THE POWER OF SONDHEIM: FROM PAGE 9

wasn't as melodic and the people were so unhappy. Teenage rebellion struck, and I decided all Rodgers must be bad and all Sondheim must be good. Thankfully, with age, I've come to realize that there can be just as much pith in a Rodgers and Hart or Rodgers and Hammcrstein song. Similarly, my dad's come to appreciate Sondhcim's work, most notably Sweeney Todd. He'll watch the video of the original Hal Prince production at the drop of a hat and swears it's one of the best musicals ever. Andy Propst, New York City Because I played instruments. I had been invited to audition for the understudy roles of Pirelli and The Beggar Woman in John Doyle's Broadway production of Sweeney Todd. so I thought I should see it rirst. Since I was a flute and voice major in college. I will admit to being jaded about what I was going to see. I imagined that the acting would be superior and the music would be just so-so. I spent the entire first act with my jaw dropped. They all acted, sang and played in the best version of Sweeney I had ever seen. The musicianship was amazing, and I heard things I had never heard before in relation to the characters and the instruments being "one." It was so gritty and real that I left thinking "Oh my gosh, I can't understudy that, it's too complex!" I didn't need to worry; I wasn't cast. A bit later I was dhlled in for Doyle's Company and learned, from the ground up. how to dive into a Sondheim musical with both feet ... and fingers. Kristin Huffman, Milford, Conn., who played the role of Sarah (plus flute, sax and piccolo) in the Tony Award-winning revival of Company Believe it or not, during my senior year in high school in the late '70s I began studying (ireek! Later that year I was cast in a production of The Boy Friend, in which I was a featured dancer in a tango number. One night on TV a promo appeared for an upcoming episode of The Dick Cuvett Show with Elaine Stritch as a guest. As it happened, she is a distant relative of my best friend, who called and told me I had to watch. Elaine sang "Anyone Can Whistle," and you can imagine the moment when I heard the lyric "I can dance a tango, I can read Greek." It was a definite "stop moment." Never mind that, as so many Sondheim fans often report, the rest of the song spoke to me on very specific and intimate levels. That was the night that Stephen Sondheim's art entered my world. John Bell, Center Valley, Pa. When I took the plunge and first subscribed to cable TV in the early '80s, I was determined to get my money's worth by watching everything on the pay channel. Showtime used a clever marketing ploy to promote its presentation of the national tour of S-ii-eenev Todd: "This is tt

musical that shocked Broadway!" I had heard of Sondheim from reading theatre re\iews in news magazines, but had never seen any of his shows. From the first viewing of Sweeney I was hooked. I borrowed a VCR, taped the show next time it was on and watched it over and over, sometimes multiple times in one day. Near obsession followed, and I read all I could about the creators and performers. That started me down the path of eventually writing occasional pieces for TSR. B.J. Sedlock, Defiance, Ohio Although I adored the original Broadway version oilnto the Woods, my favorite production was one for which I served as musical director at the Black River Playhouse in Chester. X.J.. an old church converted into a theatre-in-theround. Aside from an excellent cast, what made this production so marvelous was the intimate space the theatre scats no more than 100 people with actors literally walking around the theatre and forcing the audience to join the characters in their journeys through the woods. The circular nature of the space illustrated how these individuals were not merely embarking on a linear journey to reach some unobtainable object (especially when they realize that their physical prizes were useless), but rather they TflOrtHS iSKfWD were spiraling deep into their psyches toward the epiphany that no one is truly alone. With our director's expert staging, this charming theatrein-thc-round enhanced the frustrated journeys of the main characters, while their relentlessly circular movements were obsessively in sync with Sondhcim's score, \\ith its repeated musical motives and lyrical phrases. Patrick Koran. Bloomfield, N.J. I first discovered Stephen Soadhein when I was about seven and saw a rera episode of The Brady Bunch. ~ Go On?" Carol Brady (Florence and Marcia (Maureen McCora at a school talent show boes. they sang 'Togethec. I instantly found the musically superior BO d on that siuoai l~k's a -

