For Sondheim Fans

[bostonman]

Adding (and sticking only to renowned 20th century musical theatre composers, because of course there are so many others to consider in related fields too, and also more in this current century):

 

Jerome Kern

Irving Berlin

Frank Loesser

Harold Arlen

Vincent Youmans

Leonard Bernstein

Jule Styne

Jerry Bock

Charles Strouse

Cy Coleman

Stephen Schwartz

John Kander

Maury Yeston

William Finn

 

(And I'm sure I'm leaving out some other very worthy names)

 

All absolute geniuses IMO.

 

But this is (or was) a thread about Sondheim - who studied with Oscar Hammerstein, got to collaborate with Bernstein, Styne, and Rodgers - and took so much from them and his other contemporaries and really brought a new maturity and art to musical theatre for his generation, the way that we now view that Kern (Showboat) and Rodgers And Hammerstein (Oklahoma etc) did for theirs.

 

Plus, going back to Gershwin, there's a great song Sondheim wrote for the film of Dick Tracy - "More" - that is an absolute homage to the brothers Gershwin, both musically and lyrically. Sondheim knows, understands, and (mostly) respects his roots. (I say mostly, because if you've read his comments in his Finishing The Hat/Look I Made A Hat books, you'll know he's also a very harsh critic of his contemporaries - and I do have to say I mostly don't agree with his criticisms lol.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0b35V0MGzQ

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Nov 16...Follies from National Theater London simulcast. (NTLive).

 

Check website for detail and ticket sales...

 

http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/63102-follies

 

http://d2z302fz6vkyr7.cloudfront.net/images/productions/ntgds_ntlive_ec_follies_digilistings_ntlivewebsiteheader_v2_050717.jpg

Stephen Sondheim’s legendary musical is staged for the first time at the National Theatre and broadcast live to cinemas.

 

New York, 1971. There’s a party on the stage of the Weismann Theatre. Tomorrow the iconic building will be demolished. Thirty years after their final performance, the Follies girls gather to have a few drinks, sing a few songs and lie about themselves.

 

Tracie Bennett, Janie Dee and Imelda Staunton play the magnificent Follies in this dazzling new production. Featuring a cast of 37 and an orchestra of 21, it’s directed by Dominic Cooke (The Comedy of Errors).

 

Interesting cast, but I still haven't forgiven Bennett for that awful caricature she called a Judy Garland impression

[+ WilliamM]

Interesting cast, but I still haven't forgiven Bennett for that awful caricature she called a Judy Garland impression

 

Some people seemed to believe there was nothing more to Garland

 

So we agree.

[bostonman]

Sad that Garland didn't live long enough to be able to take on any of Sondheim's shows (though even if she had, it's doubtful she would have been able to do a full Broadway run) - I'm thinking she could have been an amazing (and cathartic) Sally in Follies. And even if not, imagine what she would have sounded like in some of his songs...

 

(She did record "Something's Coming" and "Some People," but never got to sing any songs for which Sondheim also wrote music.)

[+ WilliamM]

Judy and Vic Damone occasionally sang medleys from shows like West Side Story and Kismet. Garland's 1963-1964 TV shows may still be available. The last five or six shows were concerts with very few guests.

 

I do not care whether or not Garland sang more Sondheim in her relatively short life. She took a chance by singing concerts in a difficult time slot -- Sunday night on CBS from 9PM to 10 PM.

 

Those shows, her concerts and her films would be considered a long career for most singers. Just glad I was just old enough to see her perform three times in person.

[bostonman]

I do not care whether or not Garland sang more Sondheim in her relatively short life.

 

You may not care, but I think you might be missing my point. I'm not playing fanboy here, sorry, I'm looking at a fantastic opportunity that never could be. Given that so much of Sondheim's material is so emotionally revealing, his songs would have been a great match for her. Imagine the iconic interpreter of "The Man That Got Away" digging into the cathartic "Losing My Mind" or even "Send In The Clowns." Or even some of the material he wrote when she was alive - really any of the female solos in Anyone Can Whistle, for instance. To quote the master himself, "It Would Have Been Wonderful."

 

Kismet, of course, has nothing at all to do with Sondheim. But I know you knew that, so don't think I'm being pedantic. (Just not sure how it got into the thread lol.) On that -- I think a lot of people consider Wright and Forrest as hacks, because their melodies are all borrowed from other composers. But when you look at what they did to transform those melodic themes into a form we can recognize as "standards" is pretty ingenious. (For instance, only about half of "Stranger In Paradise" is really Borodin - the rest is very shrewdly written to sound like it's a perfect fit.)

