Stephen Sondheim

Link to  Stephen Sondheim Podcast

The S&M Show

Stephen Sondheim. Now that is more like it.

Let me explain. Rodgers and Hammerstein was important. I wouldn’t ever dream of cutting them from the lineup. But, believe you me, I am so glad to move on from them. We had a week hiatus due to Shepherd University’s Spring Break (my posting about my viewing of Hair has been added and I’ll put my posting about Phantom of the Opera up after next week’s show, The British Invasion). But our return week went quite well.

The music issue is still relevant, but luckily, I had a bit more material in actual physical format. Into the Woods is always at my apartment as well as about three versions of Sweeney Todd. What we missed out on were selections from his works Company, Follies, Assassins and sadly, A Little Night Music.

Gypsy

Perhaps the saddest exclusion due to my computer issues was that of Gypsy. Gypsy was the first Sondheim work I got to see. Of course it was the film version with Natalie Wood but it was still my first introduction.

Into the Woods

We played a great deal from Into the Woods, West Side Story and Sweeney Todd. In preparation for this show specifically, I actually convinced the library at Shepherd University to purchase the stage version of Into the Woods on DVD. I had originally inter library loaned the DVD but because of my interest in it (and the fact I used to work for the library), I was able to convince them that it was worthy to be in our collection. I am always glad when I can get a musical added into circulation.

I have to say, rather quickly, that I ADORE Bernadette Peters. I think that is perhaps the best part of doing the Stephen Sondheim show. I get to listen to so many different recordings with Bernadette, who I’ve not really seen since her cameo bits on Ugly Betty. After viewing the staged version (which was a real treat) I went on a hunt for more Bernadette Peters recordings. I had played the song ‘No One is Alone,’ which is my favorite song from Into the Woods, during our very first broadcast, so I had chosen to omit it from the actual Sondheim focused show. But during my hunt for Bernadette Peters, I stumbled across her singing it at one of her concerts. It is AMAZING! You must watch it.

West Side Story

On another matter, West Side Story is the kind of musical I think that everyone has seen from Sondheim’s collective. After all, it is an essential film classic. Natalie Wood, featured earlier in this entry, plays the part of Maria in top form. Natalie Wood, may she rest in peace, was a true movie star and is easily one of my favorite actresses. I can’t really fathom the concept of picking a favorite song from the collective of West Side Story, though it’d probably have to be America. I like big ensemble numbers.

West Side Story is currently back on Broadway in a new revival. I am really interested in this revival as the rumors has it that they’ve changed some of the lyrics, making some of the songs actually song in Spanish. I think that this is an acceptable and welcoming change. I am very eager to see it on stage and I do hope I have the chance to see it before it closes. Unlike Sweeney Todd.

Sweeney Todd

I first became aware of Sweeney Todd during a book signing for Anthony Rapp. I was waiting to get to meet him and was positioned rather close to the music listening station. One of the CD’s you could choose to listen to was the revival cast of Sweeney Todd with Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone.

I listened to it for a good twenty minutes before I grabbed the CD and headed straight for the checkout counter. I didn’t get a chance to listen to the full CD until I was home but I spent a good portion of the drive home looking over the case and the CD’s. I listened to the CD on my way to work the next day and was so entranced by it that I had to go out to my car during my lunch break just so I could hear the rest. It was of course during my listening moments in the car that I reached the song ‘A Little Priest,’ and quickly jumped for the libretto so I could fully grasp what I thought I was hearing. In shock, I laughed along with the song and felt my stomach churn just slightly from the imagery, but it didn’t matter. For I had fallen in love by that point with the entire album.

I never did get a chance to see the revival and I so wish that I had. Unfortunately, plans fell through as they so often do. But I still cherish that recording the most in the Sweeney Todd archieve. Angela Lansbury and Helena Bonham Carter are very good at playing Mrs. Lovett in their incarnations, as are many others, but Patti LuPone will always be my Mrs. Lovett. Below is another great video of her in the role of Mrs. Lovett.

