, at least to some people, is a star. And, yes, she retains the great vocal power that made her a star. But Paige uses "I'm Still Here" not so much to play a character as to make a personal statement, and it left me ice cold. Paige plays the introductory scene and the song for laughs, to a distracting and deleterious extent. Her vocal histrionics produced a flat and characterless wall of sound, and her scooping was nothing less than egregious, with the musicality of Sondheim's masterful song lost amid the shtick and gimmickry. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, Paige's performance ran the gamut from Y to Z.

Follies runs through the holiday season to the end of the year, at which point a number of the stars have concert engagements, making an extension rather unlikely. Those who have never seen the show staged, or those who are still smarting from the deeply disappointing 2001 revival, will clearly want to take this production in. In fact, anyone seeking to experience a classic show, sensitively staged, and featuring some of the best performers Broadway currently has to offer are well advised to head post haste to the Marquis.

Of course, no sooner did I post this review than Playbill.com reported that Follies will indeed be extending its run by three weeks. That's what I get for reckless prognostication.

Review - Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theatre

A confession: There are certain historic entries into the musical-theater canon that I've never really warmed up to, supposed masterpieces that I can appreciate for their innovations and craft, but that in performance usually leave me cold. One of those is The Threepenny Opera, which, although I recognize its importance, I've never actually enjoyed on stage.

Porgy and Bess has, for me, typically fallen into the same category. I know I'm supposed to love it, but it's always felt like homework. I guess it's because I've never been much of an opera fan, and every time I've seen Porgy and Bess, it's featured singers performing in an operatic style, and the productions have been rife with recitative, which I detest.

Recently, I sheepishly admitted my disdain for recitative to the head of the vocal performance program at the Boston Conservatory, and she said, "That's because very few people write recitative well. And many don't know how to perform it." OK, so that made me feel a bit less like a uncultured slob, but I nonetheless approached the current production of Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theatre with a decent amount of dread.

Of course, I had heard ahead of time that the Porgy and Bess production staff, director Diane Paulus and libretto adapter Suzan-Lori Parks, were making changes to the show to make it more accessible. I mean, how could I not have heard about that, right? First came Patrick Healy's New York Times article about the production, followed by Stephen Sondheim's dyspeptic, cranky screed in response. (Nothing like judging a production you haven't seen, is there, Steve?) Thankfully, Paulus opted not to engage with Mr. Sondheim in his testiness, issuing a brief and respectful response. Audra McDonald was equally classy, responding on Twitter with a very simple message: "Here's what I think...to quote the greatest musical theater composer of our time...'Art isn't easy'."

I wound up seeing Porgy and Bess at the A.R.T. twice. In between the two performances that I attended, which were exactly a week apart, I rewatched the 1993 DVD of the 1986 Trevor Nunn production at England's Glyndebourne Festival. Nunn's production was over three hours long, and contained a lot of the recitative. (Oh, and, BTW, Mr. Sondheim, the DVD refers to the show as "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess." And there's not a goat cart in sight.)

[SPOILER ALERT: Of necessity, I must discuss the ending of the show in the paragraphs below.]

The sequence of live show/DVD/live show again was actually perfect for appreciating what's really strong about Paulus's production. Mr. Sondheim needn't have worried. This Porgy and Bess is actually very respectful of the piece, and to the legacy of composer George Gershwin, lyricist Ira Gershwin, and librettist and co-lyricist DuBose Heyward. A huge portion of the recitative has been replaced by dialog, which speeds things up considerably. The song tempos are also considerably faster, and the staging and pace of the book scenes is full of urgency. The production as a whole feels so much more efficient, but also more heartfelt as a result.

Seeing the show twice afforded me the opportunity to witness a failed experiment on the part of Paulus and Parks. The first time I saw the show, the ending was a bit different from that of the original show. In this new version, when Porgy comes back from viewing Crown's body and spending a week in jail, Bess hasn't yet left for New York City with Sporting Life. This gave rise to a confrontation scene between Porgy and Bess, in which Porgy asked Bess if she really wanted to go, and Bess answered, "Yes." Bess left, and Porgy proceeded to sing "I'm on My Way." Presumably the boat hadn't left yet, and Porgy would have a chance to catch up to Bess.

Of course, in the original, Bess has long since left when Porgy returns, which gives rise to a heartbreaking scene in which the Catfish Row residents struggle to tell Porgy that Bess has gone. It's not clear whether Paulus and Parks made the switch because of Sondheim's letter, but in the long run, the show is better for it.

So, is this Porgy and Bess an opera or a musical? Well, at intermission at one of the performances I attended, I overheard the following interchange:

Man 1: "The program says they're making Porgy and Bess more of a musical than an opera."
Man 2: "Well, they're wearing microphones."
Man 1: "Is that the difference?"
Man 2: "And they're actually acting."

Hardly an accurate characterization of the genres, but it gave me a chuckle. More to the point, I was struck by a recent article by New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini, in which he very succinctly and aptly captured the distinction: "Both genres seek to combine words and music in dynamic, felicitous and...artistic ways. But in opera, music is the driving force; in musical theater, words come first."

For me, the chief reason why this production of Porgy and Bess works so swimmingly the is that Paulus and Parks have succeeded in their aim of making the show more of a musical than an opera. Certainly the singing voices are more from a musical theater idiom than an operatic one. And, although this production doesn't stint on the music, the words really do come first here, and so do the characterizations.

The performances are vivid and fresh, particularly that of Audra McDonald, who brings a laser-sharp intensity to every moment she's on stage. Her confrontation scene with Crown, "What You Want With Bess," was by turns erotically charged and emotionally mesmerizing. You could see why she was so torn, drawn in by Crown's raw sexuality rather than merely repulsed by him. And her delirium scene after Bess has spent two days slogging through the marsh to return from Kittiwah Island was utterly heart-wrenching. I've rarely been so moved.

As for Norm Lewis as Porgy, he kind of ran hot and cold for me. It's certainly an asset to have a Porgy that you can imagine someone actually wanting to sleep with. (OK, not just someone. Me.) Having a sexually appealing Porgy makes the romance more credible. Porgy is more than just a convenient meal ticket for Bess: He's a genuine love interest. I've always melted at the sound of Lewis's rich, resonant baritone, and thrilled at the tonal quality of his upper range. But his emotional intensity came in and out during the book scenes. However, his climactic scene with Crown was stunning, full of seething rage and raw catharsis.

Based on the publicity that Sondheim's letter generated, a number of national critics broke with precedent and made the trip to Cambridge to review the show before its scheduled run in New York. Suddenly it wasn't just a show, it was news. In particular, Ben Brantley of the New York Times, weighed in last week, and although he marveled at Audra's performance, he was less than impressed with the rest of the production. According to Michael Riedel of the New York Post, Brantley's review made some people involved with bringing the show to New York question whether this was wise.

Well, from where I sit, this Porgy and Bess is too good not to go to New York. More people deserve to see, not only Audra's sensational performance, but also this engaging, passionate, and faithful take on this musical classic. Let's hope that cooler heads prevail, and that this production takes its rightful place at the Richard Rodgers Theater in December.

Contest - Win Two Tickets to Follies on Broadway

I'm not really a summer person. I never really have been. I've always looked forward to the fall, partly because my birthday is in September, but also because, when I was in school, I always looked forward to the the new academic year. (Yeah, I'm kind of a dork.) And now that I'm teaching full-time, I'm filled with that same sense of eager anticipation when August rolls around.

Of course, autumn also brings the promise of the new theater season, and, I don't know about you, but I'm becoming pretty darned excited. Sure, some folks are lamenting the relative paucity of new musicals. So far, the announced crop of new tuners is somewhat thinner than last year's crop. (Watch this space for a preview of new musicals for the upcoming Broadway season.)

