Search Results for: sondheim

From this year's Olivier Awards in London…a tribute to Stephen Sondheim. A bevy of understudies sing his "Our Time" from Merrily We Roll Along…

The other night in London, there was a concert to honor the late Stephen Sondheim. Here's what I think is the finale with, among others, Bernadette Peters, Imelda Staunton, Petula Clark and Michael Ball…

My piece on auditioning brought this from Brian12. I don't know who he is. Just Brian 12…

Have you ever had auditioning actors suggest a different interpretation in a polite, professional manner? And did you ever like the suggestion? E.G. after following the audition directions, "Could I present something different for your consideration?" I've seen stories about actors on the set asking a friendly director to try it a different way, but never at an audition.

You always let an auditioning actor do whatever he or she wants for their audition. Where you have to draw the line is when they're miles away from the character you're trying to cast. Suppose you were trying to cast Henry Higgins for a production of My Fair Lady. The character has to speak impeccable English because he's an expert in that field and a teacher of it. He has to be somewhat arrogant and, until near the end of the play, not particularly interested in having a woman in his life. And he has to be someone with whom Eliza could conceivably fall in love.

There are a number of ways to convey all that and the gent I saw in the recent Broadway revival achieved all that in ways quite different from what Rex Harrison did in the film and probably on stage. So you'd let auditioning performs offer different approaches and you might find one that gave you a valid Henry Higgins in a way you hadn't expected.

But where you have to cut it off would be if the actor said, "Could I present something different for your consideration?" and then he tried a Higgins with a thick Cockney accent who was always lusting after the ladies and coming off like a slovenly boor. The actor has been brought in to try out for a role, not to rewrite the play.

In the case of the actor I wrote about who started ad-libbing all over the room, he was not auditioning for the show we were doing. He didn't know the show we were doing because he hadn't read the script…just an audition scene I wrote to showcase one particular character. And he wasn't even trying to be that character.

He was trying (I guess) to do something so different and wild that I'd say, "My God! We should throw out the series idea we spent months developing and which the network bought and do something totally different!" The analogy in the My Fair Lady example would be if he came in and began doing Tevye in the hope I'd say, "That's brilliant! How could I be so foolish? We shouldn't be doing My Fair Lady! We should be doing Fiddler on the Roof!" And then I call the office and tell them to stop making the sets and designing costumes for My Fair Lady and start building Anatevka.

Don't count on that happening. I'm not saying it never does but don't count on it.

If an actor wants to do something with a scene or a line that you didn't anticipate, sure. By all means, let him or her do that. Often, I hear a "read" I never imagined and it's better than anything I imagined. Happens all the time. But it has to fit the purpose. As Stephen Sondheim once said about musicals, "The important thing is to make sure everyone's doing the same show!"

The passing of Stephen Sondheim does not mean the end of Stephen Sondheim interviews.  D.T. Max conducted this conversation which may have been the composer's last one.

Now playing on Broadway, just in time to mourn its composer/lyricist, is a new production of Company which makes two major changes, both with Mr. Sondheim's blessing. One, which Sondheim said in many interviews would be a big mistake, is to move it from being set in 1970 to being set in Today. The other is to engage in some gender-reversal, making the hero (Bobby) into the heroine (Bobbi) and flipping sexes elsewhere as applicable.

Does it work? Don't ask me. I haven't seen it and it may be a long time before I'm back in Manhattan. But also don't ask me because, as I wrote here, I don't really like Company as a whole. I like (love, really) a lot of its scenes and songs but after seeing umpteen productions, I decided I don't like it much as a whole.

A tiny part of that may be personal. Bobby (male) is/was a 35-year-old who has never been married. The first time I saw this show, I was probably around 35 and I'd never been married. Nothing that Bobby says, does, experiences or sings relates in the slightest to anything in my life. I don't know if I understand his reasons or issues but I'm pretty sure they in no way approximate mine…and now as I am close to twice that age and still don't want to marry, that's still true. But apart from that, I still don't think the tales of Bobby coalesce into the changes he undergoes leading up to "Being Alive." The character just doesn't make sense to me and neither do a lot of the explanations friends have tried to lay on me. I think they're fabricating something that is not there.

When I first heard about the gender-flip, it struck me as — and this is true of a lot of new approaches to old plays — a stunt or gimmick. But after reading some of Sondheim's comments — such as in this interview of him and the new version's director — I'm curious if this version would come together for me more than the original. And that's what I may never find out.

As I explained back here, I've never been a big fan of Little Orphan Annie in her long-running newspaper strip…or most of the other places she's appeared. The Broadway musical and the umpteen movies based on the Broadway musical are okay by me…just okay.

So I guess it's high praise from me that I enjoyed NBC's live telecast the other night of that musical. But what I liked was not the musical itself but a lot of the performances and the clever way it was staged and shot for television.  The kid playing Annie (Celina Smith) was great.  The lady playing Miss Hannigan (Taraji P. Henson) was great. I saw someone online wonder why the show didn't have more scenery and I suspect that was because Ms. Henson devoured it all during rehearsals.