Though this version isn’t from the revival, I really do love it. Neil Patrick Harris has a wonderful voice and we don’t get to see it in action as often as I’d like. However, at least we always have Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog to turn to when we want to hear Neil Patrick Harris sing for more then one single song. He pairs wonderfully with Patti LuPone.

The Sweeney Todd Film

Sweeney Todd is the most recent film to be added to the Sondheim collective and I’ve barely said much about it. I think it was a good adaptation of the musical but I am still a bit sore from the omission of ‘The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,’ easily one of my favorite songs. However, I love Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd, which was something I had been rather skeptical about when the film was first announced. Perhaps the best scene, in my opinion, is that of ‘Epiphany,’ which I sadly could not play during the broadcast of the Sondheim show. But the song is below and really worth checking out if you’ve not had a chance to see the film yet.

Check out next week for our post about British Musicals!

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Spring Break Trip – Hair

The Beginning of  My Obsession with Hair

I have a long standing history with the musical Hair. It was one of the first film musicals I remember viewing as a pre teen and one of the first I remember obsessing over. I viewed it for the first time somewhere around the age of ten years old, after my mother decided I was finally old enough to watch the film. I later came to realize it was one of her favorite films and since my viewing of the film, it has become a film we watch on mother/daughter days (other films  that we’d do this too were Moulin Rouge, Little Shop of Horrors, Across the Universe and the non musical film Hook. Clearly, we like musicals). Of course, my mother did her best to try and censor the film for my young eyes. The song “Sodomy”did not exist in my version of Hair. She fast forwarded through the controversial track and well into my adult hood, I did the same. I’ve broken the habit but to this day it still feels like a taboo if I view or listen to the “Sodomy” segment.

But I’ve gotten off track. I had a point and the point is very simple. I love Hair. During my brief years of entertaining the prospect of becoming a director, of both film and stage, I always dreamed of bringing Hair back to Broadway for my generation. Once America entered the war on Terror, my desire for a Hair revival became greater. Hair seemed necessary in my eyes in our political climate. I wasn’t the only one to have this view and in 2007, Hair began to play in Central Park.

The Central Park Performances

The Central Park performances became my dreams. I wanted to visit New York and watch one of the performances. I had every thing in preparation as well until my lodgings fell through, this being before I realized I was capable of making day trips to the city. I was briefly sullen at my missed opportunity, having been under the impression it was a very limited engagement, and did my best to not sulk too much about the incident. The Central Park performances proved to be so popular that the revival was commissioned, first beginning at the Public Theater then moving to the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, where I was lucky enough to view the show two days ago.

My Viewing of Hair on Broadway

Hair became the third show I’ve seen in New York City. I ventured to New York City as a Spring Break trip with my roommate. Hair was a Christmas present from my parents to her and I, while her parents got us tickets to see Phantom of the Opera later that evening. As I saw the musical on the 17th of March, the original revival cast (which included most of the cast members from the Central Park and Public Theater performances) had just left the musical. The original cast is now working on originating a revival on the West End stage. While it certainly would have been nice to see the original participants of the revival, it didn’t matter much to me as a viewer. It was a revival no matter how you looked at it and all that mattered to me was energy. Energy was something that my cast certainly did not lack. Every cast member seemed to be full of exuberance, loving the performance they were a part of, and seemingly having a great time.

I admit that prior to my viewing of the stage show, I had never put any effort into researching the production. I assumed that the film was a close adaptation of the source material and that perhaps the stage show had a few extra songs. I was of course wrong and I am glad of it. While I will continue to love and cherish the film, it fails in comparison to the stage show. The stage show’s plot is vastly different from that of the film. The differences are so great that one wonders just how a director could take so much creative liberty with the material. When placed together in an effort to find a comparison, one only finds that the songs are identical and characters share the same names. Nothing else is identical.

Differences between Stage and Screen

In the stage show, Claude is a member of the tribe of hippies. The tribe is larger then the four members the film portrays, in fact it comprises of most of the cast. Claude is not the only member in the tribe that obtains a draft card, but is the only one who does not burn his during the Be-In. This makes it so that Claude’s focus in the second act is on what to do. Being drafted into the Vietnam war goes against all of Claude’s beliefs and values. Berger suggests that Claude immigrate up to Canada but Claude never makes it. Claude dies before he is able to escape his fate, appearing on stage in a uniform with a military hair cut, stating how “They got me.”