But last season there were only two musical revivals on Broadway, whereas this season we're likely to see at least a half dozen. Of course, there's the eagerly anticipated new production of Porgy and Bess, which I'll be seeing twice during its run at the American Repertory Theatre. Plus there's Godspell, Evita, and potentially Jesus Christ Superstar, not to mention a significantly revised version of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

But for Stephen Sondheim aficionados, the clear favorite will undoubtedly be Follies, a show that, to date, has found greater success in its recordings and concert presentations than in open-ended, fully staged productions. Follies had a decidedly lackluster revival in 2001, which, despite direction by Matthew Warchus and choreography by Kathleen Marshall, just kinda fell flat on the stage of the Belasco Theatre. For me, the problem was partly one of casting. The four central players -- Blythe Danner (Phyllis), Judith Ivey (Sally), Gregory Harrison (Ben), and Treat Williams (Buddy) -- somehow didn't mesh to create an emotionally moving core for the production, despite the considerable talents of these individual performers.

Ten years later, we have another chance to see Follies on Broadway, under the auspices of the Kennedy Center, where this production played a well-received engagement earlier this year. The production has transferred nearly intact for a limited run at Broadway's Marquis Theatre, with Eric Schaeffer and Warren Carlyle repeating their duties as director and choreographer, respectively. Much of the stellar cast has made the transfer as well, including headliners Bernadette Peters, Ron Raines, Jan Maxwell, and Danny Burstein. The supporting cast features such Broadway stalwarts as Jayne Houdyshell, Terri White, Mary Beth Peil, Susan Watson, and Florence Lacey, not to mention London regular Elaine Paige.

Sounds pretty good, huh? Well, if you're as eager as I am, I'm sure you'd love the chance to win a couple of tickets to see the show. Well, look no further, dear reader. Below are a few Follies trivia questions. Please submit your answers as a comment below. I will select a winner randomly from all entries with the correct responses. (Don't worry: I will only publish the comments after I have selected the winner.)

Good luck!

The contest is over, and the winner has been notified. Thanks to everyone who played!

1. The original working title for Follies remains with the show as the title of one of the show's songs. Which song is it? [The answer I was looking for was The Girls Upstairs, but as many of you pointed out the name of the song is actually "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs." So I accepted either answer.]

2.  Stephen Sondheim and co-director Hal Prince were supposedly inspired to create Follies by a photo of a legendary silent-film star standing amid the wreckage of a demolished movie theater. Who was the star and what was the theater? [The film star was Gloria Swanson and it was the Roxy]

3. As often happens with shows under development, lots of songs came and went during the tryout period for Follies. Which song did the now-classic "I'm Still Here" replace? ["Can That Boy Foxtrot"]

4. Many of the original stars of Follies have passed away, but one of the original leading players is still going strong, and is currently appearing on Broadway in another musical revival. Who is this performer, and which show is he or she performing in? [John McMartin is in Anything Goes. And he's pretty frickin' amazing in it, too.]

5. Sondheim has described most of the songs in Follies as pastiche, i.e. homages to classic songs, or to particular composers and lyricists. For example, "The Story of Lucy and Jessie" was a homage to "The Saga of Jenny" from Lady in the Dark. And Sondheim intended "Losing My Mind" as "a Gershwin tune with a Dorothy Fields lyric." So, what classic theater song is "Beautiful Girls" an homage to? And in which series of shows (hint, hint) did the song originally appear? [The song is "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody," and it first appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies.]

The Fine Print: The tickets are good for Tuesday through Thursday performances between August 16th and September 29th. The contest deadline is midnight EST, Thursday, August 11th, 2011.

Review - Company Film with Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone

We seem to be seeing quite a bit more of these "cinecasts," i.e. Broadway shows and the like taped and presented in local movie theaters. It started with Rent, of course, and lately we've seen cinecasts of The Importance of Being Earnest, Memphis, and Fela, as well as a number of shows from London, including Frankenstein and The Merry Wives of Windsor. (Yes, technically Fela was taped in London, but it had a Broadway pedigree.)

It seems that producers are catching on to the idea that, far from cannibalizing ticket sales for the live versions of these shows, these cinecasts might actually serve as marketing for future tours (e.g. Memphis) or to maximize revenue for a show that might not tour (e.g. Fela).

Cinecasts can also expand the audience for a strictly limited engagement, as was the case with Stephen Sondheim's Company, a filmed version of a recent concert staging of the show with the New York Philharmonic, starring Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone. I didn't catch the live concert, despite my numerous trips to New York, but I can't say I really went out of my way. Did I really need to see Company again, I asked myself, even with such a stellar cast? I mean, I've seen many productions of the show, and the recent John Doyle Broadway production is available on DVD. 

But I did catch a recent screening of the concert film, and five minutes into the showing, I realized that I could never really get too much of Company. It's really that good. Beyond the magnificent Sondheim score (it may even be his best), there's also George Furth's underrated book. People complain that the book is too fragmented, too cynical. But, from where I sit, those are two of its key assets. Despite the deliberate fragmentation, the show flows and builds elegantly, especially after the deft changes Furth made to the libretto for the 1995 Broadway production.

As for the headliners here, Neil Patrick Harris makes for a warm and wry Bobby, bringing to the role all of the charm that made him such an effective and entertaining host for the Tony Awards this year and two years ago. His singing voice can sometimes be a bit thin, but his intonation is strong and he performed the songs with great emotional fluency. And what more can I say about La LuPone? The woman is a sheer force of nature and vocal powerhouse nonpareil. There's a reason Patti's a living legend, and here she's at her diva-rrific best. Her rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch" was gripping theater, and the surrounding scenes dripped with her trademark sharpness and staccato delivery. In short: fab-u-lous.

Sharing space above the marquee were some Broadway dilettantes, folks who might not elsewise have found their way onto a New York stage: Stephen Colbert ("The Colbert Report"), John Cryer ("Two and a Half Men"), and Christina Hendricks ("Mad Men"). Each had his or her own charms, especially a delightful Hendricks as the flighty flight attendant April, but what really made this concert worth watching, beyond the aforementioned Harris and LuPone, was the exceedingly strong supporting cast of stage veterans: Martha Plimpton, Craig Bierko, Jim Walton, Katie Finneran, Jill Paice, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Aaron Lazar, Anika Noni Rose, & Chryssie Whitehead. Tony winner Finneran was a hoot as the neurotic bride Amy, and Whitehead was a knockout as Kathy, dancing up a storm in the number "Tick Tock," which Michael Bennett originally created for Donna McKechnie.

The concert was directed by Lonny Price, who seems to be making a career out of directing these concert presentations (see Candide and Camelot), and that's really not such a bad thing. He always seems to bring his own individual touches to these concerts, although his Candide really lost steam toward the end. His Company seemed more slowly paced than Doyle's, but with considerably more warmth and humanity. Despite the show's length, I found that I was almost always engaged, except during Anika Noni Rose's "Another Hundred People," which just kind of sat there, and "You Could Drive a Person Crazy," which featured weak vocals and some rather limp staging by Josh Rhodes.

So, I'm all for more of these cinecasts, but the people involved need to find a way to market them more effectively, at least in the Boston area. There was a grand total of 18 people in the theater at the showing I attended. What's more, the theaters themselves need to do a better job of actually presenting these events. Each time I've attended a cinecast, the theater staff has been clueless. They're usually not even aware of the events. 

I saw Company at the Showcase Cinemas in Woburn, MA, and the movie-theater staff got nothing right. The show started 20 minutes late. Somehow the computer that was supposed to start the show didn't kick in, and nobody was paying any attention to the computer, so we had to seek out someone in charge to look into it. Then, once the film started, the house lights didn't go down, and we had to hunt someone down again. Then, at the end of the show, the lights didn't come back on, and we had to fumble our way to the doors.

