Best Moments: Sondheim’s 90th Birthday Concert

 

Revisiting the remote 90^th birthday concert for Stephen Sondheim, picking out some of my favorite moments from that lovely tribute. Rather than just doing a straight Top Five (or, let’s be real, it probably would’ve been a Top Ten,) I came up with assorted “categories” to award specific performers for. All winners chosen by my entirely-subjective, highly-unscientific means.

 

Best Deep Cut – Brian Stokes Mitchell, singing a cut song from Assassins called “The Flag Song,” even if I drove myself crazy during the first half of the song trying to remember where I’d heard aspects of that melody before (I was trying to tie it to “Another National Anthem,” which was wrong – it was “It’s in Your Hands Now” from Road Show.) I don’t know if anyone personifies the word “eargasm” quite as well as Brian Stokes Mitchell, and he sang the crap out of this song I didn’t know but of course came away loving.

 

Best Spoken Tribute – Nathan Lane. So lovely. After advising us to “try to work with a genius” if at all possible, for the betterment of both ourselves and our work, he clarified just what he meant by that word in reference to Sondheim: “There are angry geniuses, tortured geniuses, self-destructive geniuses—he’s a nice genius.” I immediately flashed on people like David O. Russell who make art by screaming at actors, whose loathsome behavior is permitted due to their “one-of-a-kind talent,” and hearing that tribute from Nathan Lane made me love Sondheim even more.

 

Best Diva Synergy – Of course, this is “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company. How could it not be? First we’ve got Christine Baranski giving looks all over the place, then there’s Meryl Streep and the perfectly-timed way she unstoppers that bottle of scotch (and then decides against using the glass,) and then it’s Audra McDonald letting loose that voice of hers. I love their matching white bathrobes and the “I’ve had it up to here with this shit” vibe that they’re all given off. Musically, it’s not one of my favorites, just because McDonald is so blatantly several cuts above the other two vocally, but it’s a splendid performance to enjoy.

 

Best Belt – Okay, I’m only human. You put Raúl Esparza in front of me, and there’s only so much I can do. Here, he sings “Take Me to the World” from Evening Primrose. One thing I’ve always liked about Esparza is that he really understands the key to a great belt, which is intentionality. In this song, he doesn’t just come out of the gate at full blast. He builds so slowly, so gradually – in the first verse, his voice is gentle and delicate, and by the end, he’s giving it to you with all that strength, rising throughout to this natural crescendo. So good.

 

Best Emotional Delivery – Michael Cerveris, singing “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George. Stunning rendition of one of my absolute Sondheim favorites. Nobody but nobody does dramatic singing like Cerveris, and he killed it. Seriously, scoop up the fragments of my heart and put them in a bucket.

 

Best Articulation – This is how you know that the categories were defined by what I saw in the concert and not the other way around; I wouldn’t typically watch a concert like this and think, “Okay, who sang the most clearly?”, but I can’t listen to Lea Salonga sing and not be impressed all over again by the pureness and clarity of her voice. She sang “Loving You” from Passion, and her performance was like crystal. Just stunning.

 

Best All-RounderPerformance – I wasn’t quite sure what to call this category – another good name might be Best Whole-Package Performance. What I’m talking about is a combination of vocals, emotion, and physicality, and the winner here is Alexander Gemignani, singing “Buddy’s Blues” from Follies. Despite doing the whole performance from a chair, it’s choreographed from start to finish with very purposeful gestures and aptly-timed spins in the swivel chair, not to mention distinct voices for Buddy, Margie, and Sally. “Buddy’s Blues” is a song that calls for more than just singing, and Gemignani delivers all of it with aplomb, right down to collapsing into the chair in exhaustion at the end.

 

Best Coordination – No Sondheim tribute concert is complete without a quartet of Asian Americans singing “Someone in a Tree” from Pacific Overtures, and this show was no exception. Ann Harada (as the Reciter!), Austin Ku, Kelvin Moon, and Thom Sesma from the recent off-Broadway revival did the duties this time around, and their four separate videos were perfectly coordinated to set the scene. The Reciter and the Old Man looking up at the Boy in the tree, and everyone looking down at the Warrior (who hid under his table in lieu of a treaty house.) The video coordination is impressive enough on its own, but “Someone in a Tree” is also a complex song with a lot of back-and-forth lines and overlapping melodies, and despite their performances being recorded in four separate locations, they were all bang-on throughout.

 

Best Blast from the Past – This was a tough one (Mandy Patinkin, my heart!), but I’ve gotta give it to Chip Zien returning with “No More” from Into the Woods. The original Baker himself struck all the right notes (both melodic and emotional) and basically just left me in a puddle. Exqusite.

 

Best Surprise Song Choice – If you gave me 20 guesses, I wouldn’t have come up with Neil Patrick Harris singing “The Witch’s Rap” from Into the Woods, but it was a lot of fun! He brought great, vampy presence to the number and even trotted out his evil laugh from Dr. Horrible. Bonus points for roping in his kids, who mostly looked unimpressed.

 

Best Apropos Song Choice – When this was released, weeks into quarantine, it was inevitable that someone’s song was going to touch on the themes of the pandemic. There were other performers gunning for this spot (namely, Brandon Uranowitz with “With So Little to Be Sure Of” and Bernadette Peters with “No One is Alone,”) but Laura Benanti takes the prize for me, singing “I Remember” from Evening Primrose. ‘Cause, to use the kids’ vernacular, when I’ve been in my house for six weeks and it’s been days since I’ve encountered another human, Laura Benanti sitting on her bathroom floor singing, “I remember sky. / It was blue as ink. / Or at least, I think / I remember sky,” is a mood.