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Remembering the influential lyricism of Stephen Sondheim’s musicalsExBulletin

 




DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:

And finally today we want to take the time to remember a Broadway legend. Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, America’s most respected figure in musical theater, passed away yesterday. He was 91 years old. His shows ranged from the vaudeville-inspired frolic “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” …

(EXCERPT FROM THE SONG, “COMEDY TONIGHT”)

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP # 1: (As characters, vocals) Something for everyone – comedy tonight.

FOLKENFLIK: … To the musical concept “Sunday In The Park With George” on the art of making art.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “PUTTING IT TOGETHER”)

MANDY PATINKIN: (like George, singing) Little by little, putting it all together piece by piece – the only way to make a work of art.

FOLKENFLIK: It would be hard to overstate Stephen Sondheim’s influence on the form of Broadway or on critic Bob Mondello, who offers this memory.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: At the climax of most musicals, the characters heartily sing enchanted or gravity-defying evenings or whatever I did out of love. The characters of Sondheim sing about the ambivalence, the feeling of conflict.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “BEING ALIVE”)

LARRY KERT: (like Bobby, singing) Someone, hold me too close. Someone has hurt me too much.

MONDELLO: Here’s Bobby in “Company”, the musical that set Sondheim’s model in 1970 – not his first show but the first big hit in which his characters sing less to advance the action than to provide some sort of profile. psychological. Bobby is afraid to commit. He watches his friends’ weddings and grits his teeth. Yet he wants what they have.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “BEING ALIVE”)

KERT: (Like Bobby, singing) Someone needs me too much. Someone, know me too well. Someone, stop me, put me through hell and help me.

MONDELLO: That’s not how most musicals conclude it, but Sondheim’s shows almost always send audiences not only singing, but thinking about everything about the westernization of Japan in “Pacific Overtures”. .

(FROM THE SONG, “PLEASE HELLO”)

PATRICK KINSER-LAU: (As Dutch admiral, singing) Two ports, one not too rocky. And Nagasaki?

MONDELLO: … To social justice in “Sweeney Todd” …

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “NO PLACE LIKE LONDON”)

LEN CARIOU: (Like Sweeney Todd, singing) There’s a hole in the world like a big black pit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it. And his moral is not worth what a pig might spit out. And it’s called London.

MONDELLO: … To what happens after Happiness Forever in “Into The Woods”.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “PROLOGUE FROM ACT II: SO HAPPY”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 1: (Like the baker, singing) In the woods. It’s always when you think you’re finally done. And then in the woods, you leave to make another trip.

MONDELLO: The first act of this fairytale show gives us fables like Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk more or less directly, basically what we expect from the musical. The second act has princes who are terrible husbands, witches who can be mean but who know things.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “LAST MIDNIGHT”)

BERNADETTE PETERS: (Singing) You are so nice. You are not good. You are not bad. You are just nice. I am not good. I am not nice. I am right. I am the witch. You are the world.

MONDELLO: It’s Sondheim wondering on stage how the world works. Worrisome is the right word. A puzzle and game enthusiast, Sondheim was delighted to turn the Broadway musical into a playground for thinkers. When you hear the lyrics of lune-jun-croon in one of his shows, it’s probably a joke. Difficult inner rhymes are more his thing – say, we have so much in common, it’s a phenomenon, a line written for the music of another composer early in his career, just like his lyrics for the semi-symphonic. ” West Side Story ”by Leonard Bernstein.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “AMERICA”)

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP # 2: (As characters, vocals) I love being in America – OK by me in America.

MONDELLO: It was a show that both established Sondheim as a lyricist and gave him a pet peeve about how sophisticated music tends to be received on Broadway. He joked about it in the only song he ever called autobiographical. Here, from an HBO special, Sondheim doubles down on the joke by playing the role of producer on “Merrily We Roll Along” and growling what people kept telling him when he first started.

(EXTRACT FROM THE ARCHIVED RECORD)

STEPHEN SONDHEIM: (Vocals) It’s not every day that I hear such a loud score. But, guys, if I may, there’s only one thing wrong. There isn’t a tune you can hum. There isn’t one air where you’re going to work, work, work.

MONDELLO: When he finally hums what the character thinks is a hummable tune, it’s “Some Enchanted Evening” by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It’s a joke because in real life lyricist Oscar Hammerstein Jr. was Sondheim’s mentor. In the 1940s, when the aspiring songwriter was just a child, Rodgers and Hammerstein turned the playful song and dance performances of Broadway into musical pieces. Sondheim then took this development a step further. His musicals were structured around the concept. The “Follies” program, for example …

(EXTRACT FROM THE ARCHIVED RECORD)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 2: (As character) Roscoe is there, as always, to bring out the (unintelligible). Let’s go.