When I addressed my displeasure to the manager on duty, he couldn't have been less interested or concerned, and made a half-hearted offer of some free movie passes. I don't really go to the movies, so I declined. But I've heard numerous examples of similar experiences that people have had with these cinecasts across the country. I recently read somewhere that these cinecasts could represent a bit of a boon for a struggling movie-theater industry.

Only if they take them more seriously.

Review - West Side Story on Tour in Boston

West Side Story may be the best musical that I've never actually seen work on stage. I mean no disrespect to the piece itself, which I consider to be almost a masterpiece. (Read my review of the recent Broadway West Side Story revival). I've just never seen a production that did the piece full justice.

The score, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by a young Stephen Sondheim, may be the most moving and dramatically effective theater score of all time, despite flaws that Sondheim himself has pointed out in the lyrics. (Actually, he has called his West Side Story lyrics "embarassing.") The Jerome Robbins choreography ranks among the best ever created for a musical. And the libretto, by the recently deceased Arthur Laurents, actually in some ways improves upon its Shakespearean source by changing the primary motor of the tragedy from chance to racism.

So, West Side Story is a stunning piece of musical theater, without question one of the top 10 works in the musical-theater canon. (See my list of the 100 Best Musicals of All Time.)

But on stage, the piece has two significant liabilities, the first being the incredible challenge that it presents in terms of casting. I'm not just talking about the need for triple-threat actor/singer/dancers, although that's considerable, to be sure. I'm referring to the task of finding performers for the two central roles of Tony and Maria. Interestingly, Tony and Maria don't need to be great dancers, despite this being perhaps the ultimate dance show. But it's apparently a huge undertaking to find performers who can both do justice to Bernstein's score and provide the requisite depth of characterization to fully evince the pathos of the show's central relationship.

Case in point: the current national tour of West Side Story, which I caught on Tuesday night at the Colonial Theater in Boston. The tour features Kyle Harris and Ali Ewoldt as Tony and Maria, respectively, and in terms of their acting, both performers were top-notch. But Harris appeared to be having some vocal issues, which manifested themselves in extreme vibrato and cartoonish scooping. His "e" vowels during "Maria" were risibly wide and tall. Clearly the show is taking a toll on his instrument and he's had to compensate, but it was extremely distracting. Ewoldt's Spanish accent seemed rather off, and her singing, while considerably stronger than that of Josefina Scaglinone, who played the part on Broadway, had a sort of harsh edge to it, and she ran out of breath on some of the soft high notes.

And then there are the gang members. Has there ever been a production of West Side Story in which the Jets and the Sharks were convincingly menacing? I certainly haven't seen one. I suppose it would be well nigh on impossible to find a couple dozen outstanding dancers who were also physically imposing and...well...let's be frank, masculine. I suppose if you're going to err on one side, you might as well go for the best dancers, and thankfully the entire dance corps for the current tour is absolutely first-rate.

The other huge liability in West Side Story, at least from where I sit, is the "Somewhere" ballet, which I have always found unbearably quaint and precious. The movie version wisely cuts this segment, probably because it would have seemed too theatrical. But cutting it from the show would leave Act 2 without a major dance number. The movie solves this by moving "Cool" to a later point in the story, and changing the singer from Riff to Action. (Riff being...er...indisposed at this point in the story.) The impetus for this sequence is dramatically valid, but there's something about the execution that robs the second act of momentum and throws off the tone of the show.

The recent Broadway production gave the "Somewhere" vocal solo to a young boy, a character named "Kiddo" that Laurents created for this production, but who really didn't do anything else throughout the show. Having this young child suddenly burst upon the scene to sing "Somewhere" in a boy soprano voice was treacly and shudder-inducing. Thankfully, for the tour the producers decided that having a child along for the ride would prove logistically challenging, so the solo goes to the Anybodys character, played here by the kick-ass talented, fierce beyond words, Alexandra Frohlinger. (Full disclosure: Alex is a Boston Conservatory grad, and one of my former students. But she's still pretty frickin' fierce.)

One final note, about the much-discussed Spanish added to this production. As you may know, the late Arthur Laurents brought in Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer and lyricist of In the Heights, to translate a huge chunk of the show into Spanish. (Read my review of the West Side Story CD release for my take on Miranda's work here.) When I saw the show in DC, entire scenes and songs were in Spanish, including "America," "I Feel Pretty," and "A Boy Like That." It was a huge mistake, and robbed these important scenes of their dramatic weight.

The tour cuts back on the Spanish considerably, trying to strike a balance between realism and comprehension, but you could see the effort with every line that passed, and again, it was distracting and deleterious. In the theater, we have this convention in which foreign characters speak in English, and we just assume that they're actually speaking their native tongue. It was an admirable experiment on Laurents' part, but ultimately a failed one.

The West Side Story tour is currently booking through June of 2012, including upcoming dates in Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Portland, and Seattle. Even with my above reservations, I recommend taking it in. You won't see finer dancing anywhere, and the score itself is worth the ticket price.

Review - The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway

I was never a really huge fan of Pee-Wee Herman. I am rather fond of his first movie, "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure,"
and I certainly appreciated "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" on the odd occasion when I would catch it, but I wasn't a fanatic or anything.

Nevertheless, I was pretty excited to see him live on stage in The Pee-Wee Herman Show, now playing at New York's newly christened Stephen Sondheim Theatre. I caught the show last week, shortly after it opened to rather strong reviews. I was especially pumped about the show when I heard it would feature two of my favorite performers from "Mad TV," Phil LaMarr and Josh Meyers. Fortunately they didn't disappoint, bringing the same fresh-faced sparkle to their roles here as they did to that now-defunct TV series.

Would that I could say the same for Pee-Wee himself. While overall I certainly enjoyed myself, the show wore out its welcome rather quickly. A little Pee-Wee goes an awfully long way. The somewhat one-note proceedings here are the sort of thing where 70 minutes would have been much better than 90. The seats we had were really close to the stage, near enough to see the wear and tear, both in the material and the performers. Plus, Pee-Wee himself seemed to be on automatic pilot. The sense of fun and mischief was there, but his energy seemed wan and his eyes were bloodshot.

I am glad to see Paul Reubens making a comeback, though. I always thought he got a bit of a bum rap. I'm not talking about what actually transpired in that movie theater, but rather how his career essentially went on hold for 20 years. Some of the best parts of the current show occur when it makes sly references to the past indiscretions of its creator. For this isn't so much the Pee-Wee of the children's TV show as it is a return to the double-entendre-laced Pee-Wee of his original stage show. There's not much here that would be overtly objectionable to parents with their kids in tow; any child that really gets the underlying humor here probably wouldn't need a chaperon anyway.

As for director Alex Timbers (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), I didn't see his hand really appear on much of the show. I suppose that's the sign of a good director, but I get the feeling nearly anyone could have staged this show. It's all about the performances and the content, and not really about the presentation. It's possible I could be vastly underestimating Timbers' influence, but I really didn't notice anything that screamed "strong directorial hand." In any case, Timbers' work would seem to be beside the point here. This is a show for Pee-Wee fans, not theater mavens. And as is so often the case with nostalgia, the actual craft behind it is a secondary issue at best.

NOTE: New Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations require bloggers to disclose when they accept anything of material value related to their blog posts. I received complimentary press tickets to this performance of The Pee-Wee Herman Show.

Review - A Little Night Music With Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch

Dear Catherine Zeta-Jones: The Theater Wing would like its Tony Award back.