The ensemble of dancers and bit players, young and old, were all great. Even the dog was great. Harry Connick Jr…

Aw, I felt a little sorry for Harry Connick Jr. He's a great performer but I thought he lacked the underlying "wealthy asshole" quality that Daddy Warbucks needs to have. Part of the storyline is that the almighty, all-wealthy Warbucks doesn't "get" what it's like to be poor at first and slowly learns a different side of humanity by having Annie on the premises. Connick seemed so nice from the moment he stepped into his first scene that he didn't seem to need to learn that.

And every review I've seen has mentioned the unconvincing bald cap they had on him. I think it looked phonier because of the glaring microphone they had on him. Its lines made it look like the bottom edges of the bald cap were peeling up. But he sure sang well, especially in the "N.Y.C." song.

All the songs sounded good and some of the choreography was amazing. Dance numbers on Broadway these days always seem to be infused with acrobatics and awesome physical prowess. In the recent revival of My Fair Lady, they more or less turned "Get Me To The Church On Time" imto a Cirque du Soleil finale. I just hadn't expected to see little girls turning hands-free cartwheels. Arguably, there was a little too much of that too early…and I guess what I was thinking was, "What do all those orphans have to turn backflips over?"

But I have to admit I enjoyed watching it all. That was about as good a job as anyone could do with the source material…which can't be said of most of these stage-to-one-night-TV-event musicals. I'd still like to see someone tackle A Funny Thing On The Way To The Forum, maybe with Nathan Lane and James Corden as Pseudolus and Hysterium — and either one could play either part. Wouldn't it have been nice if they'd had any Sondheim musical ready to air this week?

Here's another Sondheim song I like a lot — "Our Time," sung here by Stephanie J. Block and a bunch of other Broadway performers…

Speaking of Stephen Sondheim…

There are a lot of articles appearing about Stephen Sondheim and it feels like every interview he ever gave is resurfacing. A lot of the interviews are the same interview, repeating the tale of how he gave a musical he wrote in his teen years to Oscar Hammerstein, thinking Hammerstein would produce it on Broadway and instead, Hammerstein said, "It's the worst thing I've ever seen" and proceeded to teach the young Sondheim how to do it right. But there are interviews that cover other ground and I'll try to point you to some of them in the coming weeks.

Here's a link to an article that Frank Rich wrote in 2013 that somehow escaped my notice then and since. It will tell you a lot about that extraordinary composer.

There are an awful lot of articles online about Mr. Sondheim and I won't pretend I've read all of them or even most of them. But the best one I've come across that attempt to explain about what made him special was this one by Isaac Butler.

A few hours ago in Times Square in New York, there was a memorial for Stephen Sondheim with Lin-Manuel Miranda speaking briefly and then an assemblage of (mostly) Broadway performers singing the most appropriate Sondheim song. Someone posted two video clips on YouTube and in the unlikely event I configured things correctly, they should play — one after the other — in the window below.

I still have very little desire to leave my home, especially since the plumber just left and I now have hot water again. But as I watched this, I kinda wished I was in Times Square instead of sitting here obsessing on the price of cashews…

At a birthday celebration for Stephen Sondheim, Marin Mazzie — another great talent who is no longer with us — performed one of the composer's most powerful songs. This is from Follies…

At a concert in London, Bernadette Peters sang another of Sondheim's most powerful songs. This is from Into the Woods…

In a concert performance of Sweeney Todd, Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone performed this amazing tune…

Under the opening titles of the movie version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Zero Mostel and a chorus sang this lively number. (Caution: I do not recommend any part of this movie after these three minutes…)

And in the 2008 Broadway revival of Company, Raul Esparza had this wonderful musical moment…

This is another excerpt from the Stephen Sondheim 80th Birthday Celebration which was staged (and recorded for broadcast) at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on March 15, 2010. This particular song — "We're Gonna Be Alright" — was, as host David Hyde-Pierce informs us, created for the 1965 Broadway musical Do I Hear a Waltz? Mr. Sondheim famously hated the project, writing lyrics for tunes by Richard Rodgers, who was (reportedly) neither nice nor sober much of the time. As our host notes, these lyrics are a bit "naughtier" than what got on the stage back in '65.

It's performed here by Jason Danieley and Marin Mazzie…a happily-wed couple who met in 1996 performing in the off-Broadway play, Trojan Women: A Love Story. Married the following year, they were together until she passed away in 2018 following a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. I saw Ms. Mazzie on the stage a few times and she was utterly dazzling and superb. In this number, you'll see why they were often referred to as "Broadway's Golden Couple"…

Here is Stephen Sondheim's entire appearance last night with Stephen Colbert. Nice to hear that Mr. Sondheim is still writing and that he sounds alert and sharp, and that he likes the upcoming Broadway revival of Company and the upcoming film remake of West Side Story. All that balances the fact that he doesn't look healthy and apparently could not make an entrance on camera…

Hey, remember a few days ago when I linked you up to a song by Audra McDonald from a Stephen Sondheim birthday special? Well, here from the same special is Elaine Stritch with a show-stopping rendition of Sondheim's "I'm Still Here." He didn't write this song for her to sing but I think after she did, she kinda owned it…