“I’ve run the gamut, A to Z,
Three cheers and damnit, C’est la vie,
I got through all of last year, and I’m here
Lord knows, at least I was there, and I’m here
Look who’s here, I’m still here.”—Stephen Sondheim, “I’m Still Here,” from Follies (1971)
Yes, I know I just wrote a post the other day about Sondheim. Well, what of it?
Sure, there’s a voice inside—the kind that many bloggers probably hear—saying, “Wouldn’t it be good to offer a little variety? Vary the ol’ subject matter a little bit?”
I hear you, faithful reader. But I also obey the insistent impulse of most bloggers: I write as I please. And right now, what pleases me is to pay tribute to the greatest craftsman of American musical theater for the last half-century today, on his 80th birthday.
Stephen Sondheim’s musicals have been, as often as not, orphaned at their original premieres, only to be taken up by later generations. One of these was the one that first got me listening to his music in a sustained way: Merrily We Roll Along, which told its story of middle-aged disillusionment backwards through time.
I wish the Roundabout Theatre had chosen to stage Merrily rather than the revue on the boards now, Sondheim on Sondheim. The latter might have its crowd-pleasing stars—Barbara Cook, Tom Wopat and Vanessa Williams—and a kind of best-of format. But it sounds to me a little safe—everything Sondheim, most emphatically, has rejected in his art.
Follies is not only central to the Sondheim canon, but with time, I think, it’s entered the larger sphere of the very select American musical canon. Think of its relationship to the musical the same way you might compare Lonesome Dove to the western: an examination of an endpoint of an American era, and, in a sense, a particular American art form.
For the plot of Follies—a reunion of “Weissman” (read: Ziegfeld) girls—Sondheim summed up nearly half a century of seminal figures of the American musical, including mentor Oscar Hammerstein II, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Sigmund Romberg. But that whole tradition is then deconstructed—there are no happy, romantic endings, simply a weary acceptance of one’s experience—and the whole projected forwarded into a nightmarish phantasmagoria of dreams unrealized.
“I’m Still Here” might be my favorite among this dazzling collection of musical pastiches. There are all sorts of reasons to love it:
* as a kind of through-the-years history lesson, with fun but more obscure allusions than, for instance, Don McLean’s “American Pie” or Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (for a complete rundown of the meaning of these references, see this helpful guide from June Abernathy). How many Americans today can tell you what Brenda Frazier, Major Bowes, or Abie’s Irish Rose means?
Three cheers and damnit, C’est la vie,
I got through all of last year, and I’m here
Lord knows, at least I was there, and I’m here
Look who’s here, I’m still here.”—Stephen Sondheim, “I’m Still Here,” from Follies (1971)
Yes, I know I just wrote a post the other day about Sondheim. Well, what of it?
Sure, there’s a voice inside—the kind that many bloggers probably hear—saying, “Wouldn’t it be good to offer a little variety? Vary the ol’ subject matter a little bit?”
I hear you, faithful reader. But I also obey the insistent impulse of most bloggers: I write as I please. And right now, what pleases me is to pay tribute to the greatest craftsman of American musical theater for the last half-century today, on his 80th birthday.
Stephen Sondheim’s musicals have been, as often as not, orphaned at their original premieres, only to be taken up by later generations. One of these was the one that first got me listening to his music in a sustained way: Merrily We Roll Along, which told its story of middle-aged disillusionment backwards through time.
I wish the Roundabout Theatre had chosen to stage Merrily rather than the revue on the boards now, Sondheim on Sondheim. The latter might have its crowd-pleasing stars—Barbara Cook, Tom Wopat and Vanessa Williams—and a kind of best-of format. But it sounds to me a little safe—everything Sondheim, most emphatically, has rejected in his art.
Follies is not only central to the Sondheim canon, but with time, I think, it’s entered the larger sphere of the very select American musical canon. Think of its relationship to the musical the same way you might compare Lonesome Dove to the western: an examination of an endpoint of an American era, and, in a sense, a particular American art form.
For the plot of Follies—a reunion of “Weissman” (read: Ziegfeld) girls—Sondheim summed up nearly half a century of seminal figures of the American musical, including mentor Oscar Hammerstein II, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Sigmund Romberg. But that whole tradition is then deconstructed—there are no happy, romantic endings, simply a weary acceptance of one’s experience—and the whole projected forwarded into a nightmarish phantasmagoria of dreams unrealized.
“I’m Still Here” might be my favorite among this dazzling collection of musical pastiches. There are all sorts of reasons to love it:
* as a kind of through-the-years history lesson, with fun but more obscure allusions than, for instance, Don McLean’s “American Pie” or Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (for a complete rundown of the meaning of these references, see this helpful guide from June Abernathy). How many Americans today can tell you what Brenda Frazier, Major Bowes, or Abie’s Irish Rose means?
* as an example of Sondheim’s dazzling wordplay. My favorite: “First you’re another sloe-eyed vamp,/Then someone’s mother, then you’re camp,/Then you career from career to career.”
* as an anthem of show-biz veterans’ indomitability. As WNYC-FM deejay Jonathan Schwartz remarked on his show yesterday, “I’m Still Here”—based, according to an interview of Sondheim by Chicago’s Gary Griffin, upon the life of Joan Crawford--has become the preferred tune of actress-singers of a certain age, including Yvonne DeCarlo (who originated the role of Carlotta Campion), Carol Burnett, Polly Bergen, and Elaine Stritch.
But I think its relevance is even more extensive. No profession beats show business for the variety of its cruelties, the way your career can be upended through personal demons, changing fashions, economic downturns, shifting politics, or simply capricious tyrants inexplicably given charge of your destiny at crucial moments.
“I’m Still Here” is not a kind of defiantly theatrical “My Way,” but an alternately rueful, witty reflection on human imperfection, a tale of endurance in the face of such repeated and various indignities in the entertainment world that it builds to the level of majestic, thrilling heroism.
Sondheim’s first up-close and personal experience with show business—as a gofer for Hammerstein for the experimental musical Allegro—was just such a failure, and he’s endured a full share of his own career and personal setbacks (e.g., the ‘60s disappointment of Anyone Can Whistle and his collaboration with Richard Rodgers, Do I Hear a Waltz?, plus a mid-Seventies heart attack that forced a change in his lifestyle). He wrote “I’m Still Here” for a character, but today, it can serve as his own cry of the heart.
Happy 80th birthday, Mr. Sondheim.
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