Why? Because Bernadette Peters is now proving eight times a week that you didn't deserve it. It's not as though you embarrassed yourself in A Little Night Music. Far from it. Your Desiree was never less than professional, but never more than merely competent. Let's be honest: the only reason you got that award is that the Tony voters wanted to congratulate themselves on being able to attract A-list Hollywood talent to Broadway, and to encourage other stars to make the trek east.

But now, visitors to the Walter Kerr Theater in New York can see how a real star of the stage comports herself in one of the best female roles in the musical theater canon.

To be sure, Bernadette is not without her mannerisms and eccentricities, which are on full display here. Peters seems hell-bent on wringing every possible laugh from Hugh Wheeler's urbane and literate script, whether through exaggerated line readings or shameless mugging, even when she's not the immediate focus of the scene. But the marvel here is that it works, and swimmingly so.

When I saw Zeta-Jones play the role (read my review), there was a definite sense of nervousness about her, despite her striking beauty and killer smile. And that anxiety was contagious. But with Bernadette, I just sat back and enjoyed being in the hands of a seasoned stage performer. It reminded me of seeing Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage or Three Tall Women. In both cases, I knew she was hamming up a storm, but I eagerly and ravenously devoured every last scrap of pork.

And when it comes to hearing Bernadette Peters interpret Stephen Sondheim's ravishing score, well, there's just no comparison. Zeta-Jones was on pitch (mostly) throughout the show, but her delivery of "Glamorous Life" was irritatingly labored, compared to Bernadette's joyous playfulness. And "Send in the Clowns" in Peters' hands is a tour de force. Suddenly the mannerisms die away, the defenses are down, and we're left with a masterful performer laying bare a raw and palpable sense of loss and regret. It's nothing less than stunning.

And then there's the formidable Elaine Stritch. With all due respect to the wondrous Angela Lansbury, Stritch has a much firmer grasp on the humor inherent in the role of Madame Armfeldt. Of course, Elaine is showing her age much more than Angela was. Elaine's pacing is extraordinarily slow, giving the impression that accessing every single line and lyric is a chore. The show is about 15 minutes longer than it was with CZJ and Angela, and most of that extra time comes from Stritch's continual grasping and shameless backphrasing, particularly on "Liaisons."

But, again, it works. Stritch is every bit the pro that Bernadette is, and she knows her way with a caustic one-liner. In fact, she can make almost any line into a caustic one-liner, whether the authors intended it or not.

When I first heard that Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch would be taking over for CZJ and Angela Lansbury, I was skeptical. I wasn't sure that either was right for her respective role. But after seeing the show, I can confidently announce that both women suit their parts admirably, bringing a spark of vitality to a production that was sorely lacking in same prior to their accession. These consummate professionals breathe bountiful life into a formerly moribund property. It's an amazing sight to witness.

NOTE: New Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations require bloggers to disclose when they accept anything of material value related to their blog posts. I received complimentary press tickets to this performance of A Little Night Music.

Contest: Win Two Tickets to Night Music With Bernadette and Elaine

As you may know, the current revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music was originally supposed to close in June upon the departure of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. But, subsequent to the show's closure announcement, the producers announced that the show would reopen with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch. The new cast has been in previews since July 13th, toward a new opening night on August 1st.

I know that I can't wait to see these wonderfully talented women in their respective roles; I'll be taking in a performance on July 31st. In the meantime, I've also obtained a free pair of tickets for one of my lucky readers. The tickets are valid until September 5, 2010.

Of course, I'm not just going to *give* the tickets away. That would be too easy. Below are five trivia questions related to the show and its lovely new leading ladies. I'll select a random winner from everyone who answers all five correctly. The contest deadline will be midnight EST on Friday, July 30th. You can enter your answers in the comments section below. I won't publish the comments until the contest deadline has passed.

Good luck!

1. Which African American actress took over the part of the Witch in Into The Woods upon Bernadette Peters' departure? [ANSWER: Phylicia Rashad. A number of people said Vanessa Williams, but Williams played the Witch in the revival, not the original production.]

2. Who replaced Bernadette Peters in Song and Dance, only to be replaced by Peters as the Witch during rehearsals for Into the Woods? [ANSWER: Betty Buckley. Quite a few people said Ellen Foley, but Foley was never in Song & Dance, at least according to IBDB.]

3. Which two shows was Elaine Stritch involved in on Broadway in the early 1950s that necessitated her hectic commute from Manhattan to New Haven and back? [ANSWER: Call Me Madam and Pal Joey. Most people got this one right, thanks to Elaine Stritch - At Liberty.]

4. The title of A Little Night Music is an homage to what piece of classical music, and who was the composer of that piece? [ANSWER: Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which is German for...well, I think you can get it from here.]

5. Stephen Sondheim set himself a challenge in composing to the music to A Little Night Music. What was that musical challenge? [ANSWER: To write the entire piece in triple meter, AKA 3/4 time and its brethren. As Sondheim has pointed out, the show does have the occasional non-triple meter thrown in. But most of the show is either in 3/4 or 12/8 or some other variant.]

The winner has been notified. Thanks to everyone who entered! --C.C.

Rachel York in Into the Woods

When I started writing this blog four years ago, I knew that I would have to draw some boundaries about the shows that I would be reviewing. Because I've been involved in theater for decades, and because I teach at the Boston Conservatory, I have many friends and students who are involved in local productions. And in the interest of maintaining those friendships, and allowing my students the opportunity to develop their craft in peace, I established two ground rules:

1. I only review local shows if they are at professional theaters, such as the Huntington Theatre at the American Repertory Theatre.

2. I don't directly address the performances of my students until they have graduated.

Then along came Into the Woods at Reagle Players in Waltham, MA. Reagle is one of the more prominent theater companies in the Boston area, and is particularly well known for bringing in Broadway-caliber performers to headline their shows. They also frequently rent the costumes and sets from recent Broadway productions of the shows they do. The results are often pedestrian but sometimes inspired. 

This particular production of Into the Woods featured five current and recent students from the Boston Conservatory: Elizabeth Berg, Emily Goldberg, Bryan Miner, Brennan Roach, and Greg Stone. In addition, the show was directed by an old friend of mine, Stacey Stephens, who in fact directed me when I played the Baker in Into the Woods a few years back. So, normally, this would be a classic example of a production that I would steer clear of in terms of reviewing it on my blog.

But the show also featured the delightful Rachel York as the Witch, and I knew that there would be considerable interest among my readers as to how she fared in the role. So, I decided to blog about the production, but only in terms of Ms. York's performance, as well as that of her fiance, Ayal Miodovnik, for reasons that will become clear later. 

I've long been an ardent admirer of Rachel York, based upon her performances in such shows as Dessa Rose and Kiss Me Kate. And, for the most part, York demonstrated here why she's had such steady work in the theater since her breakout role as Mallory in City of Angels. She's got a dynamite belt, a strong stage presence, and a great way with a wry one-liner. (She was certainly the only redeeming quality of the otherwise execrable 101 Dalmatians.) Her rendition of "Stay With Me" was particularly affecting, evoking a palpable sense of the Witch's fear of isolation.

Although York admittedly brought a great deal of animation to the role of the Witch, sometimes it was a bit too much. "Our Little World," the song that Stephen Sondheim wrote for the show's first London production, was particularly over-the-top. York pushed the comedy a bit too aggressively in a character voice that sounded like Granny from "The Beverly Hillbillies." Some might consider that a valid choice, but for me it obscured the meaning and potential pathos of the song.

York also demonstrated some problems with breath control and lyrical mastery, particularly during the Witch's opening patter, during which she garbled a few of the trickier lines. ("I'm telling you the same I tell queens and...queens...") I'm not privy to the details of the production process for this show, but what frequently happens with guest stars is they get plugged into the product at the last minute. It's possible that York was a trifle unrehearsed.

