Some Shade in the City

Studio 54’s production of 110 in the Shade was a step below their version of Assassins, but miles above their recent train-wreck, Pig Farm.  I can’t point all of my…finger(s)?…at Studio 64, however.  This show just isn’t…well, it isn’t any good.  I knew I was in trouble when I heard the first refrain of the first song: “It’s gonna be another hot day/ Yes it’s gonna be another hot day,” but I told myself to give it a fair shot. Unfortunately, the show stayed at this level throughout, landing it way below expectations.

The plot was trite and as predictable as Titanic, and the dialogue did little to help keep my interest peaked.  There were one or two instances when the script’s punchiness did become genuinely humorous, and these moments gave me brief respites from shuffling my playbill and checking when the intermission was coming.  The music matched the script in its lack of originality and catchiness, and the musical riff that repeated throughought the performance sounded as if it was created by a first-year piano student.  The songs were hokey and childish, and interrupted the flow of the play rather than complimenting it.  The production seemed more like a charicature of a musical made by anti-fans of the genre, rather than a piece made by true artists of the trade.

Now, the production wasn’t a wash.  The cast was excellent- Audra McDonald, as usual, stole the show with her amazing voice, and Steve Kazee did a wonderful job as Starbuck, the rainmaker.  The supporting cast did an excellent job of backing up the three main characters, putting enough energy and truth into each of their lines that the play almost became believable.  The inter-racial casting within the family was an interesting choice, and the fact that it went unnoticed on stage (there were no spoken elusions to race issues) made it a wise one, adding a strong foundation to the plot.  This element was one of the things that kept me interested in the family’s dynamic, and made all of their conversations about beauty (both inner and phsyical) quite interesting.

The cast of 110 in the Shade made up for the less-than-interesting plot line of the show, and had me smiling by the final rain scene.  (The staging of this production was above average, providing great support to the cast in an interesting, exciting way).  I left the production with the annoying vamp repeating in my head, but still a smile on my face.  The worst part, I thought, was the fact that such great talent was wasted on this show.  I wished that I could gather the cast and push them into the arms of Mr. Sondheim or Mr. Finn, but alas, let us hope this is in their future.

The Moon Over Broadway

 

Dynamite cast: check. Excellent set: Check. Good script: I don’t really know- I couldn’t understand half of it. While I am usually opposed to the use of microphones in straight plays, this production needed to either invest in some sound equipment or some voice-projection lessons for Eve Best. The half-southern, half-Irish accents made it even more difficult to understand the rural Connecticut-ian woman. Luckily, Best was such a good actress that I could follow her emotional path without understanding all of the dialogue. Best’s rapport with Colm Meaney was sensational, and one of the best father-daughter interactions I have ever seen portrayed on stage. Kevin Spacey came in half-way through act one, and piggybacked on the festive, yet tense mood created by the duo early in the play. In a few moments he let the audience know what all the hype was for, as he promptly sets the acting bar through the roof for both Best and Meaney. The latter two rose to the challenge, and the trio pulled the audience through the rest of acts one and two in extremely emotional states, the three constantly yo-yo-ing between elation and utter depression. In this way the play flows much like the drunken mind of its main character, and the audience is led by Spacey into the life of an alcoholic. It is as tragic to the audience as it is to Best when, for no good reason, Spacey thrusts us from a moment of gentle love to one in which he drunkenly attempts to rape Best. It is this emotional connection to the characters that is so wonderful about theatre, and I am happy to say that Moon for the Misbegotten ties this knot between the characters’ and audience’s heart-strings tightly. Maybe a little too tight for comfort’s sake. But it’s worth it, for art like this.

Never Yell “Tony” in a Crowded Theatre.

  For those of you lucky enough to live in New York and have the usual Sunday-night crime drama fix postponed for a couple of hours in favor of the 61st Annual Tony awards, you may have noticed the small, but important shift that happened in the American theatre scene last night.  Though this year in theatre has had its fair share of bad seeds (ahem, High Fidelity), last night proved that New York’s dramatic scene is far from dead.  

