Sondheim's Societal Struggle
Sondheim entered the world of the Broadway musical theatre through
a very traditional door. Fate directed him to grow up next door
to Oscar Hammerstein who began his informal education. But, that's
where his traditional legacy ends. One might have expected him
to follow more closely the Hammerstein style, but Hammerstein
encouraged him to develop his own style, and that's what Sondheim
did.
Critics and traditional Broadway audiences are not quick to champion
his shows. Some believe he is an acquired taste, like a fine wine.
Actually, he challenges, innovates, and stretches the boundaries
of the American musical theatre. Anytime an artist chooses to
pave a new path, he or she will surely collide with conservative
forces who wish to re-experience the same thrill they felt their
"first time." Sondheim has little interest in what has
been done--only in what's left to do.
In the 1950's Sondheim's Broadway contributions were primarily
with lyrics, and as a beginner he had less control over the production,
but his choice of project and material is consistent with his
resistance to be commercially driven in the Broadway market.
West Side Story presented a love forbidden by bigotry and social
conditions. A story with gangs and violence and death was not
typical Broadway fare. Imagine the shock to audiences who by contrast
may have seen Meredith Willson's Music Man the previous night.
Each had a boy's band, but that's where the similarities end.
The desolate ending which reinforces Tony and Maria's love and
then snatches it away as quickly and absolutely as only death
can, was too much despair for a musical audience. Today, West
Side Story is remembered as a classic, but when it opened in 1957,
audiences were more comfortable with Marian Paroo, Harold Hill,
and the troubles of River City, than with facing the real issues
of teenage violence and growing multi-cultural hatred.
A similar contrast occurred in 1959 when Gypsy ran across town
from the Rodgers and Hammerstein hit, The Sound of Music. Mama
Rose is quite a divergence from Maria Von Trapp. American theatre
goers were introduced an atypical 50's mother.
Rose
Mama Rose pushed her children into show business; "lived
in sin" with Herbie, their agent; and was as strong and aggressive
as Roy Cohn. By 90's standards Rose's parenting would easily be
classified as dysfunctional, but Rose's dreams of success outweighed
everything. Rose is not a hero or a villain; she is a fascinating
complex woman, not often seen on any stage, least of all a Broadway
musical stage.
Although Sondheim worked on several shows in the Sixties, his
notable success was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
For the first time he was responsible for music and lyrics. Its
innovation did not move in the same serious thematic direction
as his Fifties musicals. Forum is pure farce. However, it is safe
to say that Sondheim was still expanding the boundaries a little.
Compare its fast paced, bawdy humor directly adapted from Roman
Comedy to some of the big Broadway winners of the Sixties such
as Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly or Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on
the Roof . Fiddler on the Roof and Hello Dolly are sentimental
pieces. Hello Dolly falls into a "sit-com" structure,
and Fiddler on the Roof, clearly more serious in its presentation
is a well made play. Each represents American values--reinforcing
marriage and family. Most of Forum's humor is tied to bawdy one-liners,
but as the plot develops, it satirizes traditional values. This
is Sondheim's first opportunity to toy with the "love at
first sight" leads to "happily ever after" theme.
Even as the play concludes, and the attractive young lovers are
about to choose marriage, the father confesses to his son, "if
you are only as happy as your mother and I, my heart will bleed
for you." 2 This is not the matchmaking of Dolly Levy or the
family values of Anatevka. Sondheim begins subtly in Forum what
will become blatant in the 70's.
Sondheim came into his own in the Seventies. With the opening
of Company, the audience did not know what to think, but a new
audience was developing--the Sondheim audience. He was repaving
Broadway, and it would never be the same. Company attacks the
sanctity of marriage.
All:
It's not talk of God and the decade ahead that
Joanne
All
Men
Women
Men
It's not so hard to be married,
Joanne
I've done it three or four times. 3
Company does not say marriage is terrible--but it shows that marriage
is a difficult relationship that takes hard work and does not
just happen. However, People were still expecting to go to the
theatre and see Margo Channing give up her career to marry her
true love Bill who would not marry her until she did. The audience
considered this a happy ending, and this show, Applause, won the
Tony in 1970 and was still playing well when Company opened and
was later awarded the Tony in 1971. This is a plot Sondheim worked
with in Gypsy, but even in 1959, Mama Rose would not sacrifice
her career for marriage.