On a final note, York seems to have come to the Reagle Players as part of a package deal with her fiance, Ayal Miodovnik, who played Cinderella's Prince and the Wolf. Miodovnik's program bio quizzically lists nearly as much about his management and business accomplishments as his theater credits. Well, Miodovnik here demonstrates that, as an actor, he's a great businessman. His performance was inconsistent, to say the least. He didn't really seem to be playing any one particular character, bringing a different hammy countenance to each subsequent scene. Also, during "Agony" he pronounced the word "frustration" as "fuss-tration," which is reason enough to hit anyone with a sock full of manure.

Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch in A Little Night Music

As you most likely know, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury played their final performances in the revival of A Little Night Music this past weekend. You may also know that the show, which was originally scheduled to close upon their departure, will instead take a brief hiatus before Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch take up the parts of Desiree and Madame Armfeldt, respectively, on July 13th.

More on that later, but first I wanted to address some Post-Tony controversy initiated by performer Hunter Foster. As I've said, the Tonys this year were dominated by Broadway congratulating itself for attracting A-list Hollywood stars, and awarded them Tonys, in some people's estimation, simply for showing up. Hunter took it upon himself to start a Facebook group called Give the Tonys Back to Broadway, which at the time of this writing had 7,651 members.

I've admired Hunter's work for years, but I find this effort misguided and naive. The Tonys are about business and marketing. And Hollywood stars are currently seen as the key to box-office success. As long as that ethos remains extant, Tony Awards will continue to go to shows and performers that are most likely to earn the voters money. And nothing will change in that regard until theater critics are restored to the ranks of the Tony voters.

That said, I believe that Catherine Zeta-Jones was undeserving of her Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. (Read my review of this production.) If you didn't get to see her on stage, all you have to do is listen to the cast recording to witness the problem. She was fine in the book scenes, but during the songs she pushed and emoted to an egregious extent. Check out this clip from "The Glamorous Life." It's rather painful to listen to. It's as though she's trying with every note to justify her presence in the show. This otherwise excellent recording is marred by a leading performance nearly devoid of subtlety, although "Send in the Clowns" is admirably restrained.

But the fact remains that this show would never have made it to Broadway without CZJ. And based on the momentum established by CZJ (and the lovely Ms. Lansbury), we now get a chance to see Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch take up the roles. Would the show have made it to Broadway solely based on the draw of Misses Peters and Stritch? It's possible, but I have my doubts. So we very likely have CZJ to thank for providing us with the chance to see two genuine pros of the stage take on the roles. When Peters and Stritch leave, could we possibly see some additional recasting to keep the show afloat? Perhaps the mother/daughter team of Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow, as previously rumored?

Well, if that does happen, Hunter Foster will no doubt be pleased to know that neither would be eligible for a Tony, since only the cast from opening night of a particular production qualifies. Unless, of course, the Tony commission changes the rules to accommodate replacement casts. And, depending on the wattage of the stars in question, is that notion really that far-fetched?

Review - Sondheim on Sondheim at the Roundabout Theatre

At the Nederlander Theater on 41st Street, Million Dollar Quartet is attracting enthusiastic, albeit heavily discounted, audiences of rock and roll faithful to witness a recreation of a mythic night with four rock icons. Thirteen blocks north, at the Studio 54, Sondheim on Sondheim is holding court to a similarly enthusiastic, and discounted, audience of acolytes to the cult of Stephen Sondheim. While both shows have their respective merits, both are also ultimately for fans only.

Sondheim on Sondheim began its life with the unimaginably twee name of iSondheim, and is compiled by James Lapine, longtime Sondheim librettist and director. Lapine wisely opts for a thematic exploration of Sondheim's oeuvre rather than a staid "and then I wrote" format. The songs emerge from video discussions with the man himself, and offer interesting, if somewhat superficial, glimpses into the great man's life and creative process.

For instance, the song "Franklin Shepherd, Inc." from Merrily We Roll Along emerges from a discussion about the breakup of Sondheim's working relationship with director Harold Prince. After Sondheim reveals that he didn't have a serious romantic relationship until he was 60 years old, we get "Happiness" from Passion, which here becomes an amusing bi-curious daisy chain of love, requited and otherwise. And, although many people have assumed over the years that various aspects of Sondheim's work have been autobiographical, Sondheim insists that the only truly autobiographical song he ever wrote was "Opening Doors" from Merrily, which he says was about his early professional experience, as well as that of Mary Rodgers and Sheldon Harnick, during the 1950s. 

The video anecdotes feature many of the same tales that Sondheim aficionados have heard time and again. (e.g. How "Comedy Tonight" supposedly saved A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum single-handedly, and how Sondheim wrote at least three different songs for the finale of Company before settling on "Being Alive.") But there are also some interesting and instructive tips on song writing. At one point Sondheim explains the difference between lyrics and poetry: a reader can go over poetry multiple times to find shades of meaning, whereas a song lyric needs to work on a first hearing. The video screens also offer opportunities for apt scenic touches, including footage from the original "Passione d'Amour" movie, and a stunning array of assassination victims (including Harvey Milk and Benazir Bhutto) during "The Gun Song" from Assassins.

The video narration gets a bit ponderous at times, including some rather banal insights about how producing art is like having children, and about teaching being a sacred profession. But other video moments work quite stunningly, mostly those concerning Sondheim's strained relationship with his mother (who seems a rather horrid human being, at least based on the information in the show), as well as his bond with his substitute paternal figure, the great Oscar Hammerstein. This mother/father sequence features some rather shocking revelations and sweet reminiscences that I won't recount here, but this part of the show alone makes it well worth seeing, at least for the musical-theater faithful.

The cast of Sondheim on Sondheim features an awkward trio of admittedly talented headliners, although it's really not clear how they belong in the same show. Vanessa Williams was lovely and professional, but didn't really make a lasting impression. I felt rather sorry for Tom Wopat, a talented guy who here is saddled with the most ill-fitting song choices, including "Finishing the Hat" and "Epiphany," which didn't seem to have sufficient setup or purpose when I saw the show in early previews. Thankfully, the glorious Barbara Cook is always a pleasure to witness. Although her top notes are pretty much gone (hey, she's 82, for frig's sake), she still exhibits remarkable vocal control. Heck, I'll take attenuated Babs over the current crop of screaming Broadway belters any day. As she sang "Buddy's Eyes" from Follies, I took great pleasure when she got to the lyric "I'm still the princess. Still the prize." Yes, you are, Barbara. Yes, you are.

GRADE: B+ (A rich pleasure for theater geeks, but probably for fans only.)

Review - Anyone Can Whistle at Encores

Sitting and watching the recent Encores production of Anyone Can Whistle, it was often difficult to imagine how the original  Broadway production could ever have been a nine-performance flop in 1964. But it was a flop, and a rather legendary one at that. I think it was Ethan Mordden who once quipped that if everyone who claimed that they had seen Anyone Can Whistle had actually seen it, the show would still be running.

But the score to Anyone Can Whistle has since become greatly admired, particularly among Sondheim aficionados. There was a great deal of excitement leading up to the Encores production -- particularly when it was announced that Donna Murphy, Sutton Foster, Raúl Esparza would head the cast -- and I'm happy to say that the production didn't disappoint. In fact, it was the best thing I've ever seen at Encores. (Before you ask, here are the Encores shows that I have personally seen: No, No, Nanette,  Juno, Damn Yankees, On the Town, Music in the Air, Finian's Rainbow, The Wiz, Girl Crazy, Fanny and Anyone Can Whistle.)