 

Back to Sondheim...

 

(Come to think of it, had Alfred Drake been born later, he might have been quite a Sweeney Todd...and Joan Diener actually could have been a hysterical Domina in Forum, though I don't think she ever did the role. But imagine them and Doretta Morrow all in Sweeney? That would have been cool!)

[+ WilliamM]

You are correct about Garland singing Sondheim as impossible.

 

By 1965, Garland seldom learned a new song, and sometimes talked about that inability honestly.

 

I mentioned Kismet only because it was best of the many Damone-Garland duet. I did meet either Wright or Forrest in a restaurant once. Just a friendly double down, @bostonman.

[bostonman]

You are correct about Garland singing Sondheim as impossible.

 

Of course, she could have sung Sondheim's "Impossible" (A Funny Thing...Forum, 1962) though it wouldn't have made much sense lol. The Rodgers and Hammerstein "Impossible" (Cinderella, 1957) might have been fun for her. She wouldn't have been able to do La Mancha's "The Impossible Dream," of course (1965) - but that would also have been something great to hear, had she been able to.

 

[BasketBaller]

I was very amused by Sondheim's frank candor in criticizing his fellow lyricists in Finishing The Hat (I haven't read Look, I Made A Hat yet). But I also loved his praise of Dorothy Fields, whose easy, lovely lyrics have long been a favorite of mine. "The Sunny Side Of The Street" has a wonderful set of simple words that fit the music perfectly. And how on Earth did anyone come up with "So let me get right to the point, I don't pop my cork for every guy I see" from "Big Spender" in Sweet Charity?

[bostonman]

I was very amused by Sondheim's frank candor in criticizing his fellow lyricists in Finishing The Hat (I haven't read Look, I Made A Hat yet). But I also loved his praise of Dorothy Fields, whose easy, lovely lyrics have long been a favorite of mine. "The Sunny Side Of The Street" has a wonderful set of simple words that fit the music perfectly. And how on Earth did anyone come up with "So let me get right to the point, I don't pop my cork for every guy I see" from "Big Spender" in Sweet Charity?

 

Yes - Fields is certainly one of our greatest lyricists. "The Way You Look Tonight" (with Kern's equally charming melody) is among my favorites of hers.

[+ WilliamM]

For most of 1963-1964 Judy Garland TV series, she hired Mel Torme to suggest new songs and arrangements of older songs. After Torme left, Garland selected "Here's to Us" from Little Me.

She had a prime-time TV series on CBS, and the budget to hire whomever she wanted for assistance.

 

Garland had many faults, but selecting her songs (especially with Torme) was not one of those faults.

 

I was in college when she had her weekly TV show. The show was discussed often by straight and gay students, probably because it was a disappointment.

 

Nobody ever questions Garland singing or her song selections on her weekly show.

[bostonman]

Nobody ever questions Garland singing or her song selections.

 

Four words, my friend. Annie Get Your Gun. I think we are definitely allowed to question this. (Give me Ethel any day...)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzrOMXOJwjE

[+ WilliamM]

The comment was only about her TV series in the early 1960s.

 

However, I do understand your response because somehow the final sentence was separated from the previous paragraph.

 

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2011/05/judy-garland-201105

 

I do not agree with much in the article. However, the section about Garland's Carnegie Hall concert in 1961 is accurate. "The Wizard of Oz" and her concerts all over the United States in 1961 were her greatest achievements.

[bostonman]

Garland's daughter Liza (with a Z) teaming up with the Pet Shop Boys for some Sondheim, updated.

 

 

Half-sister Lorna Luft, meanwhile, has appeared in several productions of Follies, in the role of Hattie ("Broadway Baby"). But here's Liza doing the same song, in an arrangement that deftly borrows the iconic Kander "New York, New York" vamp.

 

[+ WilliamM]

I liked Liza in "Flora, The Red Menace" and "Minnelli on Minnelli," but not so much when she briefly spelled Julie Andrews in "Victor, Victoria."

 

And she deserves credit for standing by her elderly godmother, Kay Thompson.

[bostonman]

And she deserves credit for standing by her elderly godmother, Kay Thompson

 

Sondheim wrote "Me And My Town," Angela Lansbury's opening number in Anyone Can Whistle, he has said, in the style of a Hugh Martin/Kay Thompson pastiche - with Lansbury's character, buoyed by a group of 4 chorus boys. The middle section of the song was specifically a homage to "A Great Lady Has An Interview" - Garland's number in the film The Ziegfeld Follies, which features lyrics spoken in rhythm.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr2R1JkcToY

[body2body]

While the last Broadway revival of Follies had many faults, one thing that was handled brilliantly was Hattie and her turn in "Broadway Baby". She was presented as an old woman in shabby clothes, a little confused by everything until she is pushed forward to sing, and she is is hesitant at first, and then transformed. The audience sees her suddenly not as a shabby old lady, but as the Broadway Star she was in her prime. Jane Houdyshell can't deliver the song with the perfect period style of Ethel Shutta in the original production, but her portrayal was terrific.

