Sunday on the blog with Sondheim, #3

Musicals can be divided roughly into two categories: traditional book musicals, in which dialogue and songs exist separately, with the lyrics developing character and plot to varying degrees; and “sung through” musicals, in which there’s very little dialogue and everything is conveyed through song.

I mentioned in last week’s entry that one of the finer qualities of Sondheim’s lyrics is that he can hybridize those forms with lyrics that are themselves conversation and dialogue, so the dramatic movement of the play continues with the song.

This isn’t to say that he musicalizes the banal (a valid criticism of some sung-through musicals); his conversations set to music still tend to touch on topics that are song-worthy, suggesting emotion beyond what we expect in dialogue.  But he can blend the “conversational” with the “lyrical” in ways that are engaging and satisfying.

Consider, for example, the moment in A Little Night Music (1973) when Frederick, a former lover of the actress Desiree Armfeldt, meets back up with her and insists “You Must Meet My Wife.” At this point, he has revealed that he and his new wife have yet to consummate their relationship, and she responds:

Frederick	Desiree
	She’s monstrous
She’s frightened.
	Unfeeling.
Unversed.
She’d strike you as unenlightened.
	No, I’d strike her first.
Her reticence, her apprehension —
	Her crust!
You must meet my wife…
	Let me get my hat and my knife!
(spoken) What was that?
	I must meet your wife.
Yes, you must.	Yes, I must.

The give and take of this lyrical conversation is certainly part of its appeal, as the two characters are in sync with each other enough to finish each other’s sentences, even if their responses are contradictory or ironic.

“My Friends,” from Sweeney Todd (1979) is a “conversation” with a different twist.  Todd is talking to his razor blades, which Mrs. Lovett has stored for him during his banishment, and she is singing to him.  Their feelings of joy at reunion and admiration of beauty are similar, but they’re not focused mutually.  Sondheim constructs this bizarre triangle to chilling effect when their lines overlap, as in this moment:

Todd	Lovett
You there, my friend
Come, let me hold you.	I’m your friend, too, Mr. Todd.
	If you only knew, Mr. Todd.
Now, with a sigh.	Ooh, Mr. Todd.
You grow warm	You’re warm
In my hand,	In my hand.
My friend,	You’ve come home.
My clever friend.	Always had a fondness for you, I did.
Rest now, my friends,
Soon I’ll unfold you.	Never you fear, Mr. Todd.
Soon you’ll know splendors	You can move in here, Mr. Todd.
You never have dreamed	Splendors you never have dreamed
All your days,	All your days
My lucky friends.	Will be yours.

The example from Sweeney differs significantly from the first example because it really is more of a non-duet.  The two characters are singing together, but not exactly with much awareness of what the other is saying, even when their ideas are similar enough to be expressed by the same lyrics.

Of course, the real genius of this song is that under its sweeping melodic beauty, the lyrics suggest the dark inner core of the piece.  Todd truly does love his razors for the revenge they’ll allow him to exact, at the expense of all humanity; Mrs. Lovett will ignore anything and participate in everything in order to keep Todd around.

Earlier this week, I posted an entry on lyrics and the revision process that starts to touch on Sondheim’s wordplay (evident in this entry, for example, with his double use of “strike” in “You Must Meet My Wife”).  Next week, I’ll start digging into those great elements like unexpected rhymes and sheer density of words that set Sondheim’s lyrics apart.

Into the words: Sunday on the blog with Sondheim #1

With the recent announcement of a forthcoming volume of Stephen Sondheim’s collected lyrics, I wanted to devote some significant time and attention to the mastery of his words.  I’m going to organize in a completely artificial way–it’s impossible to separate out the qualities that make great art work–but figuring out those broad characteristics has been part of the fun of getting ready for this series.

Much of the strength of his lyrics comes from their sparkling wordplay, wit, rhythm, and rhyme–all things I’ll get to eventually.  But none of these would matter nearly so much if what the lyrics convey (again, false division between form and content) weren’t thought provoking, emotionally challenging, and significantly meaningful.  So that’s where I’m going to start.

It’s easy to make the claim that most theater lyrics are baldly declarative:  “I love you!,” “I want x!,” “I need an excuse to tap dance.”  Songs from musicals typically express a single heightened emotion and are used to suggest significant shifts (which is fine–there’s nothing inherently wrong with that), but they don’t necessarily suggest complexity of emotion.  

I would argue that Sondheim, though, is particularly adept at crafting lyrics that represent human emotion doing more than merely shifting from highs to lows or from love to despair. His lyrics have the quality of exposing, as he puts it, all the “rumblings beneath the surface.”

“Is it always or? Is it never and?” (The Baker’s Wife, Into the Woods)

I’ll start with a classic example of “and, not or,” from the classic “and, not or” show about love and marriage: “Sorry-Grateful” from Company (1970). This lyric is the response to the main character’s question to a good friend: “Harry, you ever sorry you got married?”

You’re always sorry,
You’re always grateful,
You hold her, thinking:
“I’m not alone.”
You’re still alone.

Good things get better, bad get worse.
Wait, I think I meant that in reverse.

You’re sorry-grateful,
Regretful-happy.
Why look for answers
When none occur?
You’ll always be what you always were,
Which has nothing to do with, all to do with her.

While there are moments there that suggest confusion, it’s less that the character doesn’t know what he’s feeling and more that he’s feeling those two conflicting emotions at the same time.

Similarly, “Marry Me a Little” from the same production sounds, by title alone, like a song a lesser writer might have penned with bitterness or confusion (or worse, for laughs) because it suggests a complication that seems impossible, akin to being a little bit pregnant. But Sondheim treats that notion of emotional ambivalence with heartbreaking earnestness as the song begins:

Marry me a little, 
Love me just enough. 
Cry, but not too often, 
Play, but not too rough.
Keep a tender distance 
so we’ll both be free. 
That’s the way it ought to be. 
I’m ready! 

