For Sondheim Fans

[foxy]

One night only, June 13th at The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Sondheim at Seven. Introduced by Angela Lansbury "a galaxy of Broadway stars will perform selections from Sweeney Todd, Follies, Into The Woods, Gypsy, Passion, A Little Night Music, Company, West Side Story, Merrily We Roll Along and more. All this in 90 minutes lol. But how can you go wrong? Tickets start at $100 and cocktail & dinner packages at Bryant Park Grill start at $500. I think I can go for $100. Tickets on IrishRep.org

[Bayman4Fun]

It's not frequent, but there are times I wish I lived in the NYC area

[handiacefailure]

Have they announced who all will perform? I'd be interested in making a trip for it if Patti Lupone and Benadette peters perform

[+ WilliamM]

Have they announced who all will perform? I'd be interested in making a trip for it if Patti Lupone and Benadette peters perform

 

Patti and Bernadette are not schedule to perform. I guess we can not rule them out as "special guests," but it is unlikely.

 

https://irishrep.org/event/2016-2017-season/2017-gala-sondheim-seven/

[bostonman]

Patti and Bernadette are not schedule to perform. I guess we can not rule them out as "special guests," but it is unlikely.

 

Ostensibly, Patti will be impersonating Helena Rubenstein that night.

[foxy]

I bought my ticket, so I'll let you know if any surprise stars show up.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I'd pay to see Bernadette not show up.

 

I know, I know... Gay theatre sacrilege, but I wish she would stop attempting to sing the songs of her past (or, at least, lower the keys) and work on interesting new material that better suits her current sound.

[handiacefailure]

I'd pay to see Bernadette not show up.

 

I know, I know... Gay theatre sacrilege, but I wish she would stop attempting to sing the songs of her past (or, at least, lower the keys) and work on interesting new material that better suits her current sound.

 

I love Bernadette. She's one of my favorite Sondheim ladies.

 

I love her show Mozart in the Jungle.

[+ WilliamM]

I'd pay to see Bernadette not show up.

 

I know, I know... Gay theatre sacrilege, but I wish she would stop attempting to sing the songs of her past (or, at least, lower the keys) and work on interesting new material that better suits her current sound.

 

One could say the same thing about the last decades of the stars of Broadway's Golden Age. Nobody expected Ethel Merman, Gwen Verdon, John Raitt or Mary Martin to sing as they did 4o or 50 years earlier.

[foxy]

I love Bernadette. She's one of my favorite Sondheim ladies.

 

I love her show Mozart in the Jungle.

 

Mozart in the Jungle is so much fun and I too like Bernadette in it. But have to say Gael Garcia Bernal is who pulls me in. I find him incredibly sexy.

[handiacefailure]

Mozart in the Jungle is so much fun and I too like Bernadette in it. But have to say Gael Garcia Bernal is who pulls me in. I find him incredibly sexy.

 

I agree, he is very sexy. And I think his accent is very sexy as well

[edjames]

A revival of Sondheim's Pacific Overtures is currently running at the Classic Stage Theater on 13th St in NYC . Directed by John Doyle, known for his stripped down versions of classic musicals, it runs until June 18. I have a ticket for Thursday night's performance.

 

http://www.classicstage.org/shows/pacific-overtures/

[foxy]

One of my favorite shows.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I love Bernadette. She's one of my favorite Sondheim ladies.

 

I love her show Mozart in the Jungle.

 

Peters, as a human being and performer, I enjoy. I also love her longtime commitment to animal rescue.

 

My main concern is the quality of her voice. I think she'd still kill it if she would stop feeling the need to sing 'her' songs. Taking a note from LuPone, she could do shows that focus on quietly selling the song rather than just big notes.

 

MitJ is a zany, fun show. A little campy. Always entertaining. And I marvel at how well-kept Peters is. She looks amazing.

[handiacefailure]

Peters, as a human being and performer, I enjoy. I also love her longtime commitment to animal rescue.

 

My main concern is the quality of her voice. I think she'd still kill it if she would stop feeling the need to sing 'her' songs. Taking a note from LuPone, she could do shows that focus on quietly selling the song rather than just big notes.

 

MitJ is a zany, fun show. A little campy. Always entertaining. And I marvel at how well-kept Peters is. She looks amazing.

 

Bernadette is a great actress on TV as well as on the stage. I loved her in Ugly Betty as well.

[+ WilliamM]

In the 1970s up to the mid-1980s, some of the most important benefits were fund raisers for Friends of the Theater and Music Collection of the Museum of the City of the City of New York. The Museum honored people like Richard Rodgers, Director Josh Logan, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin. All the benefits were under the direction of Anna Sosenko. The audiences eventually received limited-edition 2-LP recordings of the concert or posters personally signed by the honorees. (There was some doubt about Merman's signatures. I am looking at Merman's signature right now; it would be difficult to duplicate her signature through hundreds of posters.)

 

The other difference between then and now was the participation of both singers and non-singers...examples of the later include Lillian Gish, Helen Hayes and Dorothy Hammerstein.

 

I live in Philadelphia, so I probably have missed a lot.

 

My purpose here is to respond adequately to @Benjamin_Nicholas and his comments about Bernadette Peters. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Ms. Peters could have talked to the audience about Richard Rodgers rather than sing and nobody would have questioned her choice.

[edjames]

NYC...Assassins @ City Center summer Encores series:

 

http://www.nycitycenter.org/content/images_2.0/shows/A-220x330-3.png

 

Encores! Off-Center

Assassins

• Mainstage
  
• Jul 12—15
  
• Tickets start at $25
  

A carnival ride through the history of political violence, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s 1990 musical Assassins looks right into the heart of American anger, providing sensational showstoppers for a gallery of U.S. presidential assassins ranging from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald to Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. Assassins offers an uncanny vision of where we are today, where we might be going, and whether everybody really has the right to their dreams.