[bostonman]

Jane Houdyshell can't deliver the song with the perfect period style of Ethel Shutta in the original production...

 

Indeed, the conundrum with Follies is that, no matter how carefully any cast tries to capture the style in any given production, I can't imagine the effect of the show ever being as strong as the original, because any subsequent production is once-removed from that original. I was 7 when the show was on Broadway and didn't see it of course (and wouldn't have understood it at all at that age had I seen it), but I can't imagine anything being as powerful as seeing performers like Shutta, or Gene Nelson, or Dorothy Collins, essentially play themselves onstage in the context of this "reunion party" story.

 

And of course, there were similar bits of old-time nostalgia happening at that moment on Broadway as well - Ruby Keeler starring in a huge revival of No No Nanette, for instance - but Follies wasn't just comforting/sparkly nostalgia, it was a bittersweet (and indeed sometimes more bitter than sweet) look at the present vs. the past. So it would be one thing for audiences that grew up with Keeler to cheer her on in an "I knew her when" kind of way in Nanette, but something quite different to see old-time performers like Shutta truly made to confront their past in Follies. It's what I call the "Sunset Boulevard effect" lol - in terms of Gloria Swanson, an aging, fading film star out of place in the new world of "the talkies," playing the role of an aging, fading film star out of place in the new world of "the talkies." So, one can do a great job at "replicating" Follies, but I don't think one can ever again catch the genuine feeling of the show in its own real-life zeitgeist.

[BasketBaller]

Thinking back on Finishing The Hat, I remember Sondheim writing about the pastiche numbers in Follies, the songs that were meant to be from the Weissman Follies. "One More Kiss" was supposed to be inspired by Friml and Romberg with the lyrics inspired by Noel Coward's operettas, "Beautiful Girls by, I think, Irving Berlin, "Losing My Mind" Gershwin and Dorothy Fields, etc.

[bostonman]

Thinking back on Finishing The Hat, I remember Sondheim writing about the pastiche numbers in Follies, the songs that were meant to be from the Weissman Follies. "One More Kiss" was supposed to be inspired by Friml and Romberg with the lyrics inspired by Noel Coward's operettas, "Beautiful Girls by, I think, Irving Berlin, "Losing My Mind" Gershwin and Dorothy Fields, etc.

 

Yes. "Beautiful Girls" is certainly a paean to Berlin's "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody." And though he doesn't credit Berlin in the double duet of "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow / Love'll See Us Through," I tend to think Berlin's spirit is in there too, for songs like "You're Just In Love" and "An Old Fashioned Wedding," famous for that same kind of contrapuntal "2 songs in one" technique. (Even though both of those songs were written after WWII, which is beyond the scope of the Follies pastiche numbers.)

[+ WilliamM]

I do not know if the Garland-Thompson friendship was still strong in the 1960s. Garland dropped friends too easily. I doubt she cared or even thought about "Anyone Can Whistle." Judy was broke and occasionally homeless -- sleeping on the floor in the kitchens of Liza's friends after her TV series was cancelled.

 

Thompson was there when most needed: to help Judy's children plan their mother's funeral. I believe she stayed with Liza, Lorna and Joe constantly through that entire week.

[bostonman]

I doubt she cared or even thought about "Anyone Can Whistle."

 

Most people didn't. The show closed after 9 performances. Thank god they decided to record it anyway!

[+ WilliamM]

Most people didn't. The show closed after 9 performances. Thank god they decided to record it anyway!

 

I wish "Anyone Could Whistle" had lasted much longer. Only got to see the concert version.

[body2body]

Most people didn't. The show closed after 9 performances. Thank god they decided to record it anyway!

I was lucky to see a very good production in LA back in 2003. As is often the case with legendary flops, about half way through the first act it became obvious why the show failed, the book was a mess, and things did not get better from there. It should also be said that some of the musical numbers seemed to go on forever. Some shows are best served by recordings where you imagine the production based on what you hear but never got to see.

[+ WilliamM]

The cast was so good in the New York concert that I fell in love with the musical.

 

And it was the first and only time I saw Madeline Kahn in person. And the first of many time seeing Angela Lansbury. She introduced the concert.