#51
Posted: 12/15/04 at 10:36pm
I think Sondheim still prefers Happily Ever After actually VeuveCliquot (I'm not trying to say you're wrong--I love and agree with most of your posts here). Quoting from page 201-2 of the Seacrest hardcover:
[About Being Alive]"Nothing actually has changed. Marriage is still the same smothering relationship full of vain regret, unsolved antagonisms, and annihilating resentments, but its existence spells the difference between a submerged, half-dead kind of life and true awareness. The implication was that barriers that were self-imposed could only be removed by the arrival of someone else, but it was a debatable point, given the marriages on display here. If Robert had learned anything by the end of the show, it was not about the ideal of marital harmony or wise maturity. All his friends had rotten marriages, but he knew that already. If nothing had happened to the hero, how could he have a change of heart? Artistically speaking, "Happily Ever After" was the only valid ending, even if, as Prince said, it seemed to frighten audiences. But "Being Alive" it was, and it became one of SOndheim's best-known songs. Years later, while listening to an orchestral reading for a revival of Company by the Roundabout Theatre Company on Broadway in 1995, Sondheim was observed afterwards leaving his sea, walking away and wiping his eyes. [my snarky comment--maybe he was so sad by the drearily small orchestra and Tunick's lame new "contemporary" orchestrations]
Sondheim said he had always been aware that "Happily Ever After" was the logical song for Robert to sing, and he had never felt comfortable with the substitution of "Being Alive." "There was one time when I saw the show where it worked, and I can't tell you why, but it was an off-Broadway production at the York Theatre some years ago. Susan Schulman directed it, and the leading part was sung by a guy, now dead, named David James Carroll, and somehow, when he turned front and sang that song, it was as if the whole evening had led to it. I don't know how he did it, but it was completely fulfilling. I thought, my God, we don't need a transition of the right actor's playing it.
Now maybe if I saw it again I wouldn't think so, but that is the way it seemed that night and it was the one time the song moved me. I don't mean that I don't get touched or moved by it. But the thing that moves me is aline that was written by George, not me. It's when Amy says, 'Blow out your candles and make a wish. Want something. Want SOMEthing!' I get chills listening to it"
End quote
I love that line too.
I think Sondheim hasn't put Happily back in because now audiences know and love Being Alive prob more than any other song there, and I doubt directors would be happy with Happily instead. BTW I despise most of the new changes by Furth and him (can you still perform the original from MTI? I know the Kennedy Center version did--with the original 1970 orchestrations). Some of the changes are minor--the drunken story now involved less bottles of wine than before, but many IMHo don't work. The songs, even without that great 1970s synth, still sound very 1970s to me, as do lines like "Or my service will explain"--who uses answering services now? The new revised libretto starts with answering machines so? I think the relationships and beliefs feel much more 1970 than 1995 or now anyway
[About Being Alive]"Nothing actually has changed. Marriage is still the same smothering relationship full of vain regret, unsolved antagonisms, and annihilating resentments, but its existence spells the difference between a submerged, half-dead kind of life and true awareness. The implication was that barriers that were self-imposed could only be removed by the arrival of someone else, but it was a debatable point, given the marriages on display here. If Robert had learned anything by the end of the show, it was not about the ideal of marital harmony or wise maturity. All his friends had rotten marriages, but he knew that already. If nothing had happened to the hero, how could he have a change of heart? Artistically speaking, "Happily Ever After" was the only valid ending, even if, as Prince said, it seemed to frighten audiences. But "Being Alive" it was, and it became one of SOndheim's best-known songs. Years later, while listening to an orchestral reading for a revival of Company by the Roundabout Theatre Company on Broadway in 1995, Sondheim was observed afterwards leaving his sea, walking away and wiping his eyes. [my snarky comment--maybe he was so sad by the drearily small orchestra and Tunick's lame new "contemporary" orchestrations]
Sondheim said he had always been aware that "Happily Ever After" was the logical song for Robert to sing, and he had never felt comfortable with the substitution of "Being Alive." "There was one time when I saw the show where it worked, and I can't tell you why, but it was an off-Broadway production at the York Theatre some years ago. Susan Schulman directed it, and the leading part was sung by a guy, now dead, named David James Carroll, and somehow, when he turned front and sang that song, it was as if the whole evening had led to it. I don't know how he did it, but it was completely fulfilling. I thought, my God, we don't need a transition of the right actor's playing it.
Now maybe if I saw it again I wouldn't think so, but that is the way it seemed that night and it was the one time the song moved me. I don't mean that I don't get touched or moved by it. But the thing that moves me is aline that was written by George, not me. It's when Amy says, 'Blow out your candles and make a wish. Want something. Want SOMEthing!' I get chills listening to it"
End quote
I love that line too.
I think Sondheim hasn't put Happily back in because now audiences know and love Being Alive prob more than any other song there, and I doubt directors would be happy with Happily instead. BTW I despise most of the new changes by Furth and him (can you still perform the original from MTI? I know the Kennedy Center version did--with the original 1970 orchestrations). Some of the changes are minor--the drunken story now involved less bottles of wine than before, but many IMHo don't work. The songs, even without that great 1970s synth, still sound very 1970s to me, as do lines like "Or my service will explain"--who uses answering services now? The new revised libretto starts with answering machines so? I think the relationships and beliefs feel much more 1970 than 1995 or now anyway