As producers take movie after movie and try to shove them into a theatrical setting, luckily the true artists, the writers, composers, designers, actors, are pushing back.  We have allowed the Legally Blondes and the Movin’ Outs into our theatres, but we seemed to draw the line last night between pop and art, allowing a surprisingly sparse amount of pop theatrical pieces any mention in the 2007 Tony Awards Show.   There was last night a low rumbling that could be heard by the giants of Broadway, against the influx of pop theatre, and for a National Theatre company in the United States.  Many stated their support for the Lincoln Center’s attempt to start this movement, and urged for more active attempts to revive America’s theatre scene. 

For a long time, London’s National theatre and its West-End theatres have provided Broadway with all of its hits. History Boys, Coram Boy, Journey’s End, Sweeney Todd, Coast of Utopia, Journey’s End- all are revivals from original productions first held across the pond.   Americans like this theatre- they like good theatre.  They like 42nd Street and Jersey Boys but they also flock to see Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening.  The Hollywood producers have taken care of this former thirst, and it is the theatrical artists who must forge ahead and take care of the latter.  The people are ready for a National Theatre, so let’s give it to them.  As Coast director Jack O’Brien said, “let’s have no more talk” that New York theatre is going down the tubes.  Let’s show everyone, and ourselves, what American theatre can truly be.

“Opened up my eyes/ Taught me how to see”

Does art need to be popularly appreciated to be important? The work of Stephen Sondheim is often ridiculed for its intellectual, emotionless nature that makes it difficult for any audience member to comprehend. These comments come from critics and spectators who go to the theatre to be entertained, and have become fixed in the world of poperettas and spectacle shows. Once an audience can free itself from this trend, and really listen to what Sondheim is saying through his characters, it will discover that his pieces use intellect and wit to create emotionally-fulfilling works that are incredibly powerful.

“Finishing the Hat,” from Sunday in the Park With George, is a song about an artist painting a hat. It is boring and does not make sense and tells us nothing about the character. These are all common critiques of Sondheim’s work by people who have only listened to the surface of what the composer/lyricist is saying. When one pays attention to the intricacies of the piece, “Finishing the Hat” becomes a telling story of an artist’s struggle that can be used as a lens through which one can meaningfully interpret the rest of the play. It is said that those who have absorbed Sondheim’s words have become his group of cult followers, but this contingent does not have to be a limited club of intellectuals. “Most every Stephen Sondheim nut has had a kind of near-mystical conversion experience” that comes from a moment in the theatre when Sondheim’s music, lyrics, and characterization fit together to form a perfect world of true emotion. If the theatre world would change its perception of what a musical must be, and be prepared to learn instead of critique, Sondheim’s pieces would become appreciated for the works of art that they are, and be able to affect a wider audience.

Lyrics are the avenue that the songwriter takes in revealing the soul of a character to the audience. To the majority of people, the musical lyric is defined by well-structured rhyming couplets that show a character’s basic emotions. Sondheim’s lyrics go past this level, as he constructs his lyrics like the human mind that is singing them. Often stream-of-consciousness and contradicting thoughts formulate part of his works, as his characters try to determine their feelings and situation through song. His lyrics “reveal…to the audience the characters who could not have the omniscience to know or explain themselves with total accuracy.”

The lyrics of the classical artist Oscar Hammerstein elucidate what a character is feeling in words, but do not illustrate it in form or style. In “A Puzzlement” from The King and I, the king is obviously confused about matters of control and obedience. Yet this song has a structured form and is characterized by the king clearly stating his uncertainty. When Sondheim’s characters are confused, their songs show this, rather than tell it, to the audience. In “Moments in the Woods,” from Into the Woods, the Baker’s wife tries to lessen her bewilderment about her situation. Instead of her saying “What a puzzlement,” as does the king through the words of Oscar Hammerstein, she sings a list of questions about what her life means and how it will progress: “Must it all be either less or more,/Either plain or grand?/Is it always ‘Or’?/Is it never ‘And’?.” This technique, in which the character explores internal issues through through-composure and lyrical representations of her thoughts is deeply effective in allowing the audience to relate to the character as a real person. No longer is the character one who breaks into song to state in perfect rhyme why she is upset; under Sondheim, characters are representations of people with real emotion and problems, who understand and discover their lives through the arduous situations they encounter.