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that particular episode has been rerun over the last 35 years in hundreds of markets around the world to tens of millions of viewers, it just might be Sondheim's most widely heard lyric. Andrew Milner, Bryn Mawr, Pa. Is there any show in American musical theatre more graceful than A Little Night Music? Any examination of what went wrong with the American Dream more incisive than Assassins? (Well, maybe Road Show.) Any meditation on evil more chillingyet-exhilarating than Sweeney Todd? What makes Sondheim's scores the most penetrating in the canon is their integrity, in the sense of wholeness, of being complete and undivided. Those critics who insist that ''Sondheim can't write melody" clearly haven't been listening to the soaring "Kiss Me" or the long, sustained orchestral line underlying the frantic New York patter in "Another Hundred People." Instead, they've been hearing the words and little wonder. Sondheim's lyries are the quirkiest, the edgiest, the most literate; they are bearers of emotional truth. "Which comes first generally the words or the music?" that clueless interviewer asks Charley Kringas in "Franklin Shepard, Inc." In Sondheim, the words and the music are one. \bu can pick them apart, but they're as intertwined as a double helix of DNA. That's the quality that makes a Sondheim musical a "Sondheim Musical" to the extent that casual observers tend to forget the Hugh Wheelers and the James Lapincs and the John Weidmans of this world and assume Sondheim wrote, in the words of Buddy Plummer, "the whole show." They provide the book, but he supplies the soul. Diane Nottle, New York City The bold jacket to the original cast LP, still looking groovy after all these years, proudly
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proclaims Company: A Musical Coined*. glance at what quickly became a "desert! disc" for me, I thought it might have boi ironic moniker. Hadn't Sondheim abaafl "pure" musical comedy as he pushed tbc forward with this landmark concept shoi wrong I was. Sondheim and Furth's Cat takes all the elements of musical corned book! the score! the choreography! thefj tion numbers! and puts them in serviJ an acute, incisive look at relationships ua is still raw and truthful today. The charaa arc so identifiable, so familiar that it's a sible to leave the theatre without looking! ourselves and those good and crazy peof friends. And Sondheim's score? Itfinds everyday life and yet sounds like no othej "Thrilling" and "pulsating" come to mind. It's edgy and rhythmic, like the city that its DNA. Moreover, Company lends itself staggering variety of interpretations by ( tors and performers. Every new product adventure. The orchestration, the settin tone might change, will change, but I : provoked, intrigued, laughing, crying. it's simply the best that musical theatre) musical comedy can offer. Company is It remains the most affecting show for i Sondheim's entire canon. Joe Marches Clark, N.J. The original production of Follies wa> Instead of being told in a typical clear na style, the show had a dreamlike atmospheJ going from scenes with the lead characters! vignette with a minor one, from present to and then having the past and present inter^ ing. Things that could seem unreal or pret^B tious worked and seemed natural. And wheJ on a dark, almost bare stage, in the middle^ the quarreling characters, Loveland suddeJ appeared out of nowhere, filling the the;;:-. light and music the effect was incredible. I Financial reasons would probably keep anyd on that level from being done today unf<:i natcly, because part of the point of Follies isd contrast between the lavishness of the "Foil* and the reality of the lead characters' lives. 1 original performers supplied unforgettable mcnts: Gene Nelson's dance to "The Right G the way, at the end, when Buddy is telling Sal they will deal with things tomorrow, DorothyCollins looked out into the empty theatre ana I said, "Dear God, this is tomorrow." Greg Da- I rak, Trumbull, Conn. For every artist, there is one moment in yw life when something clicks within you and thra( just make sense. For me, I will always rernem- I ber the moment I saw Sunday in the Park \cidi \ George for the first time. It was a period of titaj when I wasn't sure of my path. I was uncertain j what I should do with my life. As "Sunday" finished the first act, I found tears pouring dam my face. Not tears of sadness, but rather joy. m

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