Word: sondheimer
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...LIFE'S CHOICE IRONIES that (in the realm of art, anyway) what is gentle and equivocal often outlasts what is tough and brazen. When in 1970 Company first opened--music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth--it was celebrated for its punch. Here was an innovative, hard-hitting musical that trafficked in booze and pot, bile and cynicism, promiscuity and adultery. Yet these are the aspects of Company that seem most dated a quarter-century later in a revival that has just come to Broadway, starring Boyd Gaines as Robert, the bachelor of many nicknames (Bobby, Robby...
...aisle. And Robert Westenberg, contemplating Robert's inquiry, "You ever sorry you got married?" offers a splendid version of that bittersweet hymn to ambivalence Sorry--Grateful. Westenberg vindicates the suspicion of those who (overlooking the cheesy arrangement of the original-cast recording) have long viewed this as one of Sondheim's most touching songs...
...Orleans blues (I Gotta Be Your Man), some certifiable rock-'n'-roll earthshakers (The Man), a little gospel, a brush of soul, and an overall acid bath of Newman's corrosive wit. It's music of an ambition and quality not often heard outside the work of Stephen Sondheim (whom Newman reveres), and it is performed on the album with tremendous brio by James Taylor, who sports a no-sweat self-mocking cool as God; Linda Ronstadt as the tremulous, winsome Margaret; Bonnie Raitt as Martha, a piece of trade tough enough to wring out the devil's heart...
...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...