Just like the revolutionary beginning of Oklahoma! that was written to fit what the situation dictated, rather than the stereotype, Sondheim’s music (like his lyrics) breaks with the cookie-cutter song form, and is written to represent the workings of a character’s mind. This trend has led many to criticize the dissonant, un-melodic nature of Sondheim’s music in favor of the traditional tunes of the classical musicals. In response to this, theatre writer Chip Brown has stated: “a person would have to be deaf not to be swept up in its [the score of Sunday in the Park] harmonies, its soaring arpeggios and dreamy, pulsing undercurrents.” When Dot and George reach the pinnacle of their duet in “Move On” from Sunday in the Park With George, and sing “We’ve always belonged together/We will always belong together,” the statements of critics who claim that Sondheim cannot write melodies that speak to an audience are single-handedly defied. The fact that Sondheim can write soaring melodies to fit love songs such as “Move On,” as well as others like “My Friends,” about an insane barber singing tenderly to knives, illustrates the genius and versatility of his talent.

Each piece in Sondheim’s oeuvre is unique, and each song within the show musically suited to a particular character so well that the music alone could speak the character’s feelings. The classical “charm song” and “production number,” placed in the score primarily to liven the audience and sell sheet music, are nowhere to be found in Sondheim’s scores. In the composer’s music, every note has its purpose, and nothing is unnecessarily included in response to outside promises of money or popular success: his songs most definitely do not serve as direct pathways to Billboard’s Top Ten charts. “Theater composers like Andrew Lloyd Webber prosper by writing scores for the music industry. First the record; then the show. Not Sondheim, whose dictum has always been: First the show, always the show.” Sondheim’s songs are constructed for particular theatrical worlds, and used as vehicles to further the action of the play and elucidate to the audience the emotionally-charged thoughts of the characters through an engagement in an engrossing situation. Thus, dedication to the story and characters in each particular play is the reason for his lack of popular hits, rather than the oft-claimed reason that he lacks talent.

Rather than suiting each song to the character who is singing it, each of Sondheim’s plays is unique in its sound and construction, according to the particular mood which he hopes to create. This is illustrated in the difference between the syncopated rhythms of the score to Sunday, which represents the pointillist artistry of Georges Seurat, and the dissonant score of Sweeney Todd, meant to embody the industrial age of Great Britain. Repeated intimations and comments occur through the repetition and development of musical themes in Sondheim’s scores. Serving to hint at character’s true identity, as with the Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd and the Mysterious Man in Into the Woods, or show the relation of two incidents, these motifs add a layer of exposition to Sondheim’s plays that make music serve as much a purpose in plot as dialogue. Lyrics and score are also unified into a discursive relationship, as exemplified in “Good Thing Going” from Merrily We Roll Along. When Charley sings “It’s not that nothing went wrong,” a dissonant chord is played by the orchestra on the word “wrong.” Thus, Sondheim’s scores are integrated with plot, character, and lyric to form a synthesis that creates music perfectly suited to the world of the play.

Time Out critics, in a 2003 review of Sondheim’s work being done at the Royal Opera House, stated the clichéd argument about Sondheim: “The secret of Sondheim’s success is that he’s boring enough to seem like high art, thus suffusing with a warm glow those blue-rinsed matrons of all sexes that make up his public. He’s clever enough to let the ladies-who-lunch brigades congratulate themselves on spotting his cleverness. He famously loves puzzles, intricacy, ingenuity; and wears his cleverness like a flasher’s mac. In both cases you know it doesn’t conceal very much.  And he can’t write tunes.”

