A Few Thoughts on Stephen Sondheim

Like so many theatre lovers, I was hit last night by the news that Stephen Sondheim passed away. He was 91 years old, so it’s hardly a “taken too soon” situation, but I hope that it was peaceful and without pain. May his loved ones find the solace they need in the days ahead.

So today, I’d like to just spend a little time thinking about Sondheim and his music. This post doesn’t have a specific aim or agenda. I’m just going to start writing, and we’ll see what comes out.

I believe I was around 17 when I first knowingly fell in love with Sondheim’s music (I’d gotten into West Side Story late in grade school, and I knew I loved the lyrics to “America,” but I didn’t know Sondheim’s name.) This was a little late in my informal musical-theatre education, and it was interestingly roundabout. I wasn’t introduced to Sondheim through Into the Woods or Sweeny Todd or A Little Night Music. It was actually Assassins. The Broadway revival cast performed the finale of “Everybody’s Got the Right” at the Tony Awards, and even though it was a brief and far-from-flashy performance, it piqued my interest enough for me to seek out the cast recording. It was an album I listened to repeatedly—there were songs and sections and lines that grabbed me from the start, but others needed to grow on me as I took time to acclimate to the very singular style of the show I was listening to.

This was repeated with the Pacific Overtures revival the following year (and they didn’t even perform at the Tonys—the show had already closed by that point, but just the short montage they aired during the telecast made me want to check it out,) after which I was ready to learn a lot more about this Stephen Sondheim fellow and his music. Through the rest of high school into college, I gradually increased my collection of Sondheim shows, picking up a new album every few months until I’d heard every score, including multiple productions for many of them (I just did a quick count, and I have 32 different Sondheim albums.) I tended to begin with revivals, which starred actors I already loved (ex: Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone in Sweeney Todd, Raúl Esparza in Company,) so I often came to the iconic original casts later in my exploration. I got my hands on some of the filmed productions too, watching with rapt attention as, for instance, Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters broke my heart in the most beautiful way in Sunday in the Park with George. Every few years, I’d find a new splashy tribute concert for his birthday, which I could sometimes catch on PBS.

And of course, I started seeing live productions. The 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd is, regrettably, the only one I’ve seen so far on Broadway, but I’ve seen a number of others in all manner of regional productions (again, some more than once.) I remember sitting in my seat awash in the arresting harmonies of A Little Night Music, the tremendous production of Into the Woods I saw that filtered the fairytales through the lens of different Asian folklore influences, the moment that I realized the opening notes of “Sunday” would always put my heart in my throat. I saw an inventive A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at a delightful hole-in-the-wall theatre and a sumptuous professional mounting of West Side Story. I hope that, at some point in my life, I’ll be able to say I’ve seen them all live.

For me, what makes a Sondheim score so exquisite is the way he was able to blend those intricately-clever rhymes and puzzle-box patter melodies with searingly-beautiful themes and the spare simplicity of honest emotion. I love that Sweeney Todd features both “A Little Priest” and “Johanna,” that A Little Night Music is home to both “Now” and “Every Day a Little Death,” that Pacific Overtures is known for both “Please Hello” and “Pretty Lady.” He wrote marathons of cadence and internal rhyme like, “No dared to query her superior exterior,” and he wrote achingly-simple expressions of emotion like, “There is nothing between us.”

Rest in peace, Mr. Sondheim, and much love and comfort to your family. For more than 50 years, you exemplified the words that you yourself wrote, words I strive to live by as a writer: “Anything you do, / Let it come from you. / Then it will be new. / Give us more to see.”

Giovanni’s Room (1956)

I like to collect nice-looking hardcovers of classic books, so whenever I hit a used bookstore, I’ll scrounge around and see what I can find. However, between the amount of time I generally make for reading and the fact that I read a mixture of both classic and contemporary literature, I have a lot of books that I picked up some time ago and haven’t gotten around to reading yet. (Much like my watch lists on my streaming subscriptions somehow never seem to get shorter.) As such, I own two James Baldwin titles that I hadn’t read, Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room. The last time I was between books, I knew I wanted to read one of them, and since this was during Pride Month, I went with the latter (a few spoilers.)

David, a young American living in Paris, begins a reckoning with himself when his fiancée travels to Spain without him. He meets and falls in love with Giovanni, an immigrant from Italy working in a gay bar. The two men’s relationship is charged and deep, but as Giovanni begins to hold on more tightly, David resists the true emotional intimacy that Giovanni offers alongside the physical intimacy that they share.

First off, let me begin by saying that I can understand why this book would be considered dated by 21^st-century standards. There’s an era of literature (along with an era of cinema, television, and other stories) in which same-sex relationships – particularly between men – were only “allowed” if they did not end happily. There are some majorly-tortured themes in this book, and we’re told pretty much from the beginning that we’re not going to get a fairytale ending here. That said, the characters and insights in this book are searingly-honest and the prose takes my breath away at multiple points. This is an instance where I can see and acknowledge the elements that make me uncomfortable while also recognizing the tremendous work it does within the time in which it was written. It reminds me a little of The Boys in the Band in that way, even though the two works are tremendously different.

There’s a lot to grapple with in this book. Throughout, we see how David might be happy but continually fights against the things that could make him so. Like so many other stories about closeted people, he has a particular vision for his life, and if the person he is doesn’t align with that vision, he has no real intention of allowing himself to be that person, not entirely. His time with Giovanni is a dream, an outlier, something that he can’t allow himself to perceive as true. He carries a lot of internalized homophobia and effeminophobia that are of course in part shaped by the society around him that rejects LGBTQ people and forces them into the shadows, and he in turn directs both in judgment of other queer men, viewing them as weak and unmanly even though they’re more honest in who they are than he is.