Claude is where all of the major changes in the film version start. They rip Claude from his family, that of the tribe, and present him as an outsider in the film. By doing this, Claude is not a loved member of the cast but a mechanism for the plot. He is who meets the hippies and does not how to interact with them. He is the one who leaves an impression upon George Berger, even though they only knew each other for the span of several days. He is the one who desperately falls for Sheila, a bastardized version of her stage counter part. Berger knows of Claude’s feelings and wants to see his friend once again, so sparks the road trip to the boot camp that Claude goes to several months after his visit to New York City. Berger gets Claude to sneak from Boot Camp, staying in his stead, and accidentally gets shipped off to Vietnam with no training. The film ends with Claude living and Berger dying.

Two Separate Entities

While the film is a wonderful story, it should be separated completely from the musical. It is important that a viewer thinks of them as two separate entities, as both are good in their own right, but once compared, one wonders why the producers felt the need to change nearly everything. The source material, that of the stage show, was already drastically popular and thus had a guaranteed audience. The most logical explanation would be that they wanted a more concrete plot line. But one does wonder if the producers of the film also wanted a watered down version of the source material. The film is not as explicit as that of the stage show. The audience does not get the impression that Claude, Berger and Sheila are one entity. They appear to be a romantic trio in the stage show, with Jeannie even making a comment to the audience how “Berger is hung up on Everything and Claude is hung up on a cross between Berger and Sheila.” Woof’s apparent sexuality is watered down for the film as well, with Woof making the comment he’d not kick Mick Jagger out of his bed as an apparent in joke. In the stage show, Woof means this statement and appears to have not come to full grasp with his sexual interests, as he is at the very least bisexual. Nudity also does not appear on as large a scale in the film as it does in the stage show. The first act ends with every stage member undressing during the Be-In, after burning the draft cards. All of these elements come together and can be viewed, from at least some perspective, as a watering down of the stage show for the film audiences of the 1970s. Which is a true shame and makes me really yearn for an actual remake of Hair on film. I normally do not support remakes but I feel as if the stage show deserves a chance to be portrayed as it truly is and that it’d be well received in our modern age.

Additional Materials

I discovered the song ‘Going Down’ while I was at the show. Of course there were other songs that I hadn’t heard before but this was the one I particularly enjoyed. I liked it so much I might include it in the final show, where I finally get the chance to play music from Hair.

One really cool thing that Hair does as a stage show is the cast invites the audience on stage to dance with the cast. While dancing, everyone on stage sings a rendition of ‘Let the Sunshine In.’ Not willing to pass up that chance, my roommate and I rushed for the stage once the show was over to participate. What I was not expecting was to find myself in a video online the next day. The video is located here.

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Rodgers and Hammerstein

Link to Rodgers and Hammerstein Podcast

Research

As part of my preliminary research for this Blog, I needed to brush up on musicals  that were not necessarily my favorite type. For the most part, this meant the  Rodger’s and Hammerstein genre. I have always respected Rodger’s and Hammerstein,  for they have such a worshiped collection by the general public, and they do have  several amazing shows. I just never latched onto them the way I did other musical contributors, such as Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Weber. In fact, prior to settling on this capstone topic, I had only ever really seen The Sound of Music, Cinderella and pieces from Oklahoma!

Rodgers and Hammerstein have an intense catalog. If you stick to the basic films they’ve produced, you’ve got at least the big six. The Sound of Music, The King and I, Oklahoma, South Pacific, State Fair and Carousel. Then of course you have other  examples, but because of the film productions, those are the big six that most people are going to know of. I sat down and forced myself to watch The King and I and Oklahoma!

The King and I

I am going to be straight forward on my opinion here. I did not care for The King and I. It is a major work in theater and cherished by many. But I did not care for it. It took me two days to watch because I had to stop it in the middle in an effort to retain interest at a later time. What I can say about the King and I is how it sparked my interest in the actual events. I wanted to learn about Anna Leonowens and King Mongkut. I spent a good deal of time after my viewing researching the actual events of their relationship, as well as King Mongkut’s effects on Siam during his reign. Vastly interesting from a research stand point, but far too dull for an epic musical.

