If you are a fan of the person known as Stephen Sondheim, you will want to spend much of your life on this webpage. Ten years ago, the Kennedy Center did a big Sondheim retrospective, staging six of his shows in repertory and having him interviewed and doing ancillary cabaret-style shows of performers singing (mostly) Sondheim tunes. Many of the cabaret-type performances are online as is a long interview with The Man. Go browse and read.
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Some Sondheim
If you're buying the new Stephen Sondheim book, Look, I Made a Hat (that's an Amazon link), you don't need an excerpt. But if you aren't, you might like to read this excerpt about critics and awards.
Sondheim Alert!
Apart from the fact that the tiny font is as tough to read as some of his songs are to sing, Stephen Sondheim's new book Finishing the Hat is a treasure…maybe, for those interested in the writing of lyrics, the most important book ever published…at least until the next volume emerges. You can order a copy here but that's not what this post is about.
BBC Radio, which does so many things that no radio in this country ever does, is running a series of 15-minute segments in which Mr. Sondheim reads and discusses excerpts from said book. You can listen (and if you're as crafty as some of us, download) from this page. Do not delay because each installment is only available online for a limited time. And if you're grateful for this information, thank Greg Ehrbar, who is usually the first person to tell me about something like this.
Sondheim Goodies
The New York Times has a terrific article up about Stephen Sondheim. It mainly has to do with the current trend of restaging his major works in small, mini-orchestrated productions. I don't know that I like this trend but I suppose it depends on the show and the cast and how cleverly it's all staged.
Also, the American Theater Wing — they're the folks who give out the Tony Awards — have posted a one-hour podcast conversation with Mr. Sondheim. You can download it over on this page or listen to it live there.
Sondheim on the Radio
Norman Lebrecht has an interview show on BBC3 radio where he chats with interesting people in the arts. His most recent show is a good 45 minute conversation with Stephen Sondheim.
Now, here's the hard part. The show aired last Monday and is supposed to be available on the BBC3 website for seven days thereafter…and it is, except that the website is malfunctioning and if you go to the link right now and click, the playback will start about five minutes into the programme. I figured out how to download the whole thing and listen to it from the beginning but it's kind of complicated…so your best bet is that maybe they'll fix the site before the seven days are up. Anyway, if you want to give it a try or hear it from that point on, go to this page and look for The Lebrecht Interview. If nothing else, you'll want to hear Sondheim debunk the much-rumored story that when he met Andrew Lloyd Webber at a party, Webber said to him, "There's not a note of your music that I wish I'd written." Sondheim says no such thing was said.
While you Sondheim fanciers are over in BBC vicinity, you might want to check out a two-part series from a few months ago called Sondheim's Women — an examination of the female characters in his works. This one's a little easier. You should be able to listen to Part One over on this page and Part Two over on this page.
UPDATE added the next morning: The Lebrecht Interview can be downloaded for the next few days from this page. Much simpler than what I went through.
Sondheim Pix
The newspaper changed the link to the photos of the Sondheim gala. Try this one. (And I changed it on the previous message, too.)
Sondheim P.S.
I didn't mention all the performers in last night's Sondheim Gala at the Bowl but I should have mentioned the opener: A film of Krusty the Clown (from The Simpsons) performing "Send in the Clowns" — a song that was otherwise unsung during the event. No one sang "I'm Still Here" or "Comedy Tonight" or "Everything's Coming Up Roses" or a number of other Sondheim ditties that you might have expected. I think the audience liked the fact that the producers mixed the less-familiar with the familiar, instead of loading the program with songs we already all knew by heart.
I could also have mentioned that one of the best things about the evening was the audience, which was friendly and enthusiastic and I can't remember running into so many people I knew at a concert. Sondheim fans are some of the best people in the world.
Sondheim Speaks
Click right here to read an interview with Stephen Sondheim in The Baltimore Sun. Or, if you don't have time for that, read this quote, which is about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Before the show went into rehearsal, Sondheim asked his friend, playwright James Goldman, what he thought of the project…
[Goldman] said he thought the book was brilliant, and he said the score was a delight. He said the only problem was, they don't go together. I had written a rather salon-like score, full of cleverness and kind of literary puns — I wanted so much to show off as a lyricist — whereas [the book] was a very elegant low comedy. I learned from that to be very careful in the future to write the same show.