Company began Sondheim's Seventies onslaught. He opened Follies
in 1971, A Little Night Music in 1973, Pacific Overtures in 1975,
and Sweeney Todd in 1979. The Seventies musicals challenged the
illusion of simple American values. Sondheim was not interested
in seed material that glorified the traditional American Dream,
if anything, he shattered it.
The setting for Follies is a reunion given in honor of a theatre
that is scheduled for demolition. Another composer might have
looked for the sentimental moments, but Sondheim forces his two
older couples to look back on their lives, to see the mistakes,
to feel their pain.
A Little Night Music is Sondheim's most physically stunning musical;
structured as comedy of manners, it is a play of language and
wit, and music of the waltz. This play has a happy ending, but
like Forum it contains a subtle cynical twist; to achieve the
happiness for which the audience wishes, two of the characters
must divorce. This beautiful play encourages Americans to accept
divorce in their "happily ever after." It also contains
a lovely song which questions the institution of marriage: "Everyday
a little death. 4
Pacific Overtures opened in 1975 to help set the scene for the
bicentennial celebration. The Broadway musical has previously
had stories about Asian people. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote
The King and I, which still tours around America, but Pacific
Overtures is not The King and I. Where The King and I shows Western
superiority toward a barbarian land, Pacific Overtures calls into
question the imperialistic nature of Western culture, which by
invading, has destroyed another unique culture. Pacific Overtures
is a very powerful expression of shame at our cultural rape of
Japan.
Sweeney Todd takes the audience back to London's Industrial Revolution;
a time where the spread between rich and poor was vast. As Todd
explains, "The history of the world, my sweet--is who gets
eaten and who gets to eat. 5 (An appropriate
musical to usher in the Reagan administration.) The musical shows
a world infested with corruption. The judicial system is controlled
by a rapist and pediphile who judges in relation to his own personal
gratification. The most serious crime in the world of this musical
is naivete
Amidst this serious and cynical spread of Sondheim fare, one of
the most popular Broadway musicals of the Seventies was Strouse
and Charnin's Annie. As an innocent orphan child tells the world:
Sondheim had become the Prince of Broadway, and he still was not
creating typical Broadway musicals.
As America entered the Eighties, Sondheim emerged slowly with
Merrily We Roll Along which failed on Broadway, but subsequently
has had success on the West Coast and in London. By the mid-Eighties
he had restored his artistic reputation with Sunday in the Park
with George in 1984 and Into the Woods in 1987. Although the Eighties
represented a time in America when the "rich got richer,"
and "greed was good," it also reflected a time when
the "poor got poorer," and many Americans lost hope.
Instead of continuing to shatter the American Dream as he had
done in the Seventies, Sondheim's Eighties musicals reflected
a need to stop and think, a desire to find some hope, and an aspiration
to empower.
Merrily takes a look at the perfect idealistic threesome who intend
to improve the world, and yet cannot manage to maintain their
friendship. The musical is a warning, "tend your dreams.
8
Mary
Charley
Mary
The musical ends on a most positive moment when three begin their
quest, and since the plot structure moves in reverse, the audience
knows the end. The impact is disturbing, but it allows the audience
another chance--"to change the world" and "to tend
their dreams 10
Sunday in the Park looks inside the process of making art, and
suggests the need for a balance. Act one explores the world of
workaholic George Seurat who is so obsessed with painting that
he cannot acknowledge his love for Dot or the existence of his
child. He does, however, dedicate himself to creating new art
despite ridicule from critics. Act two explores the great-grandson,
Eighties' George, who has learned to market himself and his art,
but has lost his way. Neither George has managed a happy marriage,
but young George has learned the importance of family shown through
the relationship with his Grandmother Marie, and his ex-wife,
Elaine. Before the end, George learns to balance his desire for
success with his need to feed his soul through the creation of
his art. He has not found all the answers by the plays end, but
he sees "so many possibilities."<PRE>11</PRE>
Sondheim shows the way and expects the audience to learn to "move
on" through empowerment.
