Stephen Sondheim, A Life Well Well Lived--- Elyse Sommer's laest blog ipdst

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November 29, 2021 Update Stephen Sondheim, A Life Well Well Lived Unlike the many theater notables who knew him personally, I never knew Stephen Sondheim. But I knew and loved his groundbreaking contributions to the musical theater. Thanks to his masterful Sweeney Todd and under-appreciated Passion I became attuned to his brilliant mix of tonal and d atonal chords. As a writer i was in awe of his character-building, emoton-triggering, witty lyrics. Since founding CurtainUp I've been fortunate enough to see most of his shows, often freshly staged and cast as proof of his being as timeless and adaptable as Shakespeare's plays. To read them, just go to the "Enhanced by Google" box and type in "Sondheim" and you'll be able to read them. For now, I'm re-posting my review of Meryle Secrest's excellent biography, Stephen Sondheim, a Life — but began it wit her refrain from Sunday In the Park With George which sums up Stephen Sondheim's wonderfully well lived life. I want to move on. I want to explore the light. I want to know how to get through One of the routines of my Berkshire summer is a Thursday drive to Williamstown, alternating between openings at the Williamstown Theatre Festival's two stages in the Adams Memorial Theatre building. The Adams Memorial Main Stage was the magnet drawing sixteen-year-old Stephen Sondheim to enroll at Williams College. It was also the venue for, Phinney's Rainbow, a collegiate spoof on the hit musical Finian's Rainbow, which was given four performances in 1948. A motto adorning the steps of one of the dorms inspired his first original musical Climb High. Anyone reading Meryle Secrest's richly detailed biography will also find that, while there were plenty of stops and starts along the way, these words could also serve as a motto of Sondheim's career: Climb high Climb far Your goal the sky Your aim the star Secrest while not a musical expert, is an expert biographer. Since a biographer is very much a puzzle solver, it's easy to understand her interest in a man with a well-known fascination for puzzles. Her previous subjects include people of diverse artistic background, only one of whom, Leonard Bernstein, was a musician. It was in fact while trying to get a handle on Bernstein's creative lapse, that she first sought out Sondheim. (He told her Bernstein had a bad case of "Important-itis"). As she did in the Bernstein book, Secrest again skillfully traces the evolution of Sondheim's work by carefully chronicling the personal influences that shaped his artistic development. Her interviews with the composer-lyricist are woven through with comments culled from interviews with friends, relatives and colleagues as well as secondary sources. In addition, there are a fair amount of biographer-as-analyst observations. It would have been nice to have more details about her methodology, especially about the dates and circumstances pertaining to her meetings with Sondheim. Instead, she guards the steps taken to piece together the puzzle of what makes her subject tick, as much as Sondheim for all his cooperation seems to have controlled what he wanted in print. In spite of this, Stephen Sondheim: A Life succeeds admirably in drawing a well-rounded and richly embroidered psychological and professional portrait. The emotional deprived silver-spoon childhood -- a mother aptly called Foxy and a father who abandoned the family for another woman -- are not just thrown in for the sake of a tell-all expose flavor, but to show how artists generally and this artist in particular reprocess such painful experiences. This savvy integration of the personal story , Broadway insider anecdotes and the process of writing lyrics and composing makes for a book that should please musical theater buffs as well as the general readers who make biographies one of the best-selling categories of the book business. The personal history isn't all Mommy Dearest and Daddy-Out-to-Lunch. Sondheim was lucky in many of his friendships and family connections -- knight in shining armor in the latter department being Oscar Hammerstein 2nd whose Bucks County retreat provided the young Sondheim with a nurturing home away from his mother's unnourishing nest nearby. This surrogate father also became Sondheim's musical mentor and the four-part program he prescribed for his protege as lessons in the art of writing musicals is one any young aspirant might do well to follow: First take a play that you like and musicalize it. Then take a play that you like but that you feel has flaws and try to improve them, and musicalize it. Then take something that is not a play but that somebody else has written, a novel or a short story, so that you don't have to invent the characters or plot, and musicalize that and make it into a play. And then finally, write an original, your own story, and dramatize that. Sondheim began on Hammerstein's lesson plan during his junior year at Williams, starting with Beggar on Horseback. Part four was the already mentioned Climbing High. Hammerstein saw much to like in this but was disturbed that Sondheim took so much trouble with a character he didn't like. One of his written notes in the margin of the script was "Don't bristle." Ms. Secrest does not dwell unnecessarily on the darkness of her subject's childhood.. Instead she moves through the stages of his life and work at a crisp enough pace to take us through his stints as actor and TV scriptwriter and the genesis of his whole oeuvre of successful and not so successful musicals. (An appendix with a chronological list, main original cast members and performance dates would have enhanced the book's reference value). Having reviewed a revival of A Little Night Music just a few weeks before starting this book, the chapter on this collaboration with Harold Prince and Arthur Laurents (one of several) was particularly enlightening and enjoyable: The way Hermione Gingold fought for the role of Madame Armfeldt, Prince's stated vision for an effect that would be "whipped cream with knives", the reason for the lyrical construction of the big hit song "Send In the Clowns" and the stage disaster that sent all the china crashing and destroyed two costly antique candelabras. While perhaps not as explicit as some tell-all biographies, Ms. Secrest does not skim over Sondheim's homosexuality. In fact, with many memorable photographs generously sprinkled throughout the text, the only thing missing in these 466 pages (including a 15-page index) is a CD with a little Sondheim music -- especially the refrain from Sunday In the Park With George which she uses to sum up her story and Stephen Sondheim's continuing saga: I want to move on. I want to explore the light. I want to know how to get through Through to something new . . .

The Humans — Stephen Karam's innovative adaptation of his splendid play .

 

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The Humans — Stephen Karam's innovative adaptation of his splendid play .

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November 22, 2021 Update LaChanze and Chuck Cooper In looking back on this season of Broadway reopening its doors, we might well tag it Broadway's Never-Before -Season — never before have audiences been required to wear masks throughout a performance. . . never before did theaters rely on those able to get to Broadway by foot, car, bus or train rather than for tourists from abroad . . .never before did so many prestigious venues book plays usually seen only Off-Broadway. And never before were so many of these works by Black playwrights..

Passing — the book and the new movie reviewed by Elyse Sommer, editor and founder of http://www.curtainup.com

 

Latest Features About Onscreen and Live Theater

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Elyse Sommer's theater-centric Blog- update

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November 5, 2021 Update — Solo plays with multiple actors to narrate . . . the continuing popularity of trios of sisters, brothers and succeeding generations of one family as plot- driving characters

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Elyse Sommer
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