Word: sondheims
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Composer-Lyricist Stephen Sondheim and Director-Librettist James Lapine completed their Pulitzer-prizewinning musical Sunday in the Park with George in 1984, they began exploring two new ideas: to create from scratch a classic myth or fairy tale for the stage and to bring together Lucy, Ralph Kramden and other memorable sitcom characters in a single overlapping story for a TV special. Eventually the two plans sort of fused. Instead of the sitcom figures, the authors decided to jumble larkingly together the characters and archetypes popularized by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. The strikingly original yet completely...
...poetry, stagecraft, dance and music can be as vital and communicative as it was 300 years ago in Renaissance Florence. The label for this art form -- originally opera, operetta, musical, even Broadway show latterly -- matters not. Nor does the increasingly arbitrary distinction between high art and pop culture: Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures and Sweeney Todd, for example, have joined Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in the repertoires of English and American opera companies. It is a truth that the Viennese, who have always made room on their stage for both opera and operetta, have long understood...
Crom's appeal came particularly from his use of the piano, students who attended the show said. Students said they found his three renditions of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"--in the imitative styles of Stephen Sondheim, the Bee Gees and Bruce Springsteen--particularly entertaining...
...result of Mackintosh's invitation to Sondheim and Librettist James Goldman to "have a wee think" about revamping the show, the pair has come up with four new songs and a completely new book. According to a program note by the creators, "scarcely a line of dialogue remains from the original." The central story of two couples, old friends, who married the wrong partners used to end in nervous breakdowns for some of them; it now closes with self- understanding and at least hints of reconciliation. What felt in 1971 like a put-down of old-fashioned musicals for their...
...Love; Who's That Woman?, a realization by a brassy belter (Lynda Baron) of how age has crept up on her; Could I Leave You?, an outpouring of vitriol from a neglected wife (Rigg); Losing My Mind, the pathetic admissions of a suppliant lover (Julia McKenzie). Sondheim's best lyric ever is I'm Still Here, an anthem of survival that compresses four decades of social history into the battered but unrepentant cry of a faded star. It gets a showstopping performance by Dolores Gray, who made her Broadway debut in 1944 and hasn't faded a bit. Follies seemed...