Want to find out why you do the things you do but don’t want to see a psychologist, how about seeing a Sondheim musical instead? Richard Schoch delves into the life lessons built into his shows in ‘How Stephen Sondheim Can Change Your Life.’ Schoch’s thesis might sound like a stretch but it isn’t, think of it as a musical-theater equivalent of sports metaphors or even Socrates, in fact a funny thing happen on the way to this book forum and it was a lot of fun.
Schoch deconstructs Sondheim’s storylines that confound his characters so much they inevitably bust out into legendary songs. From the pushy Momma Rose in ‘Gypsy’ (Rose’s Turn) to the emotionally blocked Bobby in ‘Company’ (Being Alive) to the vengeful Demon Barber ‘Sweeney Todd’ (Attend the Tale…) and even to the ghosted chorus of the true life assassins in ‘Assassins’ (Ballad of Booth).
Sondheim died in 2021, just as his gender switched revival of ‘Company’ was about to open on Broadway, and was in the audience for one of the previews just days before. The revival was a hit in London and the US. It was one of three Sondheim shows on Broadway last year and currently Gypsy is back, starring Audra McDonald.
Gypsy was the second show for which he was the lyricist (‘ West Side Story’ was his first) and it’s been called the ‘Hamlet’ of musicals in its dramatic demands on the actress playing Mama Rose, Ethal Merman originated the role and insisted on Jule Styne composer). Other stars taking on ‘Rose’s Turn’ on Broadway include Angela Lansbury, Patti Lupone, Bernadette Peters, and Tyne Daley.
Every show since Gypsy, Sondheim was both composer and lyricist. He was obviously not interested in formulaic musical theater, His lifelong fascination with puzzles extend the puzzles of human nature, and his theatrical storytelling as instructive as the fairy tale characters roaming ‘Into the Woods’ to face their fabulist lives.
Or how about the vaudeville stage for ghostlight realities shadowing former showgirls reunite for one last performance their famous ‘Follies’ in their old theater that is about to be torn down. The showgirls are confronted with specters of their former selves through the magic of theater to make peace, or not, with the past voiced through songs.
The lessons of getting old, sung about comedically as the showgirls dance to the song ‘Mirror, Mirror’ with the end line “that woman is me” Sung over and over. Or the bitterness of lost years in loveless marriages expressed in “Could I leave You” “Losing My Mind” or how about the universal mid-life crisis tune ‘The Road I Didn’t Take.’ Or frantic pastiche of his ‘Loveland’ medley that includes the hard knocks showstopper ‘Broadway Baby’ (Cue Elaine!).
Consider the universality of ‘Send in the Clowns’ a song Sondheim composed at the last minute for his chamber operetta ‘A Little Night Music’ before its premiere out of town run. Sung in the original cast by Glynis Johns as Desiree, singing it first and later covered by generations of star singers from Judy Collins, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Barbra Streisand, Boy George, Shirley Bassey, just to mention a few.
But Schoch goes into analytic overdrive peeling away the nuances of what the song’s life lessons transmit to audiences in for audiences, a crucible of regret and self-delusion and ultimately facing their own home truths. As deft as these observations are, he thankfully doesn’t fully detangle the song’s haunting mystique.
Pacific Overtures is examined in Schoch’s chapter titled ‘How to be Part of the World’ and he reins in his analogies on this one. The musical about the US diplomatically trying to politically outwit Imperial Japan with a one-sided trade treaty in the early 1800s, administered by Lieutenant Perry. Japan is on to the bamboozle and outwits Perry to the extent that they can deny he ever landed on their shores.
Sondheim and book writer John Weidman knew that history and musical theater wasn’t an easy sell to either producers or audiences. And the production itself was risky, designed as Kabuki theater, with an all-male cast. Sondheim also composing in stylized Japanese classicism in his score. So, this is a history lesson of how so much of what is known about world conflicts and more about what is erased, depending on which side is telling it. Audiences skipped this lesson at the time (Well maybe next year, no?)
In contrast, audiences flocked to Sweeney Todd with its graphic violence, and a vengeful barber who cuts the throats to settle old scores, Based on Christopher Bond 1970 play, which was based on a British penny dreadful of the 19th century. After Sweeney gave his enemies more than a close shave, they were slid down to Mrs. Lovett’s pie ovens for mince-meating. The pyrrhic victories of exacting revenge is Sweeney wanton desire and doomed fate. And through its lurid morbidities and dark humor, Sondheim goes for the audience’s theatrical jugular and they loved it.