In Into the Woods, Sondheim and Lapine deconstructs fairy tales
to recreate a world of hope and empowerment. First they question
all of the underlying myths involved with the fairy tales which
have confused humanity for centuries. The "love at first
sight" and "happily ever after" themes are attacked
directly in this musical. Cinderella and Rapunzel do not have
the perfect lives they were promised after "happily ever
after." Act two is full of questions about unfaithful husbands,
common ground to establish relationships rather than appearances,
and the sheer difficulties of life that require a good nurturing
childhood to help people cope. Rapunzel, locked in a tower most
of her life, could not handle the stress, and commits suicide.
Red and Jack each face a trauma which affects their growth from
childhood into adolescence. The wolf may be slain and the Giant
may be dead, but that does not erase the pain. People are who
they are because of what they have experienced. One cannot go
back to innocence; one grows through pain.
Finally to condense a very complex psychological puzzle, the four
main characters realize that they must stop blaming others for
their troubles, stop expecting someone else to solve their problems,
and begin taking responsibility for their lives. They form a non-biological
family, a community. They create a new world.
The Nineties are too close to attempt much of a generalizable
analysis by decade, but Sondheim has begun his Nineties work with
two musicals, one with James Lapine and the other with John Weidman.
Each offers an interesting societal challenge, and certainly no
one could suggest that his work has become softer with age.
In 1991 as America was becoming instantly and irrationally patriotic
because of the United States' involvement in the Gulf War, Sondheim
and Weidman opened Assassins at Playwright's Horizons. A musical
about the women and men who have attempted to murder US presidents
is more than a stretch for the Broadway patrons of Phantom of
the Opera, and anyone would have to admit that the musical theatre
audience had moved quite a distance from its beginnings with Show
Boat or Oklahoma.
Byck
Moore
Byck
Czolgosz
Guiteau
Others
Sondheim and Weidman chose a unique subject, but assassination
is not sentimentalized or glorified. The musical questions American
values. Guns, broken promises, assumptions about entitlement are
all images which point to American society's need to rethink and
restructure our values and our behaviors. And, what all these
assassins share is their fame which Americans chooses to glorify,
and Sondheim and Weidman question. Assassins is not an easy show;
it does not resolve neatly; and it forces its audience to ponder
its purpose. Its complexity challenges Americans to search for
answers.
Sondheim's newest musical, Passion which opened this May of 1994,
reunites him with James Lapine. Critics are baffled, trying to
understand how Sondheim, after all these years of condemnation,
would create a love story. After Company, A Little Night Music,
and Into the Woods attack the concept of traditional love and
"happily ever after," what is Sondheim doing, they ask?
But, Passion is not a musical love story; it is 19th century Romanticism
with a twist. Passion combines Romanticism in all of it emotional
spender with a Nineties sensibility toward the problems with dysfunctional
relationships. The obsessed woman learns to detach a little which
captures the passion of her beloved. Once they each have some
perspective, they decide to consummate their love. As all good
Romantic heroes she dies, and her love lives on in him--but in
a healthy and positive form, not in the 19th century haunting
style. Passion is difficult to categorize, difficult to understand,
but beautiful to feel and see and hear. This time one must let
it happen and be willing to open their senses, rather than judge
and analyze. Each musical is a new and different experience, but
all the musicals challenge the individual and the society.
When the new Sondheim show opens, the critics gasp, and the Broadway
patron is surprised because it is not what they expected. But,
the Sondheim audience eagerly awaits his new show with great anticipation
knowing that it will not be the same; trusting it will be different
and exquisite. When an artist challenges societal expectations,
and dares to challenge conservative convention and conservative
thought, he or she will always have a societal struggle. Sondheim's
societal struggle is his art and our nation's treasure.
1 - Gypsy, Stephen Sondheim, Jules Styne, and Arthur Laurents. 1959, Act I Scene ii., New York: RCA Records. London Cast, 1974. |