MONDELLO: … Centered on a Ziegfeld-style metaphor for marital madness.

(FROM THE SONG, “CAN I LEAVE YOU?”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 3: (Like Phyllis, singing) You’ll believe that lies are badly covered up and wounds never heal. And the game is not worth winning. And wait. I just started.

MONDELLO: In “A Little Night Music”, the concept was to take a romance on three levels …

(EXCERPT FROM THE SONG, “SEND TO THE CLOWNS”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 4: (As Désirée, singing) Isn’t that rich?

MONDELLO: … And make the characters sing throughout the waltz.

(EXCERPT FROM THE SONG, “SEND TO THE CLOWNS”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 4: (As Désirée, singing) Are we a pair?

MONDELLO: And in what is arguably Sondheim’s masterpiece, “Sweeney Todd,” he mixed opera form and musical comedy jokes to tell the story of a demonic barber slashing his throat. his customers and a baker …

(EXTRACT FROM THE ARCHIVED RECORD)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 5: (Like Mrs. Lovett) Here we are, hot from the oven.

MONDELLO: … Who bakes them in meat pies.

(EXTRACT FROM THE ARCHIVED RECORD)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 6: (Like Sweeney Todd) What is this?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 5: (Like Mrs. Lovett, singing) He’s a priest. Have a little priest.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 6: (Like Sweeney Todd) Is it really good?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 5: (Like Mrs. Lovett, singing) Sir, that’s too good at least. Then again, they don’t commit sins of the flesh, so it’s pretty cool.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 6: (Like Sweeney Todd) Lots of fat.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 5: (Like Mrs. Lovett) Only where he was sitting.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 6: (Like Sweeney Todd) Don’t you have a poet or something?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR # 5: (Like Mrs. Lovett, singing) No. You see ; the problem with the poet is how do you know he’s dead? Try the priest.

MONDELLO: Although the things Sondheim was doing had a huge influence on other Broadway composers – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton”, for example, could not have been conceived without the building blocks that Sondheim helped. to develop – the public has not always had its shows. He never had a hit musical, and “Send In The Clowns” was his only hit song. But he was revered in the theatrical establishment for his teaching and mentoring, sharing his intelligence and making the form he loved smarter. He was also loved by some of us foreigners. To a large extent, Stephen Sondheim wrote the soundtrack of my life.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “NOT A DAY NE PASSE”)

JIM WALTON: (like Frank, singing) Not a day goes by, not a day …

MONDELLO: Not a day goes by that I didn’t feel like I was living his words – for a while, not getting married; when I was weak, drinking at that and one for Mahler; trying to maintain a good thing; trying never to do anything twice. Sondheim lived this last word. His shows were all different, each thought-provoking in a new way, never more so than when he delved deeply into the artistic process itself.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “MOVE ON”)

PATINKIN: (like George, singing) I have nothing to say.

PETERS: (like Dot) You’ve got a lot of stuff.

PATINKIN: (like George, singing) Well, nothing that hasn’t been said.

PETERS: (like Dot) That’s what you said, though.

MONDELLO: “Sunday In The Park With George” portrays struggling artist George Seurat urged by his muse to do the hardest thing to do when you’re stuck, whether in life or in art, la something Sondheim has always done and that, for over five decades, has kept his art fresh.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “MOVE ON”)

PETERS: (like Dot, singing) Stop worrying where you’re going. Pass. If you can figure out where you’re going, you’re gone. Just keep moving.

MONDELLO: Through 18 major musicals, decades of mentoring, Stephen Sondheim followed that diktat – to become, according to one of his lesser-known lyrics, the best thing that ever happened on Broadway. He continued to move forward.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “MOVE ON”)

PETERS: (like Dot, singing) You have to move on.

MONDELLO: And now the rest of us have to do it.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “MOVE ON”)

PETERS: (As a point) Stop worrying if your vision is new.

MONDELLO: I am Bob Mondello.

(EXTRACT FROM THE SONG, “MOVE ON”)

PETERS: (like Dot, singing) Let’s let the others make that decision. They usually do. You keep moving. Look what you did …

PATINKIN: (like George, singing) Something in the light.

PETERS: (like Dot, singing) … So what do you want …

PATINKIN: (like George, singing) Something in the sky.

PETERS: (like Dot, singing) … Not where you are …

PATINKIN: (Like George, singing) In the grass.

PETERS: (like Dot, singing) … which you will be.

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