Composed as a chamber opera but packaged in the commercial theater, Sweeney has enjoyed many revivals and was a hit on Broadway during the 23-24 season with Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. Again, Schoch gets carried away with the notion that the audience will soul – search and identify their own vengeful natures, but come to think of it, revenge is the political currency right now, no?
Also, back on stage recently was a revival of ‘Merrily We Roll Along’, the story of three friends navigating careers, lovers, and the space age., The narrative is told in reverse time and starts when they reunite in middle age and then tracks back over the course of the musical to their times of unbreakable bonds and bitter break-ups and ending on a high note in the last scene as the friends search the skies for Russia’s Sputnik and contemplate their future. Despite a terrific score- Good Thing Going, Old Friends, Not a Day Goes By, Our Time- the show closed after eight performances, and ended Sondheim and Hal Prince’s decade of collaboration. run of Broadway hits and as Schoch reports Sondheim so disheartened that he didn’t “want to be in this profession.” “it’s just too hostile, and mean-spirited.” Flash forward to British director Maria Friedman’s 2022 revival of Merrily starring Jonathan Groff, Lindsy Mendez and Daniel Radcliff was the hottest ticket on Broadway. winning four Tony Awards, including best revival of a Musical.
That same season Sondheim’s last show ‘Here We Are’ based on two satirical films by Spanish Mexican auteur Luis Bunuel. Since the second act has no score, Schoch noting that it may have been a prescient message from the composer that he was bringing the curtain down himself.
‘How to be an Artist’ is Schoch’s primer on artistic expression as something innate and how to organize a life around that improbable reality. A survival guide to face off with an often art indifferent world. ‘Sunday in the Park With George’ was one of the most unlikely of Sondheim musicals, the story of artist George Seurat’s invention of pointalism and his struggle to finish his painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in the first act and falling in love with his muse, Dot, the second act about the modern art world of his disillusioned great-great grandson, a successful modern artist. Nominated for 11 Tony Awards winning none (including for its stars Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin) but it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
‘Into the Woods’ gathers a coterie of fairy tale characters to sing Sondheim’s songs of woe and wisdom and where they come reconcile seeing both the forest and the trees. Jack (of Beanstalk fame), Red Riding Hood, The Wolf, Cinderella, The Prince, and the Baker and his Wife(created just for the show). Schoch’s titles this story mash up ‘How to find the right path’ and the Baker’s Wife’s “Moments in the Wood” epiphany, but here Schoch gets rhetorically tangled up in the show’s fabled weeds.
In contrast, Schoch’s chapter on ‘Assassins’ gets right to the guts of Sonheim’s sardonic reality show about assassins (or would-be’s) in the chapter ‘How to Let the Darkness In’ as a commentary about the tortured lives of these lost souls driven to make a name for themselves by murdering presidents. Sondheim showcasing them in the garish musical chorus line to sing their twisted tales. Schoch analysis is so insightful about the intent and its powerful historical truths.
The carnivale of lost souls ending up in the book depository to council Lee Harvey Oswald, particularly showing the killers in an empathetic was roundly criticized. Sondheim of course was commenting on how lost and broken the assassins were in an attempt to understand them. Schoch highlights the often overlooked musical template that Sondheim uses of traditional American forms.
“ Like every historical judgment, it’s a choice between opposing narratives, rival interpretations, and views beyond all reconciling. It’s not the facts that are dispute, (for instance) Lincoln is dead, and Booth killed him- it’s what they mean.” A question then that can be asks even now -“ Is the American Civil war safely over, or will it never end.” Sondheim was excoriated in the press. Acid pen critic John Simon called for “somebody to assassinate Assassins.”
The final chapter instructs on ‘How to Love’ via the heartache of unrequited love in Sondheim’s operetta ‘Passion.’ Ah, the eternal musical question. And the last essay on Sondheim’s final show produced the year after his death.
Schoch’s tribute to the messages in Sondheim’s canon is engaging, indulgent and otherwise tons of fun to read. As serious as Schoch gets, he also balances out this study a feast for Sondheim fans with memories from stars who were in the original companies. Also, Schoch’s deft but too brief observations technical aspects about of Sondheim’s scores are spot on.
Schoch’s personal engagement to Sondheim’s music as a teacher and as a gay man brings the author to reveal some his own home truths about his roads not taken “I put my career over love,” adding “What if I had been more settled? Less Wandering? And why did I spend my twenties in the closet? Coming out is the healthiest thing I’ve ever done. Schoch even recounts the moment he came out publicly on a Manhattan street corner with a liberating passionate kiss with a man he had been secretly seeing. Now that’s musical theater magic- Cue music! & Sing Out, Louise!
