Sondheim for Dummies

You say you don’t like musicals? That they are for intellectual lightweights and involve characters unnaturally breaking into song? Then you must not know the works of Stephen Sondheim.

At the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
December 2, 2023

The blow of his death two years ago has driven me to revisit his art -- and made me want to go all Sweeney Todd on anyone who claims not to like musicals.

Sondheim “permeates our cultural oxygen like a latter-day Shakespeare,” wrote the New York Times’ chief theatre critic Ben Brantley two weeks ago. True, he is the most cerebral of composers and no other approaches his ingenuity, craft, or intellectual reach. Far from stopping the action, his songs drive the plot forward as he basks in irony, ambivalence, rhyme, and psychological and social insights. 

But for all that, I will never stop listening because the songs slay me with their emotional impact. While each masterpiece connects with the head, so many take up permanent residence in the heart. 

 

These include “Marry Me a Little” and “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company, “Pretty Women” from Sweeney Todd, and the devastating “Our Time” -- a new favorite from Merrily We Roll Along. Who’s crying? I’m not crying.

 

Then there are the comedic masterpieces, like Sweeney’s “A Little Priest” or Gypsy’s “You Gotta Get a Gimmick,” wherein a wise old stripper tells a newcomer that “I used to be a schleppa / Now I’m Miss Mazeppa.” 

The Cast of Sweeney Todd
December 2, 2023

Last week, on my annual birthday trip to New York, my wonderful husband agreed to see the 26-piece orchestra revival of Sweeney Todd for the second time this year. Expensive to produce even by Broadway standards, there has not been a Sweeney on this scale since the original opened in 1979.

 

But even if I listen to the cast album at home while making tuna salad, Sweeney Todd knocks me over every time. It is Sondheim giving everything he’s got.

 

At the Hudson Theatre
November 29, 2023

I also saw something new: the “close to perfect” reimagining of what was originally a legendary flop, 1981’s Merrily We Roll Along. It melted me and reminded me why even Sondheim’s biggest failure was tackled repeatedly until someone got it right.

I am currently taking a Zoom class with an inspiring Boston-based Sondheim expert. She has deepened my appreciation of Sondheim’s vast achievements  -- and forced me to extend my attention to his more difficult works like Assassins and Sunday in the Park with George. 

My instructor is fond of quoting another Sondheim expert: “If you’ve seen one Sondheim show, you’ve seen one Sondheim show.” Meaning that he never repeated himself. 

The Cast of Merrily We Roll Along
November 29, 2023

Sondheim’s worlds are inhabited by slaves in ancient Rome, savvy burlesque strippers on vaudeville’s Orpheum Circuit, bewildered characters from Grimms’ fairy tales, a pointillist painter, a vengeful barber in Victorian London, and an emotionally unavailable single in 1970s New York. He even wrote a controversial musical about presidential assassins.

If, like me, the vast scope of Sondheim’s art leaves you feeling a bit daunted, I recommend just listening to Sweeney Todd and Company (and checking out the HBO documentary Six by Sondheim). The tales of the barber and the bachelor never stop revealing new pleasures and are the best places for any negative ninnies to realize that they do, in fact, love musicals.