I pulled that quote out because, on TV projects I've worked on, I've become kind of a pest about quoting Mr. Sondheim, wringing variations on a similar, earlier quote that went something like, "The most important thing is to make sure you're all doing the same show." If I had to pay him royalties on every time I've said it, it would dwarf whatever he made off "Send in the Clowns." (Another allied quote is from Alan Jay Lerner: "More shows fail because of a breach in style between Act One and Act Two than any other reason.")
Anyway, it's always nice to read an interview with Sondheim. And now I have to return to a script and pray that everyone involved intends to do the show I think I'm writing…
Today's Video Link
When a new show doesn't do well on Broadway, it usually disappears forever. No one, after all, is eager to invest money in a flop. But there are exceptions. The 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along ran for 44 previews and 16 performances and if anyone but Stephen Sondheim had written its score, you'd probably never have heard of it again. In this case, all sorts of folks wanted to take a whack at revising its book and changing its staging and it's been revived more often than many huge Broadway hits.
Something similar happened with the 1974 musical Mack and Mabel with a score by Jerry Herman. Its Broadway run lasted five previews and a paltry 66 performances but it keeps getting revised and revived and revised and revived and revised and revived. Though none of these revisals were revived for long, Mr. Herman to his dying day insisted it was the best score he ever wrote — an amazing viewpoint from a guy who wrote the scores for Hello, Dolly!, La Cage aux Folles and a few other smash successes.
One of the things that is said to have kept it alive was, of all things, an ice skating demonstration. In '82, the award-winning skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean performed at the World Figure Skating Competition with a routine set to the Entr'acte of the original Broadway production of Mack and Mabel. They won a gold medal and their performance, televised around the world, prompted a run on the cast album. People reportedly rushed to buy it because they liked the one number to which the duo had skated. (In the video below, it's identified as the Overture from the show but it was actually the Entr'acte, which is the secondary overture that opened Act Two.)
The sudden surge in album sales convinced any number of producers that Mack and Mabel was deserving of another try and, like I said, there have been many of them and there are probably more to come. Maybe one day one of them will even run for a while…
Today's Video Link
In 1997, a music historian interviewed Stephen Sondheim at length about his work for the Library of Congress. I've linked you to dozens of Sondheim interviews on this blog but this one is kinda different. For one thing, he didn't tell all the same stories he told in those other interviews. For another, he goes over his manuscripts with the interviewer and discusses in depth why he did what he did. And for another, this interview runs over six hours.
Let me say that last thing again and put it in all caps, boldface and italics and underline it for emphasis: THIS INTERVIEW RUNS OVER SIX HOURS!!!!!!! And I also put in seven exclamation point. Don't say I didn't warn you.
If you want to watch it — and I can understand how you might not — you have two choices. The embed below is of the entire interview which, in case you've forgotten since the paragraph before last, RUNS OVER SIX HOURS!!!!!!!
Or you can go to this playlist and watch it in thirteen segments. If you do that, be aware that the playlist is for fourteen videos, the last of which is the entire interview which, as you may recall, RUNS OVER SIX HOURS!!!!!!! Again, don't say I didn't warn you. Here's the whole thing…
Today's First Video Link
From last night's Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez offer a tune from the current (but closing in July) revival of Merrily We Roll Along. In fact, it's my favorite tune from my next-to-favorite Sondheim show, my first being A Funny Thing…
Today's Video Link
This is the "Tiny Desk Concert" of the show Company — specifically, the genders-reversed production that played Broadway and out here a few years ago. Having not seen it — and after realizing I've always liked parts of the show but not the whole thing — I have no opinion on whether the sex changes made it worse or better. I am curious though about one line change in the song "You Could Drive a Person Crazy."
It used to go "When a person's personality is personable / He shouldn't oughta sit like a lump / It's harder than a matador coercin' a bull / To try to get you off of your rump." Now, it goes "When a person's personality is personable / She shouldn't oughta sit on her butt / It's harder than a matador coercin' a bull / To try to get you out of your rut." Did Mr. Sondheim change that and if so, why?
Here are four songs from the show including that one…
Pete Barbutti Alert!
Among my happiest memories of some years in which I commuted a lot to Las Vegas was watching (and hanging out with) one of my favorite comedians, Pete Barbutti. You may remember him from his eighty trillion appearances on Johnny Carson's show…that is, assuming you remember Johnny Carson.
