On Stage
KANFER, STEFAN
On Stage SENDING IN THE CLOWNS By Stefan Kanfer In addition to Broadway's other conundrums, a new one was added over the last decade or so: The Sondheim Puzzle. There are Stephen Sondheim...
...Asked if he is Catholic, Kenny sputters, "Oh, no...
...Its focal point is Claire (J...
...Just Binky...
...Oh, isn't it a shame...
...What follows is a string of songs from more than a dozen stage musicals or films...
...This year's wacko clan of choice can be found in Fuddy Meers, David Lindsay-Abaire's unbridled farce at the City Center Stage II...
...But they are such a small minority that picking on them seems a private vendetta rather than an entertainment...
...His most recent work, Passion, produced in 1996, was a dreary, tuneless assemblage of numbers that never added up...
...another, Assassins, never made it to Broadway...
...She has not forgotten any of her comic tricks, and has added a few along the way...
...Meantime, Sondheim productions have come and gone...
...All the more refreshing, then, to hear the rare, straightforward, courtship ballad, "Unworthy of Your Love" (Assassins, 1989), sung by the young couple...
...Richard quickly overpowers the lady cop and brings her along, manacled with her own handcuffs...
...he also speaks with a pronounced lisp—"You are," he tells her mysteriously, "my little blank filiate...
...I can neither sew Nor cook nor read nor write my name...
...The team's affection and regard for Sondheim is manifest in every number...
...Still, the ensemble is first-rate and there is nothing remotely like Fuddy Meers on Broadway or off...
...My Husband the Pig" (A Little Night Music, 1973) is one example...
...Could I Leave You...
...In general, Sondheim songs view marriage as a series of disappointments and betrayals...
...Since Claire has no memory, she believes everything she's told, including the Limping Man's new revelation: Richard is actually a killer anxious to do her in...
...To make things odder, he has a weirdly deformed ear...
...It might go a long way toward solving the Sondheim Puzzle...
...Perhaps some day the songwriter will display an equal regard for the species he so pitilessly anatomizes...
...In this he is intermittently successful...
...Lore's disgusting, Lore's insane...
...She refers to funhouse mirrors, for example, as "fuddy meers," hence the title—an appropriate one considering the action to come...
...Forum) But these are only warmups to Sondheim's hymn of loathing, "The Ladies Who Lunch...
...Every day she has to be informed of such details as her own name as well as those of her husband Richard (Robert Stanton) and her son Kenny (Keith Nobbs...
...To be sure, the author had his hits in the past...
...And yet in recent times his works seem to have lost favor with audiences...
...Like Santo Loquasto's set, the dialogue isretro, looking backward to Ionesco rather than representing its own time...
...Her doubletime, nervous bride rendition of "Not Getting Married Today" deservedly brings down the house: I'm not well, so I'm not getting married, You've been swell, but I'm not getting married...
...but I'm not getting married And don I tell Paul, but I'm not getting married today...
...some of it is obvious and derivative...
...Putting it Together leaves no doubt, however, that they will eventually end like their elders, bitter and wistful, as in "The Road You Didn't Take" and "Country House," both from Follies...
...Revivals like IrvingBerlin's Annie Get Your Gun bring in crowds...
...David Petrarca's manic style of direction, known in burlesque as "Firein-a-Whorehouse"—everybody yelling, nobody listening—does not help matters...
...Not me...
...Putting It Together shows the breadth of the songwriter's talent—as well as his all too frequent misanthropy and cynicism...
...The ear will prove to be a key to a mystery that deepens every minute...
...The production ran for 964 performances and augured a great career...
...Getting progressively sloshed, she sings: Here's to the girls who stay smart, Aren't they a gas...
...The story, though, is unimportant...
...In his collaborative phase he wrote the lyrics for several shows, including Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story and Jule Styne's Gypsy...
...Follies, 1971) is another...
...One musical, Merrily We Roll Along, lasted only 16 performances...
...Besides, it is always more stimulating to watch a rough new talent at work than to catch a smooth old pro trotting out his memorabilia for the nth time...
...To erery line you haren't got And if you're in a snit because you're missed the plot (Of which I will admit there's not an awful lot) Still don't Say, "What...
...Lindsay-Abaire's work is concerned more with the ways people communicate, or fail to understand each other...
...Moreover, Op Art is as dated as the miniskirt, and in the field of fashionable English playwrights Harold Pinter has been supplanted by David Hare...
