This runs 43 minutes but I'll bet some of you will watch the whole thing and enjoy it. It's a 1961 program about American musicals and the guest is Stephen Sondheim who at the time hadn't even composed the entire score yet for a produced Broadway show. He was "just" the lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy. About 22 minutes in, Sondheim gets on the subject of what he didn't like about some of his work in West Side Story, which I find interesting…
I'm mentioning this because I doubt a lot of the press will give it the attention it deserves. Bob Holiday, who had the title role in the 1966 Broadway show It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman died this morning at his home in Hawley, PA. He was 84.
The show opened March 29, 1966 at the Alvin Theater in New York. It received what they call "mixed notices" and it closed there July 17, losing its entire capitalization. Usually, shows that have that short a run and are not by Sondheim are never seen again but productions of Superman are still done all the time. I attribute the many revivals to how much fun it sounds like it would be to do a musical about the character, not to the merits of this particular musical about Superman. In any case, Mr. Holiday was expertly cast. He had made a rep for himself in the musical Fiorello! and as anyone who has heard the cast album can attest, had a fine singing voice.
He subsequently played the Man of Steel in several touring companies and revivals but for the most part, transitioned out of show business and into building homes. Still, he remembered the show as a great time in his life and was always available for ceremonial appearances and interviews. His performance does not seem to exist on video anywhere but it will live on thanks to that cast album. And he will always be the first singing Superman.
Last night, I went to see a new production of Merrily We Roll Along at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills. It's there through December 18 and tickets are still available — though apparently not many since it's real good. Director Michael Arden has reconceived the show in a way, staging it on a unique set. There are areas like small backstage dressing rooms all around with mirrors ringed in light bulbs, and sometimes you see actors at them getting ready for their next entrance.
Also, as you may know, the show is about three Old Friends — played here expertly by Wayne Brady, Aaron Lazar and Donna Vivino. But they're also played by three younger actors who appear and reappear, dancing about like real-time flashbacks, a la the dream sequence in Oklahoma! or maybe the ghosts in Follies. It seemed to me like an effective way to underscore the conceit of Merrily, which is that we are watching key moments from the Old Friends' lives in reverse. I've seen this show several times but never a production with this much unity and grace as it rewinds three lives.
And yes, that's Wayne Brady from Let's Make a Deal and Whose Line Is It Anyway? playing Charlie the Lyricist. I would not have thought of him in the role as Charlie is usually played by someone weaker and more nebbishy than Mr. Brady but it worked fine, maybe even a little better that the traditional way. His partner Franklin seems less unlikeable, less like he's taking advantage of a partner who can't fight back.
(Brady inserts a few moments of mime and improvisation that were not in the book by George Furth. They're funny but reviewers seem to think they're out of character. I'm not sure. Maybe they change the character for the better, just as the casting of someone who seems less a victim does.)
Merrily We Roll Along is, of course, one of those Sondheim musicals that didn't work on Broadway — it lasted 16 performances — but which lives on in production after production, each trying to find a way to finesse its inherent structural problems. This version did that for me. I stayed with it, fully engrossed, in a way that I don't think I did in previous versions I've seen.
It's not a happy story. It's about the failure of idealism — three starry-eyed kids who envision doing great things with their careers and though they achieve some of what most would call success, wind up unfulfilled and unhappy. Because the story is told in reverse, we see the unfulfillment and unhappiness at the beginning and the youthful idealism at the end, which makes the idealism seem sappy and naive.
But along the way, you also see things happen which change the context and explanation for events and clashes you've already seen and with that comes a kind of understanding of how deeds and decisions have consequences — an effect-and-cause relationship. If that's what the playwrights intended when they said "Let's tell the story backwards," this production achieved it. I really liked it. It also helped that the cast is so strong and that they sing Mr. Sondheim's lyrics with expert clarity, which not every singer of Sondheim can manage.
Like I said, some seats are still available. Goldstar has some of the cheaper seats but I doubt they have many. And if you've never been to the Wallis, it's not only one of the newest theaters in town, it's also one of the nicest. I guess you'd call this a real good review.
A forthcoming revival of the musical Company will, with the okay of Mr. Sondheim, do a gender reversal. The lead character, Bobby — an unattached man, will become an unattached woman named Bobbie. The song "Have I Got a Girl For You" will become "Have I Got a Guy For You," the female flight attendant will become a male fight attendant, etc.
