Whenever
Stephen Sondheim hits a major birthday milestone, the cream of the Broadway
crop gathers to celebrate his illustrious body of work with a tribute concert.
Everyone is dressed to the nines, and all the old favorites are trotted out –
original cast members giving you chills as they sing the classics you remember,
the biggest names in Broadway singing iconic hits, and everyone reveling in a
brilliant night of incomparable melodies and lyrics. This year, Sondheim had
this 90th birthday, and of course, following the usual tradition of
packing a concert hall wasn’t feasible. Instead, Broadway took to YouTube.
Things
got off to an inauspicious start. The livestream was delayed by about 40
minutes, and when it started, we got a quick, lovely opening of Stephen
Schwartz playing “All Things Bright and Beautiful” from Follies before host Raúl Esparza took to the screen with a
microphone he didn’t realize was muted. More technical delays. All told, we got
started “for real” more than an hour late. (Since Esparza’s few brief segues
appear to be the only parts actually streamed live, with everything else seeming
to be prerecorded, I’m not exactly sure what the extended holdup was for.)
But
even though the show began on the wrong foot, once it got going, it turned into
a beautiful night. I liked pretty much everything about how the show was set
up. Most performers were introduced via illustrations of them from Sondheim
shows they performed in (i.e. Donna Murphy in Passion, Nathan Lane in A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Michael Cerveris in Assassins, etc.), and the evening included both the usual stunning
performances and quieter, more personal tributes as people shared memories
about Sondheim and discussed what he (or the particular song they were singing)
meant to them. Nathan Lane made me smile when he joked about how happy he was
that there was “finally” a Sondheim tribute concert, and I loved what Maria
Friedman said about how, when you have lyrics like Sondheim’s, all an actor has
to do is follow it and they have nothing to fear.
The
online, socially-distanced format gave rise mostly to solo pieces, although
Neil Patrick Harris enlisted his kids for a few non-sung responses in his
delightful performance of “The Witch’s Rap” from Into the Woods. That’s understandable to me. 1) If the many delays
to the show are any indication, maybe Broadway people aren’t super savvy at
online-video recording. 2) Coordinating on any song over an Internet connection
would be tough, but I’m sure the intricacy of Sondheim’s music would make that
infinitely harder. But a few brave souls took a stab at it (I’m working under
the assumption that, for the most part, everyone just recorded their own bits
separately and then someone cut it all together.) We got an instrumental
performance of the overture from Merrily
We Roll Along, a cute duet of Into
the Woods’s “It Takes Two” featuring Beanie Feldstein and Ben Platt, a
lovely duet of “Move On” from Sunday in
the Park with George revival stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford (I
feel like Gyllenhaal has definitely earned his place in the theatre world now,)
and a couple memorable larger team-ups.
But
yes, lots and lots of solos, covering a wide array of Sondheim’s work. We got
some deep cuts (Judy Kuhn doing a song from Dick
Tracy? Brian Stokes Mitchell doing a cut song from Assassins?) and all manner of iconic classics. Some songs choices
fit their performers to a tee, and some seemed to come out of nowhere but
generally still worked beautifully. Stripped away from the glitz and pomp of a big
fully-orchestrated concert, most of the songs were accompanied only by piano,
the performers wore their everyday clothes (with Aaron Tveit showing off quite
the quarantine hairstyle!), and the backgrounds of the performers’ homes ranged
from artfully staged (Donna Murphy sitting next to her piano with sheet music
from Passion sitting out as she sang A Little Night Music’s “Send in the
Clowns”) to wonderfully ordinary (pretty sure Laura Benanti sang “I Remember”
from Evening Primrose while sitting
on her bathroom floor.) We also got one (very minor) parody from YouTuber Randy
Rainbow, who sang Sweeney Todd’s “By
the Sea” to Mr. Sondheim himself and changed bits of the dialogue to include
references to the pandemic (like getting decked out in a homemade face mask in
lieu of the usual “bathing dresses.”)
A
couple things struck me watching this. First, there’s just so much essential Sondheim that a 2-hour+ concert still leaves out
wide swathes of his most beloved work. Despite all the wonderful songs included
here, there was no “A Little Priest” (though that one may have been hampered by
the remote nature of the concert, since it’s so dependent on the interaction,)
no “Good Thing Going,” no “Losing My Mind,” and so many more I could easily
rattle off. Second, I got to wondering how song choice occurs and what
hierarchy there might be in concerts like this. How do you decide who gets to
do “Finishing the Hat” or “Send in the Clowns”? For the big divas, do Patti
LuPone and Bernadette Peters get first choice and the others go from there?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I’ll
break down some more specific thoughts on individual performances on another
day, but all in all, a great night that’s probably much more enjoyable to
settle down and watch now that it’s not live, since you won’t have to deal with
the long delays! What a lovely tribute, a beautiful celebration of his man’s
work and all that it’s meant to millions of people for decades.
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