Reading of New Sondheim Musical with Nathan Lane and Bernadette Peters — Page 7

Have you all seen the NYTix.com subpage for Square One? It has the first mention I’ve seen of “The Susquehanna River.” Had anyone heard about that?

Quoted from that page:

Square One on Broadway Background

With Broadway legends Nathan Lane and Bernadette Peters already attached to the latest Stephen Sondheim and David Ives production Square One, Broadway interest in this show has been piqued.

In 2015, David Ives and Stephen Sondheim fell in love with films by Luis Buñuel and worked on a now-cancelled Broadway show together, That show, The Susquehanna River, was based on two films by Luis Buñuel, Belle de Jour (1967) and Tristana (1970).

Scathing Commentary on Bourgeoisie

Sondheim and Ives also collaborated on Francophile which is a blend of other Luis Buñuel films The Exterminating Angel(1962) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), which both share a common plot-point.

This show is a scathing commentary on the bourgeoisie in Franco’s Spain. The irony is that the word "Francophile" is actually social commentary about France, not Spain at all, which underlines the duo's dark humor on the matter. The Broadway musical Square One borrows heavily from the previously shelved show and the latter development.

Franco’s Spain or New York's Hamptons?

The show is ultimately a scathing commentary on the bourgeoisie in Franco’s Spain before WWII and the excesses and inhumanity that set the course towards the Spanish Civil War. This ultimately became the training ground for Hitler's army and many blame the Spanish Civil War as being the First Battle Of WWII.

Others see the show as a scathing attack on the modern bourgeoisie of The Hamptons, NY or Malibu, CA where excess, mediocrity and materialistic values reign supreme.

Agreed, Georgeanddot. And Sondheim is the only composer I’d ever want to tackle European art house cinema.

https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/cameron-mackintosh-on-sondheims-unfinished-musical_58110.html

Mackintosh was quick to clear up any misinformation: "The unfinished musical was the Bourgeoisie one [presumably based in part on Luis Buñuel's film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, as had previously been reported]. My last conversation with Steve was the Sunday before he died. He asked me to go through the entire score with him on the phone."

Will it ever be seen on stage, we ask: "I don't know. It was 50 or 60 per cent there. Musically. What was interesting was that Steve had never gone through a full score with me before like that – I think he wanted me to reinforce his view as to whether or not he was going to complete it. Because of the amount of energy it would have taken.

"I mean," Mackintosh laughs, "he was always looking for excuses not to write! When we went through it I found so many vigorous tunes, but none that he had fully completed. Some moments would go off at tangents – I'd ask him: 'why don't you let the music do its thing!'.

"There was a whole section in the musical that he told me he wanted to be 'wall-to-wall music' – like the Folliessequence. But sadly he never got to write that. There was a lot of music within what he'd already written that I'm sure he would have used for that specific section, but he died before he was able to do all of that."

In the end, Mackintosh was philosophical about the entire experience. "In a way, I was blessed that my last conversation with him, a dear friend, was when his mind was working full tilt. And talking about some amazing stuff he'd written."

Interesting that on one hand we have ‘rumours’ the show is looking for a home (and wasn’t this printed in the dramatist so not just random Instagram people) and on the other hand we have Cam Mac questioning its completeness and quality. Didn’t Scott Rudin once describe what he heard of the score as like Passion? If so, I’d personally like to hear another opinion than Cam Mack about the score. ‘Letting the music do its thing’ instead of ‘going off in tangents’ to me sounds like code for him expecting traditional song structures whereas perhaps Sondheim was going for something like Passion. In any case, reflecting on my assumptions for what could hold up presentation of this show it does sound like the challenge of how to navigate unfinished work has unsurprisingly been true.

No one is you, Steve, there we agree.

I thought the scoop was that he'd finished a complete act one. Wasn't there a workshop/reading in 2016?

It is very clear that Sondheim finished the first act. This was confirmed in one of the interviews in the just-published book Finale by D. T. Max. We know "finished" is very different than locked, especially had he been able to write and rewrite during an Off-Broadway run, etc. but a full score exists for this half of the show.

I think the most likely scenario for this ever being done publicly is for it to be billed as a one-act musical based on The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Even though the musical was written to merge this source material with Exterminating Angel as act two, I'd imagine the first half could stand alone as the film does.