Favorite Sondheim Scores- Page 3
Favorite Sondheim Scores
#50Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 9:03am
Passion is an incredibly problematic show with beautiful music. "Loving you" and "I Wish I Could Forget You" are wonderful songs.
Sunday in the Park with George is also a problematic show with beautiful music. I happen to love the actual show as a whole, but many others find the book to be dull. The score of that show though is consistently beautiful throughout. I just love the overall shimmery sound that it has.
#51Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 9:33am
Let's all just ignore the old fart, eh?
PASSION, I think, CAN be problematic. But I loved the Doyle production at Classic Stage, particularly Judy Kuhn, who added a great deal of humanity to Fosca. (Even a laugh or two.) I think it's a fascinating story, and idea for a show. And the music is gorgeous, of course.
I'll never get all of the ROAD SHOW hate. I think there are at least three top notch songs in it, and that the score and show are very good. Has anyone who claims it's bottom-drawer actually SEEN it? Because I think it's also one of those shows one has to see to appreciate. I did.
#52Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 9:42am
^The Doyle production was amazing. I was hoping it would move to broadway so that Judy Kuhn could get award recognition for her performance.
I have not seen or really listened to Road Show.
Question: Should I give Merrily a go? I've never listened to the cast recording or anything. I know that it was a major flop and "Not A Day Goes By" is a great song.
#53Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 9:46am
Someone in a Tree2, I’m interested by your characterization of the book of PACIFIC OVERTURES as a “flaccid play.” To me, it’s the strongest book of any Sondheim musical out there. NIGHT MUSIC gives it a good run, but I give PO extra points for trafficking in – I don’t know quite how to say this – “bigger” ideas? And, to me, succeeding. The character arcs of Kayama and Manjiro have always struck me as two of the boldest and strongest in all of musical theater, as well as the complexity of their personal relationship. It’s not my favorite Sondheim show (that’s SUNDAY) or my favorite Sondheim score (that’s… ugh, I’ll get back to you) – though it rates highly on both of those lists – but I do think it’s one of the most cohesive shows he’s collaborated on.
#54Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 9:52am
icecreambenjamin, you have never heard Merrily?!!?!??!?
Stop what you are doing right now, get the recent P.S. Classics recording and go listen to your new favorite score.
jv92, I also love Bounce/Road Show (score wise, I actually prefer Bounce). I have not seen either show, but the score(s) are wonderful.
"The Best Thing That Ever Happened" is one of my favorite Sondheim ballads.
#55Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 9:57am
Yeah, MERRILY is one of those shows that I always forget has a really, really excellent score. Like, I forget every single time. And then I listen to it, and I'm like, "Wow, this is a real stunner." But like PASSION, it's a show I tend to listen to in its entirety. I might spin "Opening Doors" or "It's a Hit" when I need a pick-me-up, but, for me, the impact of most of the numbers is embedded in what comes before and after them.
#56Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 10:44am
Alright I'll go listen to Merrily. I just recently listened to Follies for the first time and fell in love with it.
BTW what are the best cast recordings of Sondheim shows?
#57Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 10:45amMERRILY WE ROLL ALONG is a must-listen to. I like the PS Classics recording, but get the original cast album first. There's such dynamic energy on it.
#58Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 10:56am
"Someone in a Tree2, I’m interested by your characterization of the book of PACIFIC OVERTURES as a “flaccid play.”
To answer Growl-- I saw the Boston tryout of the OBC back in '76 (or was it late in '75?), and then the Off-Broadway production in the 80's. Both times the passages without songs completely put me to sleep. I agree that the basic changing dialectic between the 2 male leads was a wonderful idea-- so wonderful that it's entire arc was summarized in the brilliant "Poems" and "It's Called a Bowler Hat" numbers, and didn't really need any other book scenes to tell you anything more. One interminable scene of narration about tigers and the Lords of the South, told by a castmember moving a paper fan, has always stayed with me as one of the dullest scenes to ever grace a musical. But oh, that score is breathtaking!
#59Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 11:12am
I'm very conflicted with my feelings toward Pacific Overtures.
The score is both beautiful and dull for me. There are some songs that I love like "Bowler Hat" and "Someone in a Tree" but others that couldve been shorter.
I also found the dialogue very hard to understand and thought it was too complicated.