 

Cast & Credits

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by John Weidman

Assassins is based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr.

Choreography by Lorin Latarro

Music Director Chris Fenwick

Directed by Anne Kauffman

Starring Damian Baldet, Steven Boyer, Alex Brightman, Victoria Clark, John Ellison Conlee, Clifton Duncan, Andrew Durand, Shuler Hensley, Ethan Lipton, Hudson Loverro, Erin Markey, Steven Pasquale, Cory Michael Smith, Pearl Sun, and Danny Wolohan

[foxy]

I just bought my ticket. I've never seen the show and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[foxy]

Just saw Assassins. Wonderful production with a stellar cast. Completely sold out. I was happily surprised that it was such a youthful audience. Certainly not a show for those looking for a lighthearted romp. But even still lots of funny lines considering it's a show about killing presidents.

[Doe Be Doe]

I saw it too. I really enjoyed it. Although, I too found it strange to be having fun considering the subject matter.

[bostonman]

I wish I could have seen this -I've been a huge fan of the show since the original recording came out in 1991. However, I did get to hear an audio of it. Performance in general was wonderful - but I was surprised to hear an older orchestration (an 8-piece version that was developed for the first London production and then used as the rental version - and one that even the orchestrator himself wasn't all that happy about). But I suppose that was mainly because it's the smallest orchestration available, and these summer productions are meant to be small scale.

[foxy]

This is what The NY Times had to say.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/theater/review-assassins-offers-a-national-anthem-for-killers.html

[N13]

Saw the original production. Was dismayed at the romanticizing of assassination. Love Sondheim (most of the time) but this one sickened my soul. Can not separate the music from the subject matter.

[+ WilliamM]

Saw the original production. Was dismayed at the romanticizing of assassination. Love Sondheim (most of the time) but this one sickened my soul. Can not separate the music from the subject matter.

 

I had the same problems with Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song." A very long book provides enough time for the reader to decide whether or not the author chose a worthy subject and explored that subject thoroughly and objectively. I concluded that Mailer was successful.

 

Concerning "Assassins," I totally agree with N13 above.

[bostonman]

Saw the original production. Was dismayed at the romanticizing of assassination. Love Sondheim (most of the time) but this one sickened my soul. Can not separate the music from the subject matter.

 

I would debate that the show does not "romanticize" assassination - except of course that to a degree, all dramatic arts romanticize their subjects simply by their use of dramatic storytelling. But then we could easily be back in the Julius Caesar argument, which is that the play ultimately DOESN'T romanticize the slaying of Caesar in that things don't turn out well in the post-Caesar world. Killing him solved nothing. (It's also, of course, interesting that Booth, in Assassins, refers to that play several times, and doesn't get that point. He wants to glorify Brutus, but that doesn't resonate with us.)

 

I would say that two of the assassins do come close to being more "sympathetic." Booth is one. His impassioned aria of sorts as he mourns the country he feels Lincoln stole from him is indeed moving, to a point - and specifically, things change when he refers to Lincoln as a "N____ lover." Although he seems to be the de facto leader of all the assassins in the show, we most often see him as a cool, cold-hearted manipulator of the rest of the group. And nowhere moreso than in the final scene, where he tries to convince Oswald to join them and take his own turn. "People will hate me," Oswald says when the idea is presented to him. "They'll hate you with a passion, Lee. Imagine people having passionate feelings about Lee Harvey Oswald." It may be a clever line (in a scene with many), but it gives me chills (as do many of the brilliantly-written witty lines in the show do).

 

The other character that gets a somewhat sympathetic look is a "footnote of history" for most people - Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated McKinley at point blank range, with a gun concealed in a handkerchief. Bookwriter Weidman plays on the young brooding factory worker's desperation to want to belong to something, anything, anyone - even having him stalk Emma Goldman out of romantic interest. And maybe we want to understand, if not feel, his sense of futility - he doesn't seem as "crazy" as the others - just beaten down. His "factory worker's" perspective on what it takes to actually make a gun is something that even reviles him ("I hate this gun," he sings) - but even in the ironic nature of the clever, upbeat folk song pastiche that describes his killing of McKinley by getting "to the head of the line" to greet him at an exposition in Buffalo, the act itself is no less horrific.

 

The show has a huge amount of comedy in it - mostly very appropriately dark. Many of the laughs are calculated double-punchers - we laugh, even though we're also horrified at what we're laughing at. However, the actual moments of assassination in the show are treated soberly (the huge, Copland-eqsue music that follows the Oswald shot, despite the major key, seems to me one huge outcry of despair - a funeral march of sorts for all the victims of assassination). And the assassins are mostly painted as shallow and ridiculous, and their actions always untenable. We may, through the lens of theatrical treatment, get a bit more insight into their misguided motives, but it doesn't mean we are supposed to agree with them. And though over the years some of the comedy in the show has been criticized as "cartoonish," (Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore in particular), this also helps diminish them - we are absolutely laughing AT them, not with them.

 

Is it one hell of a daring show? Absolutely. Does it challenge our (personal) constitutions? Yes. But do I think it sets out to romanticize or glamorize or justify the acts of these people from the underbelly of society? No, I don't. And as much as I admire the show as a theatrical composition, it disturbs me as well. It should. I understand that some people just can't face what they see in the writing, and I understand. But for me, it does something that theatre can do so well - move our souls and minds in unexpected, if sometimes unwelcome ways. And I embrace that.