Sondheim's fag" lyric- Page 5

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:46pm

Ugh...don't even.

I don't mind including a song in that moment...but the CLEAR winner for that spot should have been Happily Ever After. Not Marry Me a Little! Wretched.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:49pm

I totally agree about "Happily Ever After!" Way better song than "Marry Me a Little," which is sappier, and more self-pitying. But I guess the jaundiced view of marriage in "Happily" - especially if it comes at the end of the first act - pretty much forecloses the possibility of Bobby getting to his moment of, you know, "only connect" at the end of Act II. Personally, I don't think COMPANY needs a song for Bobby at the end of Act I - though I'm grateful it's currently there, because I so enjoyed watching Raul Esparza sing it.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:57pm

Well...I think Happily Ever After would work wonderfully because it is in direct response to him putting himself out there to Amy, and being rebuffed. Which of course leads to the discontent and resentment of Side by Side, the empty sexual encounter with April and the game changer: the scene with Joanne.

And even though Robert comes to the realization that he wants to move towards a relationship, he actually is alone at the end of the show. Marry Me a Little dissipates all of the forward movement that could be achieved by adding Happily Ever After.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 3:05pm

I think Sondheim must have a soft spot for "Marry Me a Little" because the lyric describes exactly what he wanted from Lee Remick when he proposed to her, what Arthur wanted from Nora Kaye, what Michael wanted from Donna, and what Jerry wanted from everyone: to be married, but just a little, and to "look not too deep" or to "go not too far" so that they wouldn't have "have to give up a thing" and they could stay who they were.

But I love hearing Larry Kert sing the beginning of "Happily Ever After" on the Scrabble album.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 3:08pm

Oh, I think it's a marvelous song. But in the context of Company (especially as the Act I closer), it makes Bobby seem even more wishy-washy and beige than he already is.

A little bite is what's needed to make us invest completely in the character.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 3:31pm

No one is looking at this in the context of the song. The women are saying that they could understand if their partner happened to be boring, lousy in bed, gay or even dead. Their problem is that he can't commit. It doesn't mean anything.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 3:32pm

Arguing about Company is so gay.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 3:51pm

>> my only contact with the show is the original bway cast album

Let me see if I have this correct. You're making pronouncements about the supposed imperialism of PACIFIC OVERTURES and have no idea what the libretto is about???

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 4:01pm

Chewy, you're such a fag.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 4:14pm

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 4:17pm

Are those gay n* sticks?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 4:22pm

Faggot may mean bundle of sticks in the dictionary, but it's also a viciously pejorative word for gay men, whether or not you agree.

Updated On: 12/28/10 at 04:22 PM

[Unknown User]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 4:24pm

Phyllis, I love you for saying viciously pejorative.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 4:25pm

It's kind of redundant, isn't it?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 5:39pm

And faggoting is a kind of lace!

SeanMartin, I love your outrage!

I mean, duh, I read the PO libretto, okay? I've never seen it performed is all. Why don't you pour yourself a Drambuie and just chill?

I do think "Marry Me a Little" at the end of Act 1 kind of finishes the show before it's finished, and so does "Happily Ever After," and so does, really, anything. In a perfect world, he'd sing all three songs - those two and "Being Alive" - at the end, and let the audience vote: Which Bobby do you want? The unmarried mocker? The cynically married closet case? Or the sappily married ex-gay who has been through aversion therapy and believes at last that he wants women?

There's no way to end COMPANY!

It's a Brechtian musical, let it end Brecthian-ly with cynical unresolvedness.

Sondheim has given it musical theater's first group therapy ending. "Bobby, do you want to share with the group?" And Bobby says, "Help me feel." And everyone in the group says, "Go ahead, Bobby, feel." And Bobby feels.

And then what?

He marries Marta? April? The niece from Ohio?

He marries somebody, and he cheats on her, and then he dies of AIDS in 1983.

Or he follows Dean Jones's real life arc, and finds Jesus, and testifies in Congress against gay marriage.

Or he follows Sondheim's arc and gets into leather, then gives it up and falls in love with a cute Asian guy half his age.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 6:07pm

For the record, Sondheim is not "into leather."

Don't believe everything you hear at Splash Mondays over 3 too many Cosmos.

Wait--Fenchurch?