Not that anybody cares what I think of this…but I don't know what I think of it. I usually see these kinds of things as stunts, not performances. The female version of The Odd Couple just plain didn't coalesce for me, for instance. Then again, Company is a play that always struck me as gender-confused in many ways…so maybe this will straighten things out. The show will be mounted in London so I probably won't see it but I'm curious about how it will work. That is, if it works at all.
Not long after the Iran-Contra hearings, the great comedy writer Larry Gelbart decided to try and see if he could top that absurdity and the use therein of the English language to deceive. He wrote Mastergate, a play that had a brief Broadway run of 69 performances but which has lived on via regional productions. There was also a radio drama version that starred Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, Harold Gould, Hector Elizondo and Charles Durning, plus there was a 1992 Showtime TV-Movie version which also had a helluva cast.
It presents to us the television news coverage of a series of Congressional hearings. On the spot is a soldier named Major Manley Battle who, not unlike Oliver North, arranges for some U.S. weapons to go someplace they weren't supposed to go — in this case to guerilla forces in Central America, ostensibly to use in filming a war movie.
But it's not just a parody of what went on with Iran-Contra but also of Watergate and the Joe McCarthy inquisition and every time our legislators sit before TV cameras pretending to seek some important truth from witnesses who do their best to reply without actually saying anything. Indeed, it even parodies hearings that have occurred since Gelbart wrote it. As the L.A. Times noted when the Showtime version was released…
"I feel that these kinds of situations are going to be with us forever with government, the military and business being as big as they are," said Gelbart, whose long list of credits includes creator of TV's M*A*S*H and Tony-winning writer of City of Angels. "But first and foremost, Mastergate is a play about the language. It's not for me to discover that politicians are corrupt or full of hot air. It's really about what they and television have done to the way we speak and the way we listen."
The dialogue is amazing…and difficult. Broadway singers have been known to say that the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim are wonderful but very, very challenging for the performer who has to perform them. The speeches, many of them lengthy that Gelbart wrote for Mastergate present the same challenge.
Wanna see it? Well, you can. Today, the video of the 1992 video version becomes available again. My buddy David Jablin who produced it has arranged for it to viewable for a small fee on Vimeo's On Demand service.
As I mentioned, it has an incredible cast that includes James Coburn, Robert Guillaume, Dennis Weaver, Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Marcia Strassman, Darren McGavin, Henry Jones, Pat Morita, Tim Reid, Buck Henry, Jerry Ohrbach, Richard Kiley, David Ogden Stiers, Paul Winfield, Ken Howard and Ben Stein. Here's a preview that will make you want to see the whole thing…
You can view it on this page for $1.99 for a one-week streaming period or $9.95 for unlimited streaming. All proceeds go to Norman Lear's People For The American Way Foundation in memory of Larry Gelbart, who was a big supporter. It's 90 minutes of pure Gelbart wit.
In 1981, the heavyweight Broadway team of Hal Prince, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth created a musical based on the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart play, Merrily We Roll Along. With all those great names, you'd think, "How bad could it be?" But audiences and critics decided, "Pretty bad." It closed after 52 previews and 16 performances.
Ordinarily, a show that closes that quickly is never seen again…but shows in which Sondheim participated never go away. There are always so many good, even wonderful moments that even if the overall show doesn't coalesce, there are always regional theater groups that think, "We can make this work." I've seen half a dozen productions of it, each tinkering here and there, trying to find some way to fix something that seems worthy of saving. Some have been at least moderately successful.
There's a new documentary about this show and its odd history. It's called Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened and it may be at a theater near you before the end of the year. Here's the trailer…
Here's a message I posted here eons ago, all the way back on 8/31/10. But it's a message a lot of people have linked to or asked me about. It concerns meeting deadlines as a writer and everything in it still applies except that now I've been writing professionally for six more years…
Jeremy W. writes…
I was impressed with your advice to writers about being late with their work. What advice can you give to those of us who have trouble summoning up the muse on demand? I have trouble creating with a deadline. When I don't have a deadline, I'm usually able to come up with something that I like. When they tell me it has to be in on Tuesday, I freeze up and have trouble concentrating. What can you suggest?
Well, my first piece of advice ties in with all that counsel about not being late. If deadlines inhibit you, try to get started A.S.A.P., which makes the deadline that much less threatening and formidable. If it has to be in on Tuesday, don't wait 'til Sunday night or Monday morning to get started.
