It's very interesting getting to hear these words put to the music they were written for. I've always wondered how much of an impact Lapine had on Sondheim's sound in the second half of his career, or if that sound was just the jittery engine that gave his pastiche-ier works their zip and energy. That bit where the main singer gets stuck on "in my own four walls" etc sounds almost identical to the "but he drew me close" section from Into the Wood, but also a lot of it reminds me of the score from Saturday Night.
The play itself is atrocious. Obviously it's a clumsy reading of an early version, and I can "hear" where some songs would be drawn from (like the post-sex bit where, as they put more clothes on, they get more inhibited) but oof. It's funny listening to everyone laughing at the awful jokes. I can't imagine the monumental amount of work it would've taken to shape this up into something functional, because there's almost nothing to build on.
Would be curious if anyone has any familiarity with the Finn version could compare the two.
Updated On: 3/24/26 at 05:30 PM