Updated On: 12/28/10 at 06:07 PM

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 6:37pm

Who is Fenchurch?

Am I not to believe stories whispered to me in confidence by Richard Rodgers's grandchildren?

Anyway, I ask again:

What do you suppose happens to Bobby after the end of COMPANY?

Does he become Joanne's 5th husband? Or, 4th or 6th, or whatever number it would be?

Hey, by the way, and what does Bobby do for a living, anyway?

Is he a high school teacher? Is he in PR? I don't picture him as a banker. Is he an editor at Scribner's? An astrological therapist? Who pays his rent?

[dramarama3]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 6:41pm

But I thought the reason it was 'viciously pejorative' was because of the whole stick meaning/history? Otherwise, does someone want to explain to me why I should be offended by that word?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 6:42pm

When I'm called a faggot on the street in 2010 it still stings. Other than that, I have no idea what you're talking about.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 6:51pm

C'mon, you can't deny the crazy overtones.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 7:40pm

>> I read the PO libretto, okay? I've never seen it performed is all. Why don't you pour yourself a Drambuie and just chill?

Sure. I always love to see little children pretending they know about something when their full acquaintance with a show is through the liner notes. No concept of the directorial style. No idea of the librettist's intent. No real sense of the score's context. Oh yeah, bud, that just gives you dollops of credibility.

Un-freaking-believable.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 10:48pm

Gosh, I wish I were Fenchurch, if it meant I could play the bassoon!

SeanMartin! Sweetheart! I'm sorry you're angry. I enjoyed your aggressive bold-facing of the words "liner notes," by the way! Hey, and wouldn't the staging of a particular musical vary from production to production? So that, by your logic, one couldn't make claims about the show itself unless one had seen every single production? I mean, if the only way to understand a show is to have observed first-hand the director's "vision," or whatever.

S/M, I really don't understand your hostility.

Please just let me know if you need a hug.

[Kad]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 11:21pm

Company is not a "Brechtian" musical. Sondheim never wrote anything really "Brechtian"- despite what some directors may think (even though I saw a wonderful Anyone Can Whistle staged in a true epic-theatre style, and it was brilliant). People throw around the term "Brechtian" to describe anything that isn't naturalistic, and that's false.

And Pacific Overtures isn't arguing for a sentimentalized "Orient". That's definitely not what "Next" is saying- it's not even a subtle song.

I'm not sure how the fact that Sondheim wrote no specifically non-white characters (save Pacific Overtures) makes him racist. He may not have made Sweeney Todd or Bobby or the Witch black in the text, but he certainly didn't make them white, either. Hence why we have performers like Brian Stokes Mitchell and Norm Lewis and Vanessa Williams performing them. Why does a playwright/composer have to specifically write a "black", etc., role?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 11:46pm

Kad, Sondheim himself says - in his BOOK OF ME - that COMPANY is Brecht-ish, if not in fact Brecht*ian*. Well he makes a little parenthetical nod in Brecht's direction, acknowledging that his concept for the musical owes something to Brecht. That's not to say that SS is a scholar of Brecht! The definition of "Brechtian" is open to interpretation. But it's interesting to me that Sondheim - who claims to hate Brecht - is willing to admit that there are Brechtian aspects, as far as he is concerned, to some of his work.

And I mean, come on, dude, and dudes, and everyone in general: If you were a black performer, who could act and sing and dance, from 1957 to 1980, would it not have struck you at some point that Sondheim musicals weren't much interested in casting black people? I think we have established that Tonya Pinkins, who had a small part in MERRILY, was the first black performer cast in a Sondheim show. And the question of what constitutes a "black character" or a "white character" is a complicated question, worth discussing, so I don't mean to shut down conversation. I'm just saying: Black people were erased from Sondheim's world view for basically his whole Bway career. If you don't want to call that racist, well, you must admit at least that it's true.

[darquegk]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 11:52pm

There's a difference between "not being aggressively racially inclusive" and "being racially exclusive."

Star Wars, up until 1999, only included a single minority character, who was a bandit of sorts. Did that mean that Star Wars was, by nature, racially backwards, and George Lucas a racist? Or did it mean that there only happened to be one black actor in a film that had no racial elements to it?

(Granted, the prequel film "Phantom Menace" WAS often considered to be racist, but we're not discussing it.)