‘Art is not art if one can’t understand it at first glance’ has come to be the modern belief of critics and consumers alike. Confusion leads to critique, and the audience member who pays a hefty sum to see flashy costumes and their favorite star dressed like a 70s pop singer does not want to be faced with reality at the theatre. Authenticity is what Sondheim presents to his audience, and those that have attention enough to take notice revel in its genius and truth. Those who deem him boring are focusing on what classical elements Sondheim lacks, rather than listening to his words. Johann Hari, quoting critic Frank Rich, notes the rise of the new musical: “Sondheim ‘has changed the texture of musical theatre as radically as Oscar Hammerstein, and may yet leave our theatre profoundly altered.’ He has burned all of the conventions of the musical, such as the need for an upbeat ending, the avoidance of ideas and the fear of any whiff of the intellectual.” It is time to embrace the new theatre that people like Sondheim are creating, and recognize it for the art that it is.

Stephen Sondheim, “Move On,” rec. 1984, Sunday in the Park With George,
RCA, 1984.Chip Brown “Sondheim!,” The Smithsonian Aug. 2002: 45.

Richard Kislan, The Musical. (New York: Applause, 1995) 161.

Oscar Hammerstein II, “A Puzzlement,” rec. 1951, The King and I, Decca U.S., 1951.

Stephen Sondheim, “Moments in the Woods,” rec. 1987, Into the Woods, RCA, 1988.

Oscar Hammerstein II, “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” rec. 1943, Oklahoma!,
Decca U.S. [remastered edition], 2000.

Brown, 45.

Stephen Sondheim, “Move On,” rec. 1984, Sunday in the Park With George, RCA, 1984.

Stephen Sondheim, “My Friends,” rec. 1979, Sweeney Todd, RCA, 1979.

Kislan, 164.

Stephen Sondheim, “Good Thing Going,” rec. 1981, Merrily We Roll Along, RCA, 1982.

Time Out Group, “The Great Sondheim Debate; Debate Sweeney Todd,” Time Out Dec. 2003: 14.

Johann Hari, “Profile: Stephen Sondheim-One of the Great Dissident Voices of
America,” The Independent (London) June 28, 2003: 17.

Grey vs. Pink

So what’s the deal, folks?  We have “Grey Gardens,” and we have “Legally Blonde.”  We have the Maysles Brothers’ classic off-beat realist documentary set to music, and we have a blockbuster hit with all the pink trimmings.  Why should only one member of this duo make my blood boil?  Because despite their similar birthplace, “Grey Gardens” is an adaptation of a film for the stage, while Legally Blonde” is a rip-off of a movie.  The former takes a film and alters it, builds on it, takes chances: it is transformed, by artists rather than producers, from a film intotheatre.  Blonde, however, changes line A to line B, and bam, it’s opening night quicker than you can say “but the movie wasn’t even that good.”  Blonde is not theatre, it is a movie being forced into a role in which it should not be.Something has to be done about these movie/band/biography rip-offs that are invading the mainstream American theatre posed as actual worthwhile art.                       

                                   

Now I’m not an idealist.  I know that Broadway and mainstream theatre has always been about money.  There have always been producers, and every amazing piece of art has its fair share of marketing and money-driven issues.  But while previously money fueled art, now money is eclipsing any chance at art.  Broadway producers are so eager to pour their coffers into a rip-off musical adaptation, that they deny giving real theatrical writers and composers the same chance to be on stage.  Haven’t they learned anything from “High Fidelity”?  Haven’t they seen that each new hit to come to the American stage was previously at the British National Theatre?  The American people may enjoy fluff like “Movin’ Out” or “Mama Mia,” but they also flock to see ”The History Boys” and “Sweeney Todd.”  I’m not in any position to judge what American people have the right of seeing.   But I do believe that the American people should have choice, should have the freedom to choose what they see.  We must begin to offer more than fluff to the mainstream public if we are to salvage any part of the rich American theatrical history that has fueled so many wonderful pieces.  Let’s give American writers and composers more of a chance at showing the Broadway audiences what they can do.  I bet we’ll be surprised at how well they do.

