Search Results for: sondheim

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…

Longtime reader of this site Galen Fott just wrote to tell me something I didn't know; that the version of "The Glamorous Life" that Audra McDonald sang in this video posted earlier is the version that Mr. Sondheim wrote for the movie version of A Little Night Music. It starts the same as the song of the same name did on Broadway but then turns into a very different tune. I just checked out the cast albums and he's right. I like the movie version better. I suppose Sondheim did too or he wouldn't have changed it.

This is from the concert on Stephen Sondheim's eightieth birthday at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. Paul Gemignani is conducting the New York Philharmonic as Audra McDonald sings "The Glamorous Life" from the Wheeler/Sondheim show, A Little Night Music. And sings it about as well as it's humanly possible to sing it…

BuzzR is that cable channel that most of us have that reruns old game shows.  On Sunday, May 16, they're rerunning an episode of Password from 1966 with four celebrity players: Lee Remick, Peter Lawford, Audrey Meadows and Stephen Sondheim.  That's right: Stephen Sondheim.  Sure, he can rhyme all those words but can he guess them with Lee Remick giving him the clues?  The schedule says it airs at 3 PM Eastern Time, which might mean 12 PM on your cable or 3 PM or just about anything.

• Derek Chauvin wants a new trial. Donald Trump wants a new election. I want a new Stephen Sondheim musical.

A new fad on YouTube is to compile videos of what you consider the Top 100 Broadway Songs of All Time. Someone who calls himself Mister Lister has compiled this one. I don't expect you to agree with his rankings — I don't — but you might enjoy spending an hour listening to a teensy excerpt of each. And the video is very well edited.

I've seen about a dozen of these online, some of which have been taken down due to alleged copyright infringements. All the ones I've seen show a preference for recent musicals, especially Hamilton, Wicked, The Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen and Les Miz. In fact, every one I've looked at has more selections from Hamilton than from the entire collaborative works that involved Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein or both. The list compilers are of course entitled to their opinions but you wonder how much of their selections have to do with what speaks more directly to their generation…or maybe they just haven't seen that many shows.

Mr. Lister's Top 100 here has, I think, one Lerner and Loewe song, not much Sondheim, one Cole Porter, no Meredith Willson, lotsa Lloyd-Webber, etc. His rules for inclusion exclude instrumentals and shows that never played Broadway. He says songs written for movies are ineligible but he includes "You're the One That I Want," which was written for the movie of Grease. Some of the other lists don't have the same rules. One I saw includes some of the Four Seasons' songs heard in Jersey Boys and "Singin' in the Rain," which was not only not written for the stage, it wasn't even written for the movie, Singin' in the Rain.

But hey, they're all just someone's list. When you make up your list, you can make up your rules at the same time. Your list wouldn't match mine, mine wouldn't match yours…or even mine if I redid it tomorrow. Just enjoy the excerpts and don't bitch that so many of your favorites aren't in this…