The Long And Opaque Career Of INTO THE WOODS’ Stephen Sondheim
Everyone loves a good survival story because everyone believes they’ve still got a shot to accomplish something extraordinary in this life. They may be nearing retirement age after decades of dutiful, cog-in-the-wheel service to some nondescript company that does a variety of nondescript things for which no one would think to be grateful, but, god and talent willing, the world will one day be floored by their epic musical about the history of irrigation. And whenever someone tells them to place that embarrassment in the drawer and never let it see the light of day for fear of institutionalization, they will smile and say, “Yeah, well, Stephen Sondheim once wrote a Broadway musical about famous presidential assassins.”
For theater nerds, particularly those inclined toward musical theater, Stephen Sondheim is the patron saint of fuck you. Though he is one of the most celebrated composers and librettists of the last sixty years, the bulk of Sondheim’s work has challenged the status quo of the medium; whereas most American musicals spill over with unearned sentiment, Sondheim comes at songwriting and plotting with an analytical mind. Sure, he’s been showered with Tony Awards, but his shows have spawned only one Top 40 hit: “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music. A lifelong cinephile, he draws inspiration from the likes of Bergman, Bunuel and Powell & Pressburger, driving toward quiet epiphanies via delicate and elusive melodies that, as his career has progressed, have become increasingly un-hummable. Aspiring performers often audition with Sondheim tunes, but they’re not looking to engage their would-be director’s emotions; they’re showing off a thorough command of one’s instrument. And this can be a perilous task because there aren’t many people outside of New York City or London’s West End who can identify the difference between a brilliantly delivered “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday In The Park With George and a horribly faked one. This is one reason that Sunday In The Park With George, a Pulitzer Prize-winning study of George Searat’s painting of “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” doesn’t get performed much in regional theater: it’s an intensely cerebral examination of the artistic temperament. And while it is not inaccessible, it is difficult for audiences weaned on sugary confections like Cats and Les Miserables to connect to its subtle celebration of pointillism.
That Sondheim managed to get a lavish Broadway run for a musical about such a seemingly arcane subject is a testament to a lofty reputation built largely on triumphs -- West Side Story and Gypsy -- he wanted no part of in the first place. Born to a pair of emotionally withholding, psychologically abusive parents, the young Sondheim was fortunate enough to befriend the son of legendary lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Already evincing an interest in musical theater at the age of ten, Sondheim sought the elder Hammerstein’s guidance, which he provided via a series of challenges designed to sharpen the aspiring artist’s skills. Key to Hammerstein’s mentorship was a request for four different kinds of musicals from Sondheim: one based on a play Sondheim admired; another based on a play he liked, but thought had flaws; a third based on a novel or short story that had not yet been adapted for the theater; and, finally, an original. While none of these assignments ever became full-blown musicals (including Bad Tuesday, an adaptation of P.L. Travers’s Mary Poppins which pre-dates the Disney film), Sondheim credits Hammerstein’s continued tutelage as invaluable to his development as a composer and librettist. The two men remained close, so much so that Sondheim delivered the eulogy at Hammerstein’s funeral in 1960.
It is likely that the world has Hammerstein to thank for Sondheim’s involvement in West Side Story. Longing to make his mark as a composer, Sondheim was initially cool to the idea of writing lyrics only for Leonard Bernstein’s urban retelling of Romeo & Juliet. Fortunately, Hammerstein urged his twentysomething protégé to take the gig, assuring him that there would be ample opportunity to compose music in the future. Though West Side Story is considered one of the greatest musicals in theater history, Sondheim has expressed mild dissatisfaction with his lyrics, which he told The Guardian are “Poetic with a capital ‘P’” at Bernstein’s request. But play “One Hand, One Heart” back-to-back with “I Wish I Could Forget You” from Passion, and it’s really the melodies that offer the starkest contrast. Sondheim has never had a problem with expressing outsized emotion in his lyrics; he just has a distaste for bombast.
It’s this penchant for melodic restraint that has helped solidify Sondheim’s reputation for being a cold, unfeeling composer of esoteric musicals, but his aim has almost always been to let content dictate form -- and, for the most part, Sondheim’s material has been grounded in a semi-identifiable reality. Company and Follies are about real people struggling with depressing crap like infidelity, getting older and passing out of one’s prime. Even when staging a gloriously theatrical tribute to Grimms’ Fairy Tales with Into The Woods, Sondheim can’t help but humanize his archetypes and wonder at the consequences of their actions. It makes the show a surprising choice for a family-friendly Disney musical (e.g. the song “Hello, Little Girl” finds Little Red Riding Hood being sized up in a disconcertingly lascivious manner by The Wolf), but if there’s a Sondheim show that’s going to appeal to the masses, it’s this one (or Sweeney Todd, which Tim Burton previously mangled with non-singing movie stars).
Into The Woods is a good show, but Sondheim is at his very best when probing the minds and desires of the discarded or disturbed. Who else would think to make a musical spectacle out of Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore throwing bullets at Gerald Ford -- and ask the audience to empathize in some fashion? He’s made it eighty-four years. Thank god Stephen Sondheim’s still here.
This was originally published in the December issue of Birth.Movies.Death. See Into the Woods at the Alamo Drafthouse!
