CBR 17 BINGO: White (See cover)
When Stephen Sondheim died in November 2021, I lost one of my heroes. A theater nerd in college with a proclivity for lyrics over music, I was won over completely by Sondheim’s poetry. Fans can endlessly debate which of his rhymes is most magnificent–the rhyming of “personable” with “coercin’ a bull” in Company is often cited, though I’m inclined to go with the brilliant throw-away line from Into the Woods regarding Jack’s cow, “There’s no time to sit and dither while her withers wither with her.”
At any rate, the last four years have demonstrated that Sondheim is certainly not “gone” from our midst. The resurgence of his work on a local and national level has been heartwarming, and we’ve been treated to more opportunities to see his work performed than I can ever remember. People are also writing about him more, which brings me to Richard Schoch’s How Sondheim Can Change Your Life.
Schoch is a drama professor who has spent nearly all his adult life working in the performing arts. His book isn’t a biography of Sondheim, nor is it really a critique. Rather, it’s a personal exploration of what Sondheim’s musicals have meant to the author and “taught him about life.” Along the way, he provides insights into Sondheim’s work that come from studying those musicals for decades. For example, if you find “Send in the Clowns” too saccharine or “pop-ish” (the song has suffered from being Sondheim’s only real “hit”), Schoch’s exploration of the scene from A Little Night Music in which it occurs is revealing. He talks about how that scene originally belonged to Fredrik–the aging man who rejects his longtime love Desiree Armfeldt in favor of returning to his wife. As director Hal Prince worked the scene with the actors (shout out to Len Cariou and Glynis Johns), he realized it was really Desiree’s moment. “She listens to Fredrik, and then she watches him leave. No grand gestures. No big speech.” When Prince showed Sondheim how they were tilting the scene toward Desiree, Sondheim realized that both the scene and the song needed to be hers. The next day, he shared the lyrics for “Send in the Clowns.”
I have (sadly) not seen all eleven plays that Schoch discusses in his book, and one thing I’m left with is a raging desire to see Assassins, while also wondering whether there’s anyone in this day and age who might have the courage to produce it. Americans have never been great with nuance. A show about Presidential assassins and would-be assassins is going to be politically charged, and the start of the Persian Gulf War in the middle of Assassins‘s first run was. . . unfortunate. Critics accused Sondheim of “envying” the assassins or being an “obsessive fan” of them. Schoch points out, “When a national publication titles its review ‘Glimpses of Looniness’. . . you can be sure its readership includes people so afraid of their country’s past that they won’t even try to understand it.” Yeah. Multiply that fear by 1000 and you’re getting warmer to where we are today, which is why, more than ever, we need art to explore complex ideas.
Not everything in this book is as insightful as the examples I’ve mentioned. I reject the author’s analysis of the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods (he sees her decision to return to her old life with the Baker as a failure, and not just because she meets with a sudden, disappointing death), and some of his observations are a bit on the eye-rolling end of the spectrum (Gypsy’s biggest talent is “being herself”?). As I said, this was a personal exploration and, at times, I really wanted more in-depth analysis, which was a little disappointing.
Still. . . I’m grateful. Grateful that people are writing and talking about my hero. That I can pick up a book like this and feel like I’m having a conversation with another fan about lyrics or music that we enjoyed, or debate about an interpretation, or talk about which show we’d like to see produced in the near future (Schoch doesn’t discuss A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, but I really think that level of silliness is something we could all use right now).
I recommend this book for Sondheim fans. You may not agree with all of Schoch’s opinions and, like me, you may find yourself wanting more. But it’s a celebration of art and the artist. As Sondheim wrote in Sunday in the Park with George (which many see as his most personal work), “Work is what you do for others. Art is what you do for yourself.” So go out and read, but be sure to take some time to make your own art as well.