Word: sondheims
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...midst of all the furor, Capitol Records has issued the Original Cast Album, and it is, frankly, a disappointment. The score itself is not disappointing, in fact quite the opposite is true-it is Stephen Sondheim's finest to date and one of the richest theatre scores ever written for a musical play. Nor are the voices in any way deficient. It is purely the production of the album which has taken the fire out of Follies, and needlessly...
...audiences (and critics) were divided into those who felt it was a sociological musical, a comedic commentary on urban ills, and those who believed it only signified that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw parties. "It's the most pro-marriage show in the world," protests Sondheim, who has never been married himself. "It says, very clearly, that to be emotionally committed to somebody is very difficult, but to be alone is impossible...
...Both Sondheim and Prince?and the women who star in Follies?vehemently deny that their musical has anything to do with Broadway's yearning to remember things past. Nonetheless, the success of Follies and Nanette has quickened the pulse of every Broadway grave robber who has read the grosses and misinterpreted them. Now on their way are musicals based on such memory-soaked epics as Come Back, Little Sheba, National Velvet, The Great Gatsby and Some Like It Hot?plus revivals of New Faces of 1952 and the 1944 hit On the Town...
...many people, the theater's backward look is not only normal but necessary, at a time when Broadway is constantly worried about its fifth season ?slack. Says Veteran Director George Abbott, who worked with Sondheim on Forum: "It's so difficult to get to the Broadway theater, plus there is the cost of eating dinner out and the fear of being mugged. People have to believe they're going to see something priceless." What better show, then, than one already granted a squeal of approval? What happier tense than the past perfect? Furthermore, notes Nanette's Ruby Keeler, "people...
...history of drama?need not become the exclusive province of the antique dealer or the rock group. In style and substance it can be as flexible as a film, as immediate as a street scene. Lyrics need not be laundry lists; melody need not be cacophony or syrup. Sondheim's experiments with sonority may sound tentative to the trained ear, but they are bold charts for himself?and for future composers as well. And his words demonstrate that the great tradition of Broadway songwriting, from Berlin through Porter and Hammerstein, is still alive...