Word: sondheimer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American musical comedy? No, God no, of course not. And yet, on its own lightweight, escapist terms, Anything Goes is 100 per cent successful--from moment-to-moment as enjoyable, if ultimately nowhere near as satisfying, as any show in our musical repertoire. Makes you think. Poor Stephen Sondheim...
With the possible exception of Choreographer Jerome Robbins, no one has done more to reinvent the modern Broadway musical than the team of Director Harold Prince and Composer Stephen Sondheim. In four successive collaborations-Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Pacific Overtures-they have proved that America's foremost indigenous theatrical form can accommodate adult themes, unconventional music and innovative flights of staging and dance. Now Prince and Sondheim have adapted one of their shows to the screen, and the results are perversely stupefying. The film version of A Little Night Music looks less like a daring Prince...
...Sondheim's gorgeous all-waltz score is his most openly emotional, but it is not heard here to maximum effect. Some of the best numbers (e.g., The Miller's Son) have been dropped, others have been reworked, and most of the rest (notably Taylor's Send in the Clowns) are ineptly performed. The only song that retains its full stage power is A Weekend in the Country, in which music and lyrics merge ingeniously to sum up at least five of the story's subplots and seven of its characters at once. Even in the context...
...first Loeb Mainstage production of the semester is the quintessential late '60s musical, with the large added bonus of a brilliant score by Stephen Sondheim. Company is the story of a single man among his married friends, and his shifting feelings about the value of marriage. Paris Barclay's crew is a bit uneven, but all the leads can sing, which is all that a musical really requires. A must for Sondheim freaks--and since there are so many of the, you'd better get your tickets in advance. Tonight, tomorrow and Saturday...
Everything of importance in Company emanates from the score, a barrage of acid gripes, ironic laments and anxious yearnings set to and in between the noisy rattles of urban chaos. Sondheim can pack a stanza with so much cynicism that beyond the wit and polish of the lyrics it becomes almost a cry of pain...