Typically, Encores cuts down the librettos for its shows, sometimes to a detrimental extent, as was the case with Finian's Rainbow and Juno. But in the case of Anyone Can Whistle, they were doing the show a huge favor, paring down Arthur Laurents' ridiculous, confusing, and self-indulgent book to an absolute minimum, and giving Stephen Sondheim's glorious score a chance to shine.The score contains some of Sondheim's most interesting, moving, and ambitious work, including the soaring ballad "With So Little to Be Sure of," the rousing "Everybody Says Don't," and what is perhaps the best song in the show, "A Parade in Town." Sure, there are some clunkers, including the awkward "See What it Gets You." But one the whole, it's one of Sondheim's best scores, and when you're talking about the big S, that's saying something.

Pulling off Anyone Can Whistle can be a very challenging task indeed, and requires a director with a very sure hand. Fortunately, the folks at Encores brought in Casey Nicholaw. (Admittedly, Nicholaw's most recent gig was the poorly received and early-closing All About Me, but hey even Fosse and Bennett had their misfires.) Nicholaw brings a fast pace and a consistent tone to the show, and also does a masterful job staging the songs, particularly the two extended sequences, "Simple" and "The Cookie Chase."

Anyone Can Whistle also depends on very strong and appropriate casting choices, and here, as elsewhere, this production did not disappoint. Sutton Foster was her perky, spunky, funny self, and Raúl Esparza was his sonorous, intense, and dynamic self. But as talented as the two performers are, and as well-suited for their roles as they were, they wound up coming off as merely competent in the shadow of the spectacular Donna Murphy. Murphy is not only letter-perfect as Cora, but I couldn't help thinking about the other roles that this amazingly talented woman has mastered, including Fosca in Passion, Ruth Sherwood in Wonderful Town, Anna Leonowens in The King and I, and Lotte Lenya in Lovemusik. Great honk, is there anything this woman can't do? My friend and fellow blogger Kevin over at Theatre Aficionado at Large has called Ms. Murphy "God's gift to musical comedy." I couldn't have said it any better.

A final note: Anyone Can Whistle is certainly a period piece, particularly in its decidedly '60s association of "crazy" with "nonconformist." Someone mentioned to me that Sondheim was speaking at a talk-back for the show and said that, in the original production, they didn't do a strong enough job of making the crazy/nonconformist distinction. I think it's more of a semantic issue. But even if the show *were* romanticizing mental illness, I'd be inclined to cut the creators some slack given that it was written 45 years ago. (I'm a bit less inclined to give certain Pulitzer Prize-winning musicals a bye is this regard. Stay tuned for my take on that recent, stunning development.) 

GRADE: A (What very well may become the definitive production of a deeply flawed but significant show.)

Review - A Little Night Music Revival

Easily the most anticipated musical of the season thus far has been the Broadway transfer of acclaimed London production of A Little Night Music. My schedule didn't allow me to see the show during previews, as is my normal wont, but I did get down to the Walter Kerr Theater last weekend to take in [sigh] a post-opening performance.

Given that I was seeing A Little Night Music almost a month into its run, it was inevitable that I would have already heard a good deal about the production. For instance, I had witnessed much talk of the scaled-down staging, reflecting the larger trend of treating Stephen Sondheim revivals as "chamber" pieces. This particular aspect of A Little Night Music didn't bother me: these reduced productions have at least one positive effect, which is creating more of a focus on the piece itself.

I had heard a good deal of grumbling about the reduced orchestrations: the current production of Night Music features new charts by Jason Carr for eight musicians, whereas the originals by Jonathan Tunick called for 25. I guess I don't really focus on sound quality and fullness, as long as the playing is professional, which it most certainly was. The music sounded just fine to my admittedly unrefined and inattentive ear.

What did bother me were some of director Trevor Nunn's staging choices, some of which seemed to defy explanation. Most egregious was the dinner scene, in which Nunn has the cast sitting on the floor on pillows. Not only did it seem strange that elegant dinner guests would be lolling around on the floor, but this choice would seem to be a direct contradiction of Madame Armfeldt's line upon the guests' arrival: "We cannot be caught squatting on the ground like Bohemians."

One note of irony in the supposedly "intimate" production design was the scenery by David Farley, which was lumbering, cumbersome, and visually unappealing. And the much-discussed exceedingly dim lighting, designed by Hartley T A Kemp, is indeed exceedingly, annoyingly, unnecessarily dark. Is the production team trying to get us to focus more on the characters? Or hide the hideous set? Whatever, the insufficient illumination here is irritating, and I would imagine even more so for those with aging eyes. And when you add the veritable darkness of the proceedings to the production's deadly slow pacing -- the show clocks in at 3 hours, whereas the original was closer to 2.5 -- the effect is soporific, indeed.

All of which would seem to be beside the point, because very few attendees for this Night Music are there for orchestral richness, atmospheric lighting, or swift pacing. They were there to see Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is perfectly presentable, if uninspired, as Desiree. Her manner during the book scenes was very natural, but during the songs she seemed to be pushing. In her first number, "The Glamorous Life," it seemed as though she was trying to justify her presence on Broadway. Her diction was a bit lacking at times, but her voice is strong and appealing. "Send in the Clowns" had a nice, smoky quality to it, although she did sharp a bit on the final note, when she tried adding a brief crescendo/diminuendo emphasis.

But I couldn't help thinking as I watched the show, "She's the reason we're all here." Because, without Catherine Zeta-Jones, this revival quite simply would never have made it to Broadway. News that she would make her Broadway debut in the show reached as far as China and Pakistan. The production has been playing at or near capacity, with a very healthy average ticket of about $130.00. But when CZJ leaves, the show very likely close, unless they can find another Hollywood A-lister to step in. 

Not that it really matters, but the casting for the rest of the show has its highs and lows. Angela Lansbury is her fabulous self as Madame Armfeldt, although in truth, she's not entirely suited to the role. Try as she might, our beloved Angela is far too likable in a part that should be imperious and cutting. Broadway newcomer Alexander Hanson is terrific as Frederick, conveying just the right sense of world-weariness and faded prowess. Leigh Ann Larkin is far more subtle and effective as Petra than she was (IMHO) as June in Gypsy. Larkin does a bang-up job on "Miller's Son," one of the best I've ever seen, in fact. (I still don't think the song belongs in the show, though: it stops the action dead, asking us to spend four-plus minutes with a minor character just as we want things to wrap up.)

There were, however, some major casting missteps. Ramona Mallory seems to be have been cast solely because she's the daughter of the original Anne, Victoria Mallory. At first, Mallory the younger seemed a welcome -- albeit petulant -- change from the typical ingenue. But she eventually became irritatingly hysterical and whiny. Aaron Lazar seems far too young and not nearly imposing enough as Carl-Magnus. And then there's poor Erin Davie, a wonderfully talented young woman, who is sorely miscast here as Charlotte. Davie is far too soft-edged. Her "Every Day a Little Death," which should be a paean to understated bitterness, becomes a maudlin, melodramatic affair. Davie seems to be acting up a storm, trying to make the part work, but she's simply not right for the part, at least not now, and perhaps not ever.

While I remain glad that A Little Night Music has finally, after 35 years, made it back to Broadway, the production at hand hasn't much to offer to beyond marquee-value names above the title. It's certainly a strong show in its own right, and the current version is never less than serviceable. But for $137.00, is "serviceable" really enough?

Stephen Sondheim at Sanders Theater - Part 2

Last week, I posted some of my notes from A Life in the Theater - An Evening With Stephen Sondheim, a conversation between Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich at Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Mass. There was so much good stuff, I decided to break my notes up into two different posts. In my first set of notes, I included Sondheim's observations about some of his earlier shows, including Follies, Company, and A Little Night Music. Here, musical theater's greatest living practitioner discusses some of his later shows, as well as one of his first.  