The Meaning of Life

           

       I came to the marathon production of “The Coast of Utopia” at Lincoln Center prepared for a lot of things.  I came prepared to walk out of nine hours of theater hungry, nursing soar hamstrings, and with a bad case of indigestion from the two short meal breaks during which I’d shove slices of pizza down my throat while simultaneously digesting three hours of Russian-flavored philosophy that had just been thrown at me.  What I did not come prepared for, though, was the fact that, for a moment, I’d step closer than I ever had before to answering that age old, ever-elusive question, “what is the meaning of life?”  Not surprisingly to those that know his work, the answer came from the pen of Mr. Tom Stoppard.         

     In the play, Stoppard’s characters spend years, practically the whole of their lifetimes (and nine hours of their audience’s), trying to peg down the definitions of history’s most famous capitalized nouns: Reason, Freedom, Art, Liberty.  How heroic they seem on the stage, these men sacrificing everything for philosophy,  unwaveringly shouting their eloquent monologues in the face of exile, tyranny, and death.  And what for?  These men are not those who need to be freed.  They are aristocrats, who could otherwise spend their time doing whatever 19th century aristocrats do.  Yet they proceed, with all of their minds and hearts, to search for the key, the answer, the philosophy that will allow them to free all mankind from the shackles of slavery and ignorance.  For only then, they argue, can an individual be free.  Dang.  And here I am, sitting on my couch watching “America’s Next Top Skinny Person” while there’s a genocide going on in Darfur and homeless people are sleeping on the street outside my window.  I repeat again, for emphasis, Dang.

             

            Walking out of the Vivian Beaumont amongst my fellow marathoners, I was nagged, nudged even, by two insistent questions: what should I do?  How should I live my life?  Stoppard’s characters would have me stand up, yell from the depths of my soul, and revolt. Yet, where did all of their efforts, their beautiful monologues, lead the oppressed people on whose behalf they spoke?  Their actions did not free anyone from life’s many injustices, and their words survived only to be read by the bourgeois intellectuals of the generations to come.  So why did these intelligent, wealthy men spend their lives obsessing over the state of the world, when they knew how little impact they were having?  Why didn’t they waste their time away sipping lemonade and reading George Sand?  The answer must be that they couldn’t.  They had no other option.  Inside there burned a fire that necessitated their fight against the status-quo, and this fire was fueled more from a love of words and an obsession with philosophy than from a sense of moral duty.  To them, not spending their life philosophizing about freedom and liberty was an impossibility.  And they were happy doing it.  They were tortured by the questions they asked and the answers that failed to come, but they were in love with this torture and sought it everywhere they went.

 

            My day-long affair with Stoppard’s characters left me wondering, where are our Bakunins and our Turgenevs? What has happened to that drive, that desire to shout from the rooftops?  Choice has happened. Freedom has happened.  We have gained the freedom that 19th century people dreamed of, but with it has come an overwhelming dose of apathy.  It is too easy to not care, to not think, to not explore in this e-country of ours.  Freedom means the right to care about what you want to, but as a young member of this planet, I am hard-pressed to accept that freedom means the right to care about nothing. I am well aware of the fact that the world is plagued with a tremendous laundry list of issues. Our individual inefficacy in the face of all the world’s problems, however, should not lead us to a sense of Sisyphean hopelessness.  After a week of my own philosophizing, the question I now find myself asking is, what do I care about, what do I feel compelled to stand up in favor of and sacrifice for? 

            The meaning of life, as inspired by Tom Stoppard, is to be passionate about something.  Stand up for something, but not only because you feel a moral or ethical obligation, but because you want to.  Because you need to.  Because you’re so excited or enraged by something that it makes you act, because doing otherwise would be denying your inner self a chance to thrive, a chance to live.  So skip over an article on gun control in the paper in favor of the Garfield comic. And enjoy that Garfield comic, because that is our right, and it is something we must always remember to cherish. But when the time comes when you feel the need to stand up, to speak about something, do it.  And do it not out of guilt, but out of love for that world where Reason, Freedom, Art, and Liberty abound.