Variety Article: Critics Hate Sondheim — Page 2

Look, critics hate Sondheim, ALW, and many others who has a HUGE fan base. I mean, didn't a lot of critics bash Caroline? Come on!! I have learned never to take anything a critic says too seriously. A lot of them have been doing this for so long, they have forgotten what a good show is and pretty much like shows that appeal to the masses.

---

Of course, that leads to old arguments about whether his books have been worthy of the scores he's written for them.

I agree with Plum that sometimes you need to listen to Sondheim a second time before you can fully appreciate his music ( the lyrics fall easier on the ears the first time around).

He was a bit of an acquired taste for me - thank goodness I bought most of what he has available on videos, OCRs or even concert versions of his shows. I now enjoy them much more than when I first saw my first Sondheim show -- the original production of INTO THE WOODS.

Some of his songs are good as stand-alone music -- one very good example is "I REMEMBER ( SKY)" from Evening Primrose - the lyrics are crisp and the music hauntingly romantic. Barbra even recorded it on her Christmas album, with some new lyrics from Stephen Sondheim.

Sondheim is easily the greatest musical theater composer who ever lived. Anyone who disagrees with that statement doesn't understand what theater is supposed to be about.

HOWEVER, although Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music are basically flawless, some of his other works have some major problems. With ambition often comes greatness, but also imperfection. To summarize:

Sunday in the Park with George: some great, genuinely moving musical and dramatic moments, but the first act is as confusing as the second act is boring.

Into the Woods: close to perfection, but there are some major problems with a general indecisiveness between making the characters caricatures and "real" people.

Passion: A couple of good songs, but soooo boring. Sorry Steve.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Aside from the famous "Comedy Tonight," the score frankly isn't really that good. The book is the main attraction of the show.

Company: Also close to perfection, but the score definitely needs to be listened to a few times before it can be really appreciated (at least in my case).

Assassins: Next to Sweeney Todd, Sondheim's best score, but the book, despite some solid moments, is problematic. It's really more of Weidman's fault than Sondheim's. But it's still a great show.

Follies: Great score, but a complete lack of focus. Who cares about all these other characters? The four leads should get much more attention than they do.


But these are all quibbles. Sondheim is still the greatest. But as I said, ambition is a tricky thing. There may be more "flawless" musicals out there than Sondheim's, but there certainly aren't any as memorable or as important to the development of the art form.

Updated On: 12/21/04 at 09:43 PM

Except that it is.

Updated On: 12/21/04 at 12:07 AM

"...the greatest musical theater composer that ever lived..."

R-I-G-H-T...

Sondheim would be lucky to kiss the lint on the trailing hem of the nethermost garment of Rodgers, Bernstein, Verdi, Wagner, Britten, Gershwin, to name just a few.

MusicMan--when I said "Sondheim is the greatest musical theater composer that ever lived," I was not including opera composers. And honestly, as great as Rodgers, Berstein, and Gershwin were, Sondheim really is better--he's got the great music AND lyrics (BOTH of which he wrote himself after WSS and Candide, etc.), plus an understanding of the human condition no one else has matched.

Opera is musical theatre, Distinctive Baritone.

Sondheim is a master in his field but to suggest that he corners the market on the "human condition" is just plain absurd, if for no other reason than his "understanding" is strictly limited to the ambivalent, perverse, cynical and death-obsessed which accounts for its limited audience.
Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals present the totality of life in a Shakesperean fashion in the way most people experience it, the light and the dark, the comic and the romantic, the tragic and the transcendent. Bernstein's music, not only in the musicals, but throughout his entire oeurvre, radiates a life-affirming joy, power, passion and spirituality unknown to Sondheim. I have yet to find in all of Sondheim a lyric that matches the warmth, wit and wonder (let alone its ability to conceptualize an evolving metamorphosis into concrete terms) of Alan Jay Lerner's final stanza in GIGI:
"When did your sparkle turn to fire
And your warmth become desire?
Oh, what miracle has made you the way you are?"

Sondheim has his strengths but let's keep things in perspective.

True, opera is a form of musical theater, but most people, including myself, tend to see them as two different art forms within the same medium, so it's not really relavent to compare someone like Sondheim to say, Puccini.

As for Rodgers and Hammerstein, they were wonderful, but they definitely presented a sugar-coated version of the world that Sondheim does not. Take their darkest musical for example-- Carousel . This is a show about a guy who beats his wife and kills himself. And it's STILL sugary-sweet. I love the show, and R&H as well, but come on. There's no comparison.

Isn't arguing about theater fun?

Updated On: 12/21/04 at 04:39 PM

Exactly, Distinctive Baritone, dark and sugary-sweet, like life. If you ever cried your eyes out because someone died or goofily wrapped your arms around someone and told them you loved them, you've experienced a Rodgers-and-Hammerstein moment.

Yes, it's as beautifully written and abstract as my example, BlueWizard---and also detached (willfully so) from any human relationship.

People beat the artistic process every time.

Updated On: 12/21/04 at 06:29 PM

Ah, I see what you're saying. However, it could work the other way, too: where in the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon is that kind of disconnection, cynicism and ambiguity ever expressed? I think these represent a facet of the human experience that are neglected by R&H. Sondheim is very much a post-war writer/composer, so naturally he tends towards the a more cynical and introverted style.

Still, I believe Sondheim has written some works that show unabashed human connection: "No One Is Alone," maybe.

---

Updated On: 12/21/04 at 06:37 PM

Where's the ambiguity?

How about in the detente between East and West, man and woman, tradition and progess in THE KING AND I??
How about in the tight-knit New England community in CAROUSEL who not only come together to celebrate a clambake but also ostracize and snub one of their own?
How about the "sugar-y sweet" ingenue Laurey who just happens to have the hots for the brooding, thuggish ranchhand with the dirty pix?
How about the stalwart marine with a Phildephia mainline-Ivy league pedigree who cannot come to grips with his own racism and familial loyalties?

I could go on but the ambivalences and ambiguities and complexities are all there in the overall architecture of the plays.
Finally, no happy ending is accomplished in a Rodgers and Hammerstein without a high price being paid, usually a death. Yet, life goes on.
Seems to me that's how most of us experience our humanity.

And that, in fact, it reinforces what you bring to it. If you're an iconoclast, you walk away feeling that it speaks for you. If you're very religious and are already furious about this Piss Christ picture you've heard about, it reinforces your fury. So the comfort is having your point of view remain exactly the same before and after seeing it.

Which is what's interesting about Feingold's notion of "clarifying" positions.