Seeing Pete perform these days is a rare treat but not impossible. He's currently touring as part of a troupe of comedians billed as The Four Jokers. The other three Jokers are Mark Schiff, Scott Wood and ventriloquist Jay Johnson. Their next gig is March 2 down at the La Mirada Theater down in La Mirada, California. I'd go if I could but it's my birthday and I already have other plans.
But also — and this intrigues me — Las Vegas is about to get its first-ever production of the musical Follies with its score by Mr. S. Sondheim. You'd think a show about aging showgirls would be a natural for that town, right? Well, it will be staged there for the first time for six performances only in April and Pete is in the cast! Details can be found here.
I dunno what part he's playing but if I were in charge, we'd cut a few numbers to give Pete time to do his stand-up act. If anyone reading this goes, let me know how it is.
Today's Video Link
There's this new Broadway revival of the show Merrily We Roll Along, see? And they recorded a cast album for it and here's a video of them recording one of my favorite Sondheim tunes…
Long Running Shows on Broadway
It's been a while since we took a look at the list of long-running shows on Broadway and a few things have changed; mainly that Phantom of the Opera, which we often predicted here jokingly would never close has closed. It still has the Number One spot though and will for some time. The revival of Chicago, which most Broadway pundits were sure would close first, is still running and it's only 3,420 performances behind Phantom.
A Broadway show typically does about 400 performances a year but if Chicago does continue on for another eight and a half years, it might claim the top spot. (The shows in boldface are the ones that are still running.)
- The Phantom of the Opera – 13,981 performances
- Chicago (1996 Revival) – 10,561 performances
- The Lion King – 10,179 performances
- Wicked – 7,718 performances
- Cats – 7,485 performances
- Les Misérables – 6,680 performances
- A Chorus Line – 6,137 performances
- Oh! Calcutta! (1976 Revival) – 5,959 performances
- Mamma Mia! – 5,758 performances
- Beauty and the Beast – 5,461 performances
- Rent – 5,123 performances
- Jersey Boys – 4,642 performances
- The Book of Mormon – 4,575 performances
- Miss Saigon – 4,092 performances
- 42nd Street – 3,486 performances
- Grease – 3,388 performances
- Aladdin – 3,347 performances
- Fiddler on the Roof – 3,242 performances
- Life with Father – 3,224 performances
- Tobacco Road – 3,182 performances
- Hello, Dolly! – 2,844 performances
- Hamilton – 2,789 performances
- My Fair Lady – 2,717 performances
- Hairspray – 2,642 performances
- Mary Poppins – 2,619 performances
As you can see, Hamilton will soon pass Hello, Dolly!, The Book of Mormon will soon pass Jersey Boys, and Aladdin will soon pass Grease and 42nd Street.
Worth noting is that Disney has four shows in the Top 25, whereas Stephen Sondheim, Neil Simon, Richard Rodgers (with or without Oscar Hammerstein) and Mel Brooks have a combined total of none, though if this was a Top 30 list, The Producers would be on it. Andrew Lloyd Webber has two shows on the Top 25 list, both in the Top 5. And not one of these shows ever had Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, Audra MacDonald or Hugh Jackman in it, though every night at Lion King, the guy playing the meerkat is probably doing an impression of Nathan.
Also worth noting: All the shows on this list are musicals except for Life With Father and Tobacco Road.
The oddest presence on this list would seem to be the revival of Oh! Calcutta!, a show that no one liked in this version or the original. Why this ran so long is pretty obvious: It had naked people in it. Also, it was a very cheap show to put on with a cast of eight, none of whom probably got over scale and it was in a small theater.
The theater was The Edison, a converted ballroom inside the Edison Hotel. It only had 541 seats and I once heard an actress who was in Oh! Calcutta! there say that they could show a profit if the place was half-full, which was often accomplished by booking tour groups, often from other countries. Even then, she said, they had people walking out in mid-show most nights and once in a while, they played to less than 50 people. Eventually, so few seats were being filled that the show closed. A few other plays inhabited the theater but they didn't last long, possibly because all the actors in them were clothed…whereupon the Edison Hotel turned the theater back into their ballroom.
So that explains why that show ran as long as it did. How though do we explain why The Phantom of the Opera lasted longer than the expiration date on a box of Wheat Chex? Perhaps if we're willing to invest two hours and forty minutes watching this video, we'll get a clue. This is a performance of Phantom done in 2011 at the Royal Albert Hall. It was jazzed-up with extra production value and a larger-than-usual cast and orchestra, plus special appearances…all to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the show. Still, whatever made this juggernaut a success is probably in there somewhere…