I didn’t realize until I started the book that David and all the other major characters are white; the foreword includes the note that, at the time, Baldwin didn’t know how to address both parts of his identity as a gay Black man within the same story, and so his writings divided that existence in twain, writing about either straight Black men or queer white men. But within that, there’s still something special in writing David as white, because it’s done in such a way that a white author wouldn’t. In the very first paragraph of the book, as David is describing his reflection, he states, “My face is like a face you have seen many times. My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across death-laden plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into a darker past.” Whereas, by and large, the average white author doesn’t even use the word “white” to describe their white characters.

Which brings me again to the writing. While I read a little of Baldwin’s non-fiction in college, excerpts from essays, I just adore the stunning prose he writes here. His command of language is extraordinary and heartfelt, and I love how the style of the sentences and paragraphs shift according to David’s emotional state. It’s so beautifully written, and it makes me excited to read more of Baldwin’s work.

Warnings

Violence, sexual content, drinking/smoking, language (including homophobic slurs,) and strong thematic elements.

Top Five Disney Princes

Today, I’m staying home for all the sanitation workers out there.

Is it sexist that I’m compiling a Top Five of princes before I get to princesses? I’d say no – I’m starting with the princes because it’s easier for me to just pick five. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to doing a similar post for the Disney princesses, but I know I’m going to be debating long and hard to winnow down my list to my absolute favorites.

Phillip (Sleeping Beauty) – Going old-school for the first name on this list. If I were basing this on my initial memories of this movie, I wouldn’t have included Phillip, but rewatching the film in recent years made me remember how cool he is. After a couple mostly-blank-slates in Snow White and Cinderella, Phillip is fun and energetic and dashing. It’s easy to see why he and Aurora get so caught up in one another (“love at first sight” tropes notwithstanding,) and I still get a kick out of his declaration, “Now, father, you’re living in the past. This is the 14^th century!”

Best Musical Bit: Gotta go with the classic, “Once Upon a Dream.” I like the ending, with Aurora and Phillip singing together. “If I know you, / I know what you’ll do. / You’ll love me at once / The way I did once / Upon a dream.” Lovely.

The Beast (Beauty and the Beast) – More so in the live-action version, even though I did always enjoy him in the original. The Beast is someone who’s had a long time to feel sorry for himself, punished for his past cruelty but reflecting on how hard it is for him rather than recognizing that he needs to change his ways. It’s not until Belle comes along, someone who doesn’t capitulate to his growling and his tantrums, that he starts to uncover the man he could be.

Best Musical Bit: Again, we’re talking live action, because “Evermore” is worth the damn price of admission. “Wasting in my lonely tower, / Waiting by an open door, / I’ll fool myself she’ll walk right in. / And as the long, long nights begin, / I’ll think of all that might have been / Waiting here forevermore.” Oh, the angst! The way it’s shot, with the Beast clamboring about the castle, is so windswept and dramatic, and the emotion in his voice is really affecting.

Aladdin (Aladdin) –Aladdin is the first Disney movie I have really clear memories of seeing in the theater, and Aladdin will probably always be my favorite. A scrappy and resourceful thief with a good heart, Aladdin brims with potential that he doesn’t fully trust he has. I love watching him come into his own and realize he doesn’t have to be someone he’s not to get the sort of life that he wants. (Also, Mena Massoud was totally the best part of the live-action movie.)

Best Musical Bit: I’m gonna go with the reprise of “One Jump Ahead,” short but very sweet. “If only they’d look closer, / Would they see a poor boy? / No siree. / They’d find out / There’s so much more to me…” You really feel that yearning, and it comes through even more for borrowing the melody of the previous song, which displays such cockiness and charm.

Li Shang (Mulan) – Gotta love Shang. Not technically a prince, but Mulan isn’t a princess either – both get honorary status just ‘cause they’re that cool. A dedicated captain with daddy issues, Shang is brave and principled, and his experiences with Mulan help expand his notions beyond doing what is expected/ordering into doing what is right. Sad we won't see him in the live-action movie.

Best Musical Bit: Obviously “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” come on now. I especially love those vocals at the start of the last verse. “Time is racing toward us till the Huns arrive. / Heed my every order and you might survive.” A kickass song set to an awesome montage. It’s just *chef’s kiss*!

Kristoff (Frozen) – I get such a kick out curmudgeonly Kristoff being slightly stunned at Anna’s sunshiny naivete. He can be a bit of a grouch, but he has a good heart, and for all that he’s irritated by Anna early on, he still keeps helping her. And when the chips are really down, he’s all in. I don’t think Frozen 2 serves him quite as well, but he delights me as a character in both the movie and the musical.

Best Musical Bit: I do love me some Jonathan Groff, but the first Frozen completely drops the ball on Kristoff singing, and while Groff sings the heck out of “Lost in the Woods” in Frozen 2, it’s a little too cheesy for my tastes. So I’m going Broadway version, with “What Do You Know About Love?” Kristoff’s parts in bold: “Some people know their hearts / The minute true love starts.” – “Some people read a lot of books.” – “Some people simply know / When true love says, ‘Hello!’” – “Some folks are taken in by curly locks and princely looks!” Great contrast between the low softness of the first line and the rising intensity of the second, and it’s a nice demonstration of his cynicism where instant-love is concerned.