My second piece of advice is to search for the spine of what you're doing. If you're having trouble getting started, you may not really know where it is you have to go. Let's say the chore at hand is to write a commercial for cheese-straighteners. Ask yourself what it's really about: Why should anyone buy a cheese-straightener? Why should they buy your cheese-straightener? What is it about cheese-straighteners that people need to hear?
If you can't answer those questions, maybe you don't know enough about this project to write it and you need to turn your attention there. If you have to write a story about a talking gerbil, ask yourself what it is about this particular talking gerbil that interests you and would interest someone else? Again, if you can't answer that question, there's where the problem is located.
Or maybe you don't have enough of an assignment. Stephen Sondheim used to say that the most difficult job was when someone comes to him and says, "Just write a song" or "Just write a song about love." There are simply too many starting places in a task of that sort. On the other hand, if someone approaches him and suggests, "Write a song about a lady sitting at a bar whose boyfriend has just dumped her and she's feeling sorry for herself," then he has something to build on.
If an editor tells you, "Write me a fantasy story" and that's all the direction you have, maybe you need to impose a discipline on yourself. Maybe you need to arbitrarily pick something you care about — you're mad at your sister, you're afraid of grasshoppers, you love ham, whatever — and use that feeling as a foundation on which to build. You may wind up writing about something else but that could get you started. And moving — even in the wrong direction — can often be preferable to not moving at all.
That's especially true if you're the kind of writer that I hope you are, and which I try to be. That's the kind that's prolific but who recognizes that sometimes, you have to throw out everything you wrote yesterday.
You have to like what you write, at least when you write it, but not so much that you can't bring yourself to toss it into the dumpster and rebuild. Fear of spending time and energy writing the wrong thing can be very inhibiting for a writer. Given the choice, I would rather write for three hours and then delete it all than spend those three hours staring at the screen, trying to think of the perfect thing to write. The latter usually doesn't lead me to knowing what I want to write, whereas the former usually does.
Which brings me to the best cure for Writer's Block I've ever come up with. It's so good that I can't believe I'm the first or even the millionth to come up with it. It's to decide to write something you're definitely going to throw away…and to make it childish and utterly self-indulgent.
You're stuck on what to write…where to start or how to pick up on a script or article you started on and have to finish. Instead of spending the next hour or two banging your head against the stucco, try this. Spend that time writing something that wallows in the most adolescent, shameful fantasy you have.
Pick the person in your life, past or present, you most despise. Write a story about how you got total revenge on them and they came to you begging for forgiveness. Or you can go a sexual route with this. Remember that kid who sat across from you in Geometry in High School? The one you lusted after but who treated you like you had smallpox? Write a story about how that person came to you and begged you to have sex with them.
Forget about logic or typos or clever verbiage. Just tell the story in direct, earthy terms. When you're done with it, read it over once, delete it and turn back to the thing you have to write. If that doesn't unjam your writing muscles and get them limber and functioning, then I would consider another line of work.
I'm serious about that. Imagine a dentist who had days when he couldn't bear to fill a cavity or file down some old lady's lower bridge. Maybe he shouldn't be doing that for a living anymore. You don't have to be a writer, you know. It's not compulsory.
There are quotes where famous writers like Dorothy Parker say things like, "I hate writing but I love having written." I never think that attitude makes a writer intriguing or colorful or anything of the sort, just as I never think that suffering for one's art automatically makes the art any better.
Some of us have bad, non-productive periods and that's usually something else, something that (probably) has to do with some aspect of our lives other than the pure writing part. I'm not talking about the times that are the exceptions. I'm talking about if you constantly find that writing gives you headaches and a need for Maalox™ and if you're starting to find it an unpleasant chore to stop playing Spider Solitaire and use your computer for the reason you got it in the first place.
When writers tell me how painful writing can be for them, I respond with something like, "No one's forcing you to be a writer and it's inconceivable that it's the only thing you can do in this world. Go do one of those other things."
Invariably, they say, "Aren't there times when you hate writing?" I tell them no. I may not like certain jobs or certain people I have to work with…but hey, if I were selling porta-potties, I probably wouldn't like every customer that came in to buy a porta-potty. Don't confuse a bad gig with a bad profession.