Sweeney Todd
- Sondheim said that, in general, he's not really a fan of movie versions of stage musicals, and that most definitely includes A Little Night Music and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Because they weren't conceived for film, they don't tend to work well in that medium.
- The film version of Sweeney Todd, he said, was a notable exception, because director Tim Burton completely re-conceived the piece for film. Burton cut all the chorus songs -- what Sondheim refers to as "peasants on the green" pieces -- and retained the songs that came from the emotional life of the characters. The cast actually rehearsed "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," but didn't make it into film, because it's really a theatrical piece.
- Rich asked Sondheim why he thought Sweeney Todd has become such an admired and accepted work, given the (ahem) distasteful subject matter. Sondheim said it was because the musical is based on the Christopher Bond version of the Sweeney Todd legend. Previous versions portrayed Todd and Mrs. Lovett as merely greedy, bumping off customers in order to steal their money, and cooking them into pies to hide the evidence. Bond added the revenge plot, the Count of Monte Cristo tale of the wronged man seeking justice, and the tragedy that unfolds. "Bond made the story human," said Sondheim. "That's what makes the story sing."
- Sondheim said that although he loves working on plot-less musicals (Company, Follies, Assassins), he also loves shows with solid plots. That's why Sweeney and A Little Night Music work so well, he said, because they have very strong stories upon which the music hangs.
- One of the most difficult numbers to write for Sweeney Todd was "Epiphany," the point in the show when Sweeney decides to take his vengeance out on all of humanity, rather than simply the people who done him wrong. But mass murder is an awfully hard thing to justify dramatically. Sondheim says that "Epiphany" was actually based on "Soliloquy" from Carousel, a song that Sondheim says "changed the face of musical theater." Obviously, the two songs are entirely different in terms of tone and intent, but they both set out to justify major, life-altering decisions on the parts of the characters singing them. The key to making "Epiphany" work, said Sondheim, was in having Sweeney break the fourth wall and threaten the audience, which made the threat more credible.
- Sondheim said that there really isn't any moral to the story of Sweeney Todd. "It's really just meant to be a horror movie," he said. "We just wanted to scare people."
- Sweeney Todd did reasonably well on Broadway (although the production closed at a financial loss), but the show positively flopped in Britain. The show played the famed Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and was basically a recreation of the Broadway production, and it folded within a month. Sondheim says it was probably because Sweeney Todd is just a silly folk tale in Britain, a ruse to scare children into going to bed, lest Sweeney Todd come and get them in the night. As playwright John Guare put it to Sondheim, "Imagine someone coming to America with a serious musical based on 'I Love Lucy.'"

Gypsy
- Sondheim compared "Epiphany" from Sweeney Todd to "Rose's Turn" from Gypsy. "I love to write nervous breakdowns," he said, then added wryly, "I understand them so well."
- Apparently, Gypsy director/choreographer Jerome Robbins had originally intended "Rose's Turn" to be a ballet. In an early version of the show, there were three different actresses playing June and Louise at various ages, and at the end of the show, all six of them were going to come out for a kaleidoscopic ballet portraying Rose's breakdown. But Robbins turned to Sondheim one day in rehearsal and said, "I don't have time to stage it. Go write a song."
- Robbins and Sondheim went to the rooftop theater above the New Amsterdam, the place where Ziegfeld used to hold his Midnight Frolic revues, and talked for hours about what the song should say. Robbins played the part of Rose, and began to ad lib, dipping and swaying across the stage, a la Mama Rose in Gypsy Rose Lee mode. Sondheim took his notes to composer Jule Styne and the two of them filled out the song into the tour de force that we know today.
- Oscar Hammerstein didn't live long enough to see Sondheim write both music and lyrics for a show, but he did get to see both West Side Story and Gypsy, and was impressed. Hammerstein approached Sondheim after seeing Gypsy, and said that there were three problems. First, the doorknob in the kitchen scene wasn't working. Second, "You'll Never Get Away From Me" shouldn't end with dialog, but rather with the end of the song.
- And third, "Rose's Turn" was ending in such a way that robbed the audience of an applause break for Ethel Merman. Instead, it was ending by having the character slowly lose focus, and trail off into confusion. You have to let them give Ethel a hand, Hammerstein said. Because the audience wasn't able to acknowledge Merman, they were uneasy and unable to focus on the following scene, the pivotal one in which Louise and Rose have their final resolution, and the mother/daughter roles reverse. But that's not true to the emotion of the scene, said Sondheim. There's a difference between real truth and theatrical truth, said Hammerstein. Some things that are false emotionally are right for the stage. So they added the now-iconic "For me!" at the end of the number, gave Ethel her applause, and suddenly the audience was paying attention for the final two pages of the show.
- Rich asked Sondheim whether Hammerstein might have been put off by the subject matter of some of Sondheim's shows. Sondheim said that he would like to believe that Oscar would be proud of all of his shows, because, although he and Hammerstein have different tastes in subject matter, the shows are all in keeping with Hammerstein's artistic principles. People wrongly think of Hammerstein as old-fashioned and sentimental, but he really never was, and neither are his shows. He was a man of very strong artistic ambition and opinions and was very articulate about voicing those opinions.

Sunday in the Park With George
- Working with James Lapine changed Sondheim's creative life in a number of significant ways. Sondheim had never worked Off-Broadway before; he had usually written shows for out-of-town tryouts or opened them cold on Broadway. But with Sunday, for the first time, he had the luxury of developing a show in a not-for-profit setting, and he says it made for a much more relaxing experience, even if the production was in fact only a few geographic blocks from Broadway.
- Sondheim wrote the song "Finishing the Hat" to express what he called "the joy of trancing out." "When you're creating," he said, "the world is going by while you're making your own world." Of course, at the end of the song, the character Georges has no one to share his creation with except the dog, which expresses one of the key themes of the show: the sacrifices that an artist makes.

Into the Woods
- After Sunday in the Park With George, Sondheim and librettist/director James Lapine were looking for a quick way to make some money. They briefly toyed with the idea of creating a musical that was based on a TV special, featuring such iconic TV characters as Ralph Kramden, Lucy Ricardo, and Mary Richards. They even contacted TV producer Norman Lear to see if he might be interested in collaborating. But they eventually decided to focus on fairy tale characters instead.

General notes
- Sondheim also talked about various productions that he's heard of in which people change certain aspects of his shows, including an all-male version of Company, another in which Bobby shot himself at the end, and a version of Merrily We Roll Along that did the show "backwards" (i.e. "forwards").
- Sondheim is currently working on a two-volume, annotated edition of all of his lyrics throughout his career. The books will include historical background and essays about each show. The first volume, titled Finishing the Hat, appropriately enough, is scheduled to come out in late 2010 with second to follow in 2011.

Stephen Sondheim at Sanders Theater - Part 1

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending A Life in the Theater - An Evening With Stephen Sondheim, which took place at the lovely Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Mass. The event comprised a conversation, of sorts, between Stephen Sondheim, looking rather spry for his 79 years, and Frank Rich, the man formerly known as the "butcher of Broadway" during his stint as chief drama critic for the New York Times. 

In truth, Rich needn't have showed up. His questions were rather on the soft-ball side, and didn't really go much beyond "And then you wrote Follies. What was that like?" Pretty much anyone with even a passing knowledge of musical theater could have performed the same function. Sure, there was a certain added value to his presence, given his now legendary review of Follies for the Harvard Crimson, and other such overlaps, including his presence at the final DC performance of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. But on the whole, the added value to Rich's presence was minimal.