...such pedestrian shows as Les Misérables and Cats have been running since the Bush Administration...
...There is considerable truth to the remark about plotlessness...
...Too many of the people are eccentric merely for the sake of being far out, rather than having any legitimate comic purpose...
...The title refers to people not unlike the older Wife : ladies with too much money and too little soul...
...When the younger woman admires herself she suddenly turns into an airheaded bimbo: I'm lorely...
...Their car goes beyond the speed limit and they are pulled over by a member of the Highway Patrol, Heidi (Lisa Gorlitsky...
...Meanwhile Richard goes off in pursuit of Claire, with Kenny in tow...
...Known only as The Limping Man (Patrick Breen), he makes his entry by wriggling out from under Claire's bed and announcing that he is her long-lost brother...
...At the Barrymore Theater Heam, Henshall and Barrowman maintain equally high standards, Eric D. Schaeffer's direction is crisp, and Bob Crowley's bright and efficient set is abetted by Howard Harrison's resourceful neon lighting...
...Some of his comedy is nimble...
...More than a limp afflicts him...
...No sooner does Richard leave the room than a new character appears...
...In TV sitcoms and stage comedies, the noun "family" is usually preceded by the adjective "dysfunctional...
...As it turns out, the Limping Man is Claire's first husband, Heidi is his girlfriend, and nobody else is what he or she seems...
...Winsome, What I am is winsome...
...The youth grows surlier by the moment, puffing marijuana joints and predicting disaster...
...No doubt there are still rich self-delusive women who waste their purses and their afternoons in Manhattan bistros...
...A Little Night Music, 1973) When the women are not together, they put on various masks of happiness that cannot disguise Sondheim's overriding disdain...
...In a sense, that is what Sondheim has enjoyed...
...Company, 1970) This lengthy sneer is not only unpleasant but seriously outdated...
...Once Upon a Mattress, before moving on to television...
...Another thousand dollars, A matinee, a Pinter play, Perhaps a piece of Mahler s...
...Carol Burnett got her start in a musical...
...Radiant as in some Dream come true...
...There are Stephen Sondheim fan clubs, web sites, collectors' CDs...
...The thread-thin story line consists of relating the tribulations of a nameless older Wife and Husband (Carol Burnett and George Heam), and a similarly anonymous Younger Man and Younger Woman (Ruthie Henshall and John Barrowman) while the Observer watches and comments on the proceedings...
...SmithCameron), a victim of severe amnesia...
...Many of his songs, among them "Send In the Clowns," have become cabaret standards, and major stars compete to appear in his shows...
...As the all-seeing Proustian onlooker Pinchot is funny, sharp and in good voice...
...And yet nothing the composer/lyricist has written since Forum has had as long a run...
...His first solo effort was remarkable: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, produced in 1962, remains a model of wit and melody...
...At times the elder male pursues the younger female, at other times the elder female and the young one commiserate about the opposite sex: Men are stupid, Men are rain...
...But that is only the beginning of her travails...
...Another long, exhausting day...
...Some are blithe and funny, as in the Observer's "Instructions to the Audience" (from The Frogs, 1972): Don't take notes To show us you know all the famous quotes...
...Kenny has a vicious streak and a vile mouth, characteristics that are displayed not by him but by the hand puppet he carries around...
...All I am is lovely, Lorely is the one thing I can do...
...He has 20-20 foresight...
...When this group arrives at Gertie's they are confronted by yet another oddball, Millet (Mark McKinney), an ex-convict in a stolen suit (the plastic tag still clings to his jacket...
...Rushing to their classes in Optical Art, Wishing it would pass...
...But what he really wanted to do was create both music and words...
...Sondheim calls this a review, not a revue," so that we may sit back and consider the creator's decades of work...
...The author has fame, wealth and just about every award the theater has to offer...
...All this is calmness compared to the winding and unwinding of biographies and subplots...
...Together the siblings flee to their mother's country house where more complications ensue...
...Clear the hall 'cause I'm not getting married...
...At the opening curtain, a character called the Observer (Bronson Pinchot) reminds us that "Mr...
...In a fallow period (for Broadway and Sondheim) comes yet another production stitched from old material...
...The cast performing all this is impeccable...
...Don't say "What...
...Mama Gertie (Marylouise Burke) suffered a brain incident some time back, and can only utter "strokespeak," a mix of half-words and strange sounds...
...Thank you all...
Vol. 82 • November 1999 • No. 14