I've been doing this for 41 years because I enjoy it and can't think of anything attainable I'd enjoy more. I also can't think of too many moves stupider than doing something you don't like for 41 years if you have any choice in the matter. If you're a writer who doesn't love writing, find another profession…something you'd gladly do for the next 41 years without complaining about it all the time. You'll do yourself — and your friends and your family and maybe even your audience — a tremendous favor.
So what's up with the next Stephen Sondheim musical? Alan Burnett sent me this link to an article that tells us what is presently known about it.
A new Stephen Sondheim musical is on the horizon — and by "horizon," we mean maybe in 2017. Since Mr. Sondheim is 86, it might be a good idea to hurry it along a bit, huh? Maybe?
No word on any productions of the musical based on the Jerry Lewis film, The Nutty Professor. Jerry's last known announcement of it definitely opening on Broadway as that it would be there in November of 2014. It's not on any lists of shows that are set or likely to open there in the foreseeable future. Surely some theater company somewhere would like to do it?
Stephen Sondheim discussing lyric writing. What the hell does he know about it? (Thanks to James Troutman for the link.)
Another Sondheim moment. From the PBS version of Company (the one starring Neil Patrick Harris), we have Anika Noni Rose performing "Another Hundred People." I once saw a really low budget version of this show done in a 99-seat theater with too small a cast. Some people had to double, playing two roles that would usually be played by separate actors. Afterwards, I tried to talk the director into changing this song to "Another Seven People"…
Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin recreate a Sondheim moment from Sunday in the Park with George…
We'll watch and link to any interview of Stephen Sondheim. Here's a recent one conducted on the stage of the National Theatre in London. It's all worth watching but the most interesting question to me was the final one in which Mr. Sondheim speaks of the difference between a musical on stage and on screen, and why he thinks West Side Story was not a good movie…
Today is Leap Year Day. Back in 1952 when my mother was seriously preggo with me, I was expected to be born on 2/29/52. I somehow missed my entrance cue and a few days later, they went in and got me…but when I was eight and old enough to understand a concept I couldn't have grasped at age four, I was told, "If you'd been born when you were supposed to be, this would be your second birthday." Somehow, my relatives joked, that would have made me two years old instead of eight.
I understood of course that this was a joke but it was an intriguing concept with which to play. If it worked like that, when all my friends were eighty and close to passing on, I would be twenty and in my prime of life. Of course, think of all the birthday presents I would have missed over the years…and how about that long, frustrating wait for puberty? Or to be old enough to drive a car?
Speaking of driving a car, my knee has healed to the point where I've been doing some limited driving, mainly at times when traffic is likely to be at a minimum. It's now been four months since the second of my two operations and I'm doing that plus walking some decent distances. There's still the occasional time when I can't and it's still painful to get up from a chair…especially a low chair. But I'm pretty happy with the recovery process and fairly certain my mobility is better than it would be by now if I hadn't had the knee replacement.
I have stuff to do today more pressing than blogging but before I return to it…
Josh Marshall has a good article up on why the portions of the Republican party who want to stop Trump are unable to stop Trump. Sez Marshall, it's because most of what he's selling is the same stuff they've been selling to their constituents for years. I think that's basically correct. Trump's claim that the I.R.S. is auditing him because he's a "good Christian" is as clear a lie as we've ever heard from a politician — unless it's topped by Trump's claim of yesterday that he didn't denounce the Ku Klux Klan in that interview because he had a "bad earpiece." But the G.O.P. leaders can't denounce him for the Christian hooey at least because they've spent years telling Christians that everyone's out to get them and take away their religion.
Nate Silver says not to presume that everyone who calls themselves a Conservative will eventually back Mr. Trump. This election, it might be wise to presume nothing. I'm even skeptical it'll happen in November.
If you love Sondheim and do Spotify, this is the page for you.
The big "left out of the In Memoriam reel" controversy today seems to be about Abe Vigoda, though there are also complaints about the omission of Geoffrey Lewis, Martin Milner, Joan Leslie and a few more. I was glad to see they included Stan Freberg.
All right. I'll be back later…maybe. I dunno. Lots to get done today.
I am just now getting into the works of Steve Reich, the composer who has done much the last few decades to take music in new, interesting directions. One of the many admirers of his work is Stephen Sondheim and a little more than a year ago, the two men took the stage in New York for a joint conversation moderated by John Schaefer and a performance of many of their individual compositions. It runs a little more than two hours but they might just be two hours well spent…