Sondheim talked about a lot of stuff that we've heard before, but it was certainly a delight to hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were. What follows is a show-by-show breakdown of some of the stories and recollections that Sondheim related to a rapt audience of about 1,100 admirers. There was so much great stuff to relate that I'm going to be breaking it up into two separate posts.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- This was definitely one of the more oft-told tales of the evening, but Sondheim related a few details that I found compelling. Famously, Forum was flopping in DC. The final out-of-town performance had 50 members sparsely scattered throughout a 1,700-seat theater. Jerome Robbins had come in to help doctor the show, and said the opening number, "Love Is in the Air," wasn't working. The song was charming, but Forum isn't. It's a low comedy. Enter "Comedy Tonight."
- Sondheim says that this certainly made sense to him, given what had learned from his apprenticeship with Oscar Hammerstein, who told him that the opening number is the most important part of a musical: it needs to tell the audience what to expect in terms of style and substance. "Comedy Tonight" went into the show in Broadway previews, and the rest, as they say...

Company
- The original closing number to Company was called "Happily Ever After," which was eventually replaced by "Marry Me a Little" and ultimately "Being Alive." It's often said that "Happily" was cut because it was too much of a downer, but Sondheim said it was actually cut because it made the ending too bitter.
- "Side By Side" was originally supposed to be the 11 o'clock number, but Sondheim's agent suggested moving it to the opening of act 2 to give the audience a sort of progress report on Bobby. In its current place, the song really livens up the rest of the act.
- Most of the characters in Company were based on real people in librettist George Furth's life, while the part of Joanne was written specifically for Elaine Stritch. Sondheim was working on a number for her called "Crinoline," which was about memory and living in both the present and the past. (This, of course, would later become the theme for Follies.) Furth said, "No, that's not Elaine." Furth was out drinking very late one night with Stritch, in a bar on 3rd Avenue that was about to close. Stritch persuaded the bartender to keep bar open for her. "Honey," she said, "just give me a bottle of vodka and a floor plan." That's Elaine. 

Follies
- During the show's tryout in Boston, the opening sequence to Follies was somewhat abstract and featured shrill, dissonant music and slowly moving ghosts, and the audience just wasn't getting it. Sondheim spoke of the responsibility that creators have to their audience. "It's OK if they don't like it, but if they don't understand it, that's something you have to fix," he said.
- Sondheim thought the original opening would have been truer to the theme of the piece, but he worked with choreographer/co-director Michael Bennett to devise a new opening. "The audience is your collaborator," he said. "It's not about pandering. You can be subtle or indirect, but you're not allowed to baffle." 

A Little Night Music
- After such an expensive "flop" (his word, meaning Follies), Sondheim and Harold Prince wanted to make something that was a crowd-pleaser. Sondheim joked that he may indeed have a bit of a dark streak, but at the time a friend advised him to use Night Music as a chance to "show off." The friend exhorted him to "make it delightful, just a lighthearted operetta."
- The show was based on the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film, "Smiles of a Summer Night." While Night Music was running, Bergman contacted Sondheim about collaborating on a movie version of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow. Bergman visited Sondheim the day after Bergman first saw A Little Night Music on Broadway. Sondheim asked him what he thought. Bergman said, "My dear boy, my movie and your musical share a story and nothing else. But we all eat from the same cake." Strangely enough, Bergman related that Victoria Mallory, who played the part of Ann, looked just like the woman Bergman had based the part on. "As for that Hermione Gingold, she does tend to fuck the audience, doesn't she?"
- Speaking of Hermione Gingold, when she auditioned for Night Music, Sondheim and Prince were worried that she might be too campy for the role, but she actually read extremely well. On her way out of the audition room, she told Sondheim and Prince, "I notice the character is 74 years old. So am I." (Later they found out she was actually 75.) Gingold also had noticed that at the end of the show, Madame Armfeldt dies, and the stage direction indicated that she slumps over and her wig falls off. Gingold took off her own wig, revealing that she was completely bald.
- Rich asked Sondheim if he knew whether Ingmar Bergman had seen the film version of A Little Night Music. "It may be what killed him," he said.
- Of course, Elizabeth Taylor played the part of Desiree in the movie version. Sondheim said that, to make her appear to sing on key, they had to cut and paste individual notes from multiple audio takes. And this was before digital editing.
- Taylor shared a trailer with co-star Diana Rigg. One day, Rigg asked Taylor if she knew that day's date. Taylor didn't, but started looking around for a newspaper. She found one, but said, "Oh, never mind. This is yesterday's paper."

COMING SOON: Sondheim's recollections on Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Gypsy, including the revelation that "Rose's Turn" was originally supposed to be...a ballet?

Sunday in the Hall With Sondheim

If you're in the Boston area this weekend, and you're looking for a lovely way to spend this Sunday evening, why not head over to the Boston Conservatory. A bunch of my BoCo students have put together a revue entitled Sunday in the Hall With Sondheim. The "hall" in this case is venerable Seully Hall, which is on the fourth floor of the Conservatory's main building at 8 The Fenway. And, well, if I have to tell you who Sondheim is, then you really have no business reading this blog.

Two of my best students from last semester have put together this review: Joe Longthorne and Neil Reilly. Joe is the show's director, and Neil has created all the orchestrations and arrangements himself. And he's put together some really interesting numbers and sequences. Featured songs include "Take Me to the World" from Evening Primrose, "Being Alive" from Company, and "The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened" from Bounce/Road Show. The cast comprises more than 20 the best performers that the school has to offer, accompanied by an 18-piece orchestra selected from the Conservatory's many talented musicians.

The shows are at 7PM and 9PM this Sunday evening. Tickets are $7 in advance and $9 at the door. For advance tickets, contact [email protected]. The proceeds go towards the school's Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS efforts. In keeping with the BC/EFA tradition, there will also be a number of autographed goodies from various Broadway shows available through silent auction and raffle. 

So, a great cause, and a great show. We hope to see you there.

iSondheim with Barbara Cook?

We've been hearing off and on about a new revue of Stephen Sondheim's work with the unbearably precious name iSondheim. The show is being compiled and directed by James Lapine, longtime Sondheim collaborator.

The show was originally supposed to run at Atlanta's Alliance Theater this past April and May, but that production was canceled because of the projected production costs and the weak economy. As the awful title implies, iSondheim was to have included a great deal of technology -- multimedia, video, projections, etc. -- featuring interviews with Sondheim himself, intermingled with live performances of songs from Sondheim's career. But the production requirements apparently made the show untenable for a regional, non-profit run in the middle of a recession. 

More recently, there's been chatter on the Rialto about a New York run for iSondheim, under the auspices of the Roundabout Theater, and starring none other than the glorious Barbara Cook, who would be making her first appearance in a non-concert, non-benefit Broadway show in nearly forty frickin' years. The show would also feature two additional singers, yet to be cast. The wonderful Liz Callaway was supposed to have starred in the Alliance run. Wouldn't it be great to see her treading the boards again? Perhaps with her equally marvelous sister, Ann Hampton Callaway?

However, iSondheim seems to have hit a bit of a snag, according to Michael Riedel's column today in the New York Post. Apparently, Mr. Sondheim himself isn't happy with the revenue percentage that the Roundabout wants from any future touring company of the show. Something tells me Steve is going to get his way; it would seem that the Roundabout needs this show -- financially and artistically -- a lot more than Sondheim needs the Roundabout. The good news is that the iSondheim name, according to Riedel, is very likely to change. He mentions that both Virtual Sondheim and Sondheim on Sondheim have been under consideration as replacement titles, although neither seems to be much an improvement. 

Here's hoping that the differing parties iron out their differences so that we can all get to see both Stephen Sondheim and Barbara Cook back on Broadway where they belong.