Word: sondheimer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sense that you are watching events unfold that are both unpredictable and ineluctable. A team of five musicians pilots us from one realm to the other, artfully building toward songs that never emerge. (Lapine knows all about linking action to music; he wrote the books for such Stephen Sondheim musicals as Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George). At the moment, New York theater isn't long on chills, but Twelve Dreams offers some of the genuine, subtle edginess of a Henry James ghost story...
Robbins quickly found himself some inspired collaborators: composer Leonard Bernstein and scenarist Arthur Laurents (Stephen Sondheim, in his first major musical credit, joined as librettist later). There were some stumbles: originally the pavement warriors were Jews and Catholics, but that reminded Laurents too much of Abie's Irish Rose. Puerto Ricans, who moved to New York City in great numbers after World War II, became the antagonists, squaring off against a gang of melting-pot whites...
...embarrassingly exuberant dancers kicking up their legs and belting out endless choruses of catchy ditties. The word jazz evokes an aesthetic of a different sort-two-drink minimums, low-key cool, wandering saxophone solos that trail off into ecstasy. The new album Color and Light: Jazz Sketches on Sondheim brings the worlds of jazz and Broadway together, and the result is a sensuous, satisfying collection of songs. These interpretations are more intelligent and textured than the average Broadway show tune, yet they contain more melodiousness and amiability than one usually expects from jazz...
...Stephen Sondheim is among Broadway's best and most daring songwriters (A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George), but his cerebral, challenging compositions possess depths that cannot always be fully explored in the sometimes constraining format of musical theater. Those depths are plumbed here. Each track on Color and Light features one or more jazz musicians performing a Sondheim show tune. Singer Peabo Bryson and saxophonist Joshua Redman join forces on a version of Sondheim's Pretty Women (from the musical Sweeney Todd) that is mature and mysterious, dark and sweet. Grover Washington Jr., with charismatic...
...create entertainment the whole world will pay to see. The aim is pure show-and-tell: it shows with grand images and lavish costumes; it tells with familiar songs. A cuddly optimism replaces the mordant philosophizing of Tony Award-winning shows. People don't go to Vegas for a Sondheim musical (indeed, not many go to Broadway for one). Vegas shows are zippy, out-of-mind experiences aimed at vacationers of all classes and countries. "You have to have a certain style of show here," says EFX! master Crawford. "When half your audience doesn't speak English, you have...