Oh, dear god.
Surely at no other point in his illustrious career as the reigning Broadway lyricist/songwriter/composer of his time has Stephen Sondheim presented such a disappointing first act curtain. To hear him tell it, his collaborators—Hal Prince, Leonard Bernstein, and Arthur Laurents chief among them—would not have permitted it. And yet, as there was only one author of this book, there it is, that last line: "And then I met James Lapine."
Where is Arthur Laurents when you need him?
The issue, of course, is not so much what the line says as what it promises, the lure of what lies ahead: Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and the intense, brilliant Passion. But as much as the reader might wish to turn the page and go forward to read about those shows and about Donna Murphy, Mandy Patinkin and, especially, Bernadette Peters, there simply is no page to turn.
The theater, they say, is filled with plays that have a good first act and a weak second. Here we have no second act at all and none is promised in the text, only implied by the book’s subtitle Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. That promise is placed on the book’s cover directly under the title, and a marvelous title: Finishing the Hat. That the book’s title is also the title of a song by Mr Sondheim is all well and good. But the fact that that song is from the musical, Sunday in the Park with George, one that is not actually included in this book of lyrics, forcing those who want to pierce the mystery of the choice to go and Google to search out those lyrics, seems contrapuntally both Sondheim’s joke and an act of literary perversion.
But enough of this...
Quite. That's from a review in the NYJournal of Books -- I had to double-check to make sure it wasn't some drama major with a blog. It gets worse, though I had to laugh when I got to "And, brother, this book’s got gimmicks aplenty." D'you think that breathlessy lush-and-dripping prose counts as a gimmick?
So tonight we've got another in Colbert's continuing series: "Famous Stephens who aren't me." If you don't know who Stephen Sondheim is, here's wikipedia:
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards (eight, more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. His most famous scores include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins, as well as the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. He was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981
He's apparently here promoting Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (and here I was hoping that the subtitle-longer-than-the-book trend had run dry). Here's a bit from the excerpt (Amazon, B&N):
This book is a contradiction in terms. Theater lyrics are not written to be read but to be sung, and sung as parts of a larger structure: musical comedy, musical play, revue—"musical" will suffice. Furthermore, almost all of the lyrics in these pages were written not just to be sung but to be sung in particular musicals by individual characters in specific situations. A printed collection of them, bereft of their dramatic circumstances and the music which gives them life, is a dubious proposition. Lyrics, even poetic ones, are not poems. Poems are written to be read, silently or aloud, not sung. Some lyrics, awash with florid imagery, pre - sent themselves as poetry, but music only underscores (yes) the self-consciousness of the effort. In theatrical fact, it is usually the plainer and flatter lyric that soars poetically when infused with music. Oscar Hammerstein II’s
Oh, what a beautiful mornin’,
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I got a beautiful feelin’
Ev’rythin’s goin’ my way!
is much more evocative than this couplet from his "All the Things You Are":
You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long.
The first, buoyed by Richard Rodgers’s airy music, sounds as profoundly simple (especially if you ignore the dialect) as something by Robert Frost. The second sounds even more overripe than it is in print, given Jerome Kern’s setting, which merely by being music—and beautiful music, unfortunately—makes the extravagance of the words bathetic...
Bet that first reviewer nodded sagely while reading this (possibly noticing "this is sage nodding" as he did so).
An actual grad student has a more readable review:
...While the lyrics are the real star of the book (and, as Sondheim noted in his interview with Terry Gross for NPR's Fresh Air, they read very well on the page), I found myself really enjoying his thoughts upon revisiting the lyrics. For instance, his explanation for changing "Rich and Happy" to "That Frank" not only helps us understand his rationale for the change but also gives us a deeper appreciation for the thought that he puts into his music and lyrics. I also enjoyed Sondheim's forthrightness and candor, which rarely devolve into malicious gossip (the closest he gets is in his recollections of The Frogs). He is quick to praise the lyricists who came before him and influenced his work (as his pastiche work in Follies shows), but he also does not hold back when it comes to critiquing their more questionable lyrics. Even as I felt myself getting defensive on behalf of lyricists like Gershwin (whose work Sondheim refers to as "Rhyming poison"), Sondheim uses specific examples to prove his points, and even when I admire the lyricist in question, I often found myself understanding and agreeing with Sondheim's anlysis...
The NYTimes published Paul Simon's review:
..."Finishing the Hat" — a fascinating compilation of lyrics, commentary and anecdotes, covering the years 1954 to 1981 — is essentially about process, the process of writing songs for theater. Performing acts of literary self-criticism can be a tricky business, akin to being one’s own dentist, but Sondheim’s analysis of his songs and those of others is both stinging and insightful. Nevertheless, he successfully avoids the traps of a self-inflated ego and, with one delicious exception (Robert Brustein, who produced "The Frogs" at Yale, is described as "that worst of both worlds, the academic amateur"), of savoring the pleasure of revenge upon an "unprofessional" outsider. After reading "Finishing the Hat," I felt as if I had taken a master class in how to write a musical. A class given by the theater’s finest living songwriter...
That one's worth reading. So is the more scholarly review at guardian.co.uk:
..this book, one of the greatest books ever written about craft in the theatre, which also happens to be a self-portrait of one of the most striking and original artists of our time. It is entirely typical of Sondheim that in writing a book of such apparently narrow focus, he should have produced a work of vast breadth and scope. The surprise is how moving, how deeply romantic the book is – surprising, that is, to those who persist in thinking of Sondheim as merely ingenious, a deviser of musical crossword puzzles, instead of the passionate explorer that he is, irrepressibly searching for the new forms that will keep alive the art to which he has devoted his life...
Might be worth taking a look at.
Mon | Tues | Weds | Thurs | Patti Smith
Author, "Just Kids"
The legendary rock star discusses her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe | Stephen Sondheim
Author, "Finishing the Hat" | Laird Hamilton
Surfer | Amy Sedaris
Author, "Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People"
Paul Simon
Singer-Songwriter, "Getting Ready for Christmas Day" |
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