Of course this character is not ready for much of anything in terms of the traditional conception of romantic commitment, but again, it’s not that the character doesn’t know what he wants.  Rather, he’s asking for something that’s a bit more complicated than what characters typically sing about.

To close, I’ll move on to an example that’s less striking in some ways because its language is simpler, but it’s also more profound because that simplicity helps achieve the song’s effect.  The song “Our Time” from Merrily We Roll Along (1981) closes the show, but the narrative is told in reverse.  The audience, therefore, has seen the shambles of a friendship and artistic collaboration shared by two men and a woman slowly return to its loving, optimistic roots, expressed here as:

Something is stirring,
Shifting ground …
It’s just begun.
Edges are blurring
All around,
And yesterday is done.

Feel the flow,
Hear what’s happening:
We’re what’s happening.
Don’t you know?
We’re the movers and we’re the shapers.
We’re the names in tomorrow’s papers.
Up to us now to show ’em …

It’s our time, breathe it in:
Worlds to change and worlds to win.
Our turn coming through,
Me and you, pal,
Me and you!

True, this moment’s complexity comes from its position in the structure of the play as much as anything in the language of the lyrics themselves. But its success is derived from the fact that it is to be experienced as a youthful, heartfelt vision of the future and as a tragic reminder of the failure of that vision–not one or the other. Ignoring one of the readings robs the song of its potency.

37 by Shakespeare by 37

This Spring, I helped chaperone a student trip to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater‘s production of The Comedy of Errors.  I wasn’t going for the play: The weather forecast looked great for a day at Navy Pier, and I’m still amused at the idea of taking a day off from work that doesn’t involve sub plans.  

The Comedy of Errors is one of those plays that it seems no one puts on (and certainly no one talks about), but I had a great time and I started thinking…which of the other 23 plays by Shakespeare have I unfairly dismissed?  (Note:  The CSC production did do quite a bit of tinkering, including the creation of an entire “we’re filming the play” frame narrative…and we were there on the morning of the Regional Theater Tony Award announcement, so this experience may be misguiding my soon-to-be-announced goal).

All that said, I’m going to try to fill out the “37 by Shakespeare” by my 37th birthday, giving me just over 5 years to hit the 23 plays I’ve eschewed or just never had the chance to see.  

For a quick rundown of the ground I’ve already covered:

As You Like It (Cambridge Summer Shakespeare Festival)
The Comedy of Errors (Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
Hamlet (Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford)
King Lear (Illinois Shakespeare Festival)
Macbeth (Illinois, Cambridge, Lyceum Theater NYC)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Illinois, Globe Theatre London)
Much Ado About Nothing (Theatre Royal Haymarket, London)
Othello (Cambridge)
Romeo and Juliet (Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Cambridge)
The Taming of the Shrew (Illinois)
The Tempest (Cambridge, Chicago)
Twelfth Night (Globe, Illinois)
Two Gentlemen of Verona (Krannert)
A Winter’s Tale (Globe)

So, I’m hopeful someone nearby decides to put on a marathon of all the histories, since I’ve seen absolutely zero of them (having passed up the chance to see Mark Rylance as Henry V once in London…stupid).

Notch 15 in the belt is planned, however, with a bloody night in Bloomington awaiting in Titus Andronicus on July 29.

Top Three Live Performance Events

In no particular order:

The Kenny Barron Trio, Village Vanguard NYC March 2005

Though I’d dabbled in jazz for a while, I was a very casual listener until my evening at the Vanguard.  My jazz exposure was limited a couple major discs by Miles Davis and John Coltrane and a few random things I’d picked up from friends. 

After a trip on the 1 Train down to the West Village, I found myself in the presence of an art form that I’ve grown to love:  the jazz piano trio.  Kenny Barron’s smart playing–neither too spare nor too showy in ornament and improvisation–was certainly the highlight of the experience, but I found myself appreciating the truly collaborative effort of playing in a jazz combo.  I was too new to the scene to remember what they played, but the evening was an important one, opening my awareness to great jazz pianists like McCoy Tyner, Cedar Walton, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Phineas Newborn, Jr., …and all of their collaborators. 

Sweeney Todd, Eugene O’Neill Theater NYC March 2005

John Doyle’s actor-musician production of Sweeney Todd  brought the act and art of storytelling to the fore and managed to make Patti LuPone back into an ensemble member.   People unfamilar with score and story claim the plot and characterization may have been muddled in the process of the stripping the revenge tale to its core, but I didn’t find this to be the case.  In fact, the doubling of character and instrument actually enriched the experience for me.  I’d never had much interest in the young love/Anthony and Johanna story before, but the sonic and physical gravity lent by their twin cellos strengthened their presence.  (It also helped that Doyle stifled any audience response through applause until after the first rendering of “Johanna”).  There was so much to appreciate in this production–between the strength of the score and story themselves, the performances, and the “work” of the show being produced right in front of you–that I actually saw this twice.

Twelfth Night, The New Globe Bankside London July 2002

While I enjoyed all aspects of this original practices production at the Globe (meaning all casting, costuming, and music/effects choices must adhere to the practices of the Elizabethan theater), the experience was definitely made by Mark Rylance as Olivia.    Though there is much to call artificial about his performance, the rendering of Olivia’s sorrow that eventually turns to comic love was completely effective.  I remember his movements around the stage seeming as if the character were floating around instead of walking.  The cast erupting into a ridiculously festive dance after the performance added to the atmospheric perfection of the experience.  Being footsteps from the Thames in an open-air reconstruction of the Globe didn’t hurt, either.