I think the problem lies in my own personal tastes. I am more likely to flock to the musicals that are big epics, such as Les Miserables, or have roots in rock music, such as Hair or Spring Awakening. Shows that have the standardized show tunes are always going to have issues grabbing my attention, even though I love show tunes. Do not let that be misunderstood. I was very bored with The King and I, but I loved the music.  “Shall We Dance?” was simply breath taking from a music standpoint for me.

Oklahoma!

Oklahoma was not nearly as unbearable for me as a viewer. I made the mistake during my radio show by saying that it was my favorite of the Rodgers and Hammerstein film collective. It isn’t. The Sound of Music is. But I did enjoy Oklahoma, so much so that I sought out Hugh Jackman’s version of Oklahoma. I enjoyed that more. I do believe that I enjoyed it more because it was clearly a staged production, not a film. I feel as if staged productions that are filmed and put on DVD are generally more enjoyable than a studio produced film. Not necessarily all of the time, but it has happened more than once in my opinion (best example, Rent).

Broadcast and Music Issues

With the Rodger’s and Hammerstein show, I learned something as a radio DJ. I  learned how to use the vinyl player in our studio. I’ve always known how to use a vinyl player at home, but the one in the studio intimidated me. I am intimidated by the equipment I don’t regularly use. Which believe it or not does include the CD player as well. Since beginning at WSHC, I’ve been primarily using digital music files that are stored on my ipod.

My ipod, presently, is useless. It has some form of a glitch in it that makes it so I can not make a manual playlist properly. If I add a song to a playlist from an album with more then one track, 75% of the time it automatically goes to another song from the list. Almost like it is shuffling the tracks without renaming them. It has caused me many problems in the past few months, to the point where I have given up on it all together until I can fix my music library.

My music library is stored on my desktop computer, the first big purchase item I bought after obtaining a job. It currently has a virus and I’ve been trying to fix it for some time now. What this means for both The S&M Show, and my original show The Late Night Double Feature, is that I have limited music selection. A lot of my cast albums I purchased through the itunes shop but never bothered to transfer to CD. The CD’s I physically own are scattered between my car and my parents house. Sadly, the majority of my Rodgers and Hammerstein (and Sondheim) collection was purchased through itunes features.

Which means very limited selection. I wished I could have been able to play songs from Cinderella or Carousel, for example. I was really yearning to play “If I loved you,” during my broadcast, but sadly could not. Luckily though, I have an obscene collection of Broadway cast recordings on vinyl. I used the vinyls of The King and I and South Pacific for the broadcast. I found that I loved the way the vinyls sounded  over the air. I’ve always been in love with the scratches and pops. I was thrilled with how it turned out.

To end this entry, I figured I’d go ahead and post some links to my favorite clips from the Rodger’s and Hammerstein song catalog.

This is from the Hugh Jackman lead version of Oklahoma. I absolutely love when Hugh Jackman sings and I think this song is a delight as a viewer.

Edelweiss is my favorite number in the Sound of Music and always has been. I think that Christopher Plummer has a real magneficent voice. I often wish he’d have done more musicals during his prime. I prefer the version at the end before they escape from the concert hall, which always evokes tears to my eyes, but I posted this one for readers who may not want the film spoiled if they’ve not seen it.

Patrick Wilson is one of my favorite actors. I discovered him in the film version of Phantom of the Opera. To this day I state that he is one of the only real redeeming factors of the film. Due to my obsession with his voice, I found this clip several years ago and I am absolutely in love with it. His version of “If I loved You” is my favorite and I can only hear it through youtube!

Brandy was massive in my childhood. As a child growing up in the 90’s, nothing was cooler then Brandy. She had her own television show and pretty decent solo albums. So stared in the remake of Cinderella, it was a huge thing for me and my friends. Julie Andrews’ Cinderella is a delight as well, but this was my first exposure to the musical, so it will always mean more to me. Plus, I love Whitney Houston.

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