#60Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 11:28am
Thanks for your thoughts, Someone in a Tree2. While I disagree that the Kayama/Manjiro switcheroo is summarized in those songs – it’s certainly deepened and illuminated by them – it’s nice we share some of the same affections for the show, not the least of which is the breathtaking score. (A friend of mine who shall go unnamed chastises me for loving “Welcome to Kanagawa.” Are you here?)
Have you seen the film of the Broadway production? That was my first – and sadly, so far, has been my only – experience with the show in full, when I was about 20, and I remember being rapt from start to finish. I’d never seen a show with a book quite like it. I ask not to suggest it might “turn” your opinion, as, having seen the Boston and OOB productions, you’re clearly familiar with the material, but just out of curiosity. It’s one of those things that I’m repeatedly both thankful and surprised for – just the fact that it exists.
#61Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 11:34amJv and Icecream - I so totally agree about Judy Kuhn's performance at the CSC's production of Passion. It will probably always rank in my top 10 most memorable theatrical experiences.
#62Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 11:46amI definitely wouldn't mind a bit of rewrite on Pacific Overtures, particularly keeping in mind the amount of immersion our own culture has had with Japan, just so long as it stays an angry, violent show. That's why I like Welcome to Kanagawa so much. If done right, it should make you feel sick.
#63Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 12:49pmI think that Pacific Overtures has such a complicated plot and it's triple casted which makes it even harder to follow.
#64Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 1:43pmThe more I listen to PACIFIC OVERTURES (in full-- on vinyl) the more I truly, truly fall in love with it. It's probably one of his most romantic scores ever. Yes, I said that.
#65Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 1:51pm
^It's such a great score that it and the show deserves to be turned into a film. Out of all of John Weidman's works, it is the most easiest to translate to film because at least there is a plot going on.
Sondheim is such a great songwriter that it would be particularly difficult for me to choose but FOLLIES, COMPANY, INTO THE WOODS, PASSION, ASSASSINS, ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, and even SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE are my personal favorites that I listen to all of them quite often.
#66Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 2:05pmDo you think that Sunday in the Park with George could ever make a good movie? I feel like it would need a really artsy director.
#67Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 2:11pm
^I think it could work if audiences could accept the surrealness of it all.
Maybe Darren Aronofsky could do it.
#68Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 2:16pm
I agree that PO would make a great movie. That or NIGHT MUSIC are the two of his shows that would most easily lend themselves to film. Almost every song is a character number, and, except for "Next," which is problematic even within the show, there are no park-and-bark-style choruses. I could easily imagine "The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea" done a la "Belle" in "Beauty and the Beast" -- with a Japanese aesthetic, of course.
#69Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 2:25pmMaybe "Next" could be cut but the tune remains. A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC has been done as a film in 1977 but was such a critical and financial flop that a remake wouldn't be unfounded.
#70Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 2:52pm
Night Music the film (Liz Taylor as Desiree!) is available on amazon.
I also love PO. The score is one of my faves (Chrysanthemum Tea is a absolute brilliant little mini-musical in its own right.
#71Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 2:56pm
Yeah, the "Night Music" film is almost unwatchable. IRONICALLY.
#72Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 3:00pm
It's criminal what Hal Prince himself allowed to happen on the film of NIGHT MUSIC. Replacing the Swedish setting with an Austrian one basically deleted the entire Perpetual Sunset magic and left us with way too much Schlagsahne and Schmaltz. But the revised "Glamorous Life" and perfectly executed "Weekend in the Country" almost make it worth watching nonetheless. And yes, I agree that a NIGHT MUSIC film remake will never happen but is so deserving of one.
PACIFIC OVERTURES is so deeply woven with theater conventions and performance modes, both American and Asian, that I have a hard time picturing it gaining much through the realistic medium of film. Would "Poems" benefit by seeing the actual leaves and the wind and the drops of rain? Would "Four Black Dragons" be any richer if we saw genuine steamships chugging into the harbor? Doubtful.
Updated On: 11/29/14 at 03:00 PM
#73Favorite Sondheim Scores
Posted: 11/29/14 at 3:05pm
I think any director with any amount of sense wouldn't include the images you suggest.
Take a moment, if you will, and try to imagine a "Pacific Overtures" on film directed by Kurosawa.
THAT'S the movie I'd want.
EDIT: And I totally agree about the revised "Glamorous Life," though I will admit it never quite fully clicked for me until I saw Audra do it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH-iArq5aew
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Broadway Legend Joined: 10/3/14
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