Anyone catch Six by Sondheim on HBO?- Page 4

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 9:10am

I agree. I don't understand the thought behind including something so pointless as that rendition of "I'm Still Here." He didn't sing the melody, he bastardized the lyrics, he didn't act the song, but instead made a mockery of it. I was angry by the end of it. Completely counterintuitive and counterproductive.

As for the rest of the "modern" production numbers, they added little if anything to overall piece, which I loved (the documentary, that is). I got so much more from seeing the various clips of the performers who have done Send In the Clowns than I did from Audra, who sang it exactly the way Sondheim had just said he didn't write it (long, sustained notes and passages).

Opening Doors was amateurish with bad direction and performances (especially Jeremy Jordan, who I truly can't stand---easily one of the most narcissistic performers of his generation, and he really isn't very good at acting or singing).

The documentary itself was marvelous and well edited. It made me see the man as much as the myth. The student as much as the teacher. The enthusiastic audience member as much as the artist.

Now if I could just edit out those useless production numbers, it would be perfect.

[jv92]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 9:42am

One of the most affecting things Sondheim said in the film, and in SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM, is that without Oscar and Dorothy Hammerstein, he doesn't know if he'd even be alive. THAT'S pretty powerful stuff. (When Foxy died in the mid-90s, he didn't bother to go to her funeral. When Dorothy Hammerstein died some years after Oscar in the 1980s, he barely made it through the service. At least, that's what someone told me.)

This was a devastating film. It made me proud to love the theater and to love the work of this brilliant man. I happened to LIKE "I'm Still Here", but not as much as I liked the footage of GYPSY with Merman.

THIS is what it's about folks. Not Carrie Underwood. It couldn't have come at a better time to remind us of true artistic genius, and the high standards the greatest living songwriter has for his remarkable work.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 9:43am

I would have loved a complete version of "Opening Doors" and I would really have loved to see America Ferreira sing "Like It Was."

[jv92]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 9:57am

Wasn't she charming though? I was pleasantly surprised at how much I really liked her and wouldn't mind seeing her play Mary for real in a full production.

It was also fun to see SS in that segment as the producer. A friend thought it was his acting debut but I reminded him that SS had played Maxie in a Burt Shevelove TV staging of JUNE MOON.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 10:39am

I love that video of June Moon!

[jv92]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 11:48am

I had the pleasure of finding it on an academic video database for theater students and got a real kick out of it. Although, when I first read the play, I thought Maxie was more like Frederick Loewe-- a sort of witty, above-it-all Viennese guy. Sondheim played him...well, like Stephen Sondheim. I suppose what I'm saying is that I would have gotten even more of a kick out of Sondheim playing the role of a Viennese accent.



Updated On: 12/14/13 at 11:48 AM

[darquegk]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 12:01pm

What is the academic video database? I've just finished my MA and am going on to my PhD in Theatre as Literature, and such a resource could be invaluable for my dissertation.

[jv92]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 12:07pm

I think Alexander Street Press runs/owns it? It's quite good. Lots of filmed performances of great plays, as well as other stuff. I do believe you need a subscription, unless the university you got your MA and will get your PhD at has one.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 12:25pm

The June Moon is available at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/June-Moon-Broadway-Theatre-Archive/dp/B0000640TE

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 1:44pm

My favorite parts of the documentary, aside from the archival footage and the interviews with Sondheim himself were the numbers from "Merrily We Roll Along". I thought Jeremy Jordan, Darren Criss and America Ferrera were outstanding...and when Laura Osnes joined them I was in heaven.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 4:55pm

As for the performances, as lovely as Audra McDonald is, must she be in every damn Broadway-themed television production?


ummm what Namo said.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 6:28pm

Just finished watching it (finally). I really loved it, especially how frank Sondheim seem to discuss everything, his fallining in love at 60, he lack of relationship with his mum, the letter she wrote to him before her heart surgery....so sad.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 6:38pm

I can't believe how horribly abusive his mother was.

At the same time, if Stephen hadn't experienced the upbringing he had, he wouldn't be the person he is today ... and that includes the bad stuff.

I'm not grateful it happened. But since it did, I'm glad he made the most of it.

Boy, did he.

[darquegk]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 9:19pm

Sondheim isn't a book writer, so I don't know how much water this holds, but poisonous mothers or mother figures litter his canon.

[karen24]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 9:28pm

I just caught up with this tonight after DVR-ing it earlier in the week. We have never had HBO but just happened to get it included with a new cable package - boy, am I glad! I loved it. Of course, like almost everyone else, I wished it were longer, I wished more songs could have been discussed, but I understand the idea behind trying to zero in on a select few and put them in the context of his career.
My favorite moment: The COMPANY recording session - I have that DVD too, but somehow seeing it in this context, the juxtaposition of Dean Jones absolutely nailing the song while its creator listens, alone, was so powerful. And also, pretty much any time Sondheim was talking about his craft.
I'm going to be keeping this one in the DVR for a long time.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/14/13 at 9:33pm

darquegk, if it's true that Sondheim kept a daily appointment with a Freudian analyst for many years, mothers would have to be prominent, wouldn't they? And even if the analysis is a myth, it seems to be that Sondheim was attracted to collaborators, many of whom had their own mother issues. (This isn't a criticism. I have more than a few of such conflicts myself.)

I thought it was odd that no specific comments about Dorothy Hammerstein were included. Sondheim often mentioned the Hammersteins as a couple, so she was included in the affection generally (and any mother who basically "adopts" the neighbor boy is to be lauded), but I would like to have heard what he thought of her as a person. And could he separate his feeling for his adopted mother (as he apparently did for his stepmother) from those for his birth mother?

***

Back to James Lapine, any theories as to what he thought he was doing with the musical selections? Just being avant-garde for its own sake? I thought his mix of the interview clips was masterful and it was magical to watch Sondheim age forward and back throughout the various stories.

But the musical numbers! Ugh (other than Kert and Jones, of course). Why, Jimmy, why?

(And was that the same Cocker butchering "Broadway Baby" over the credits?)

***

Finally, am I the only one who is tired of hearing Darren Criss croon his way through every type of Broadway and pop material? He started at the top on GLEE with Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and it's been all downhill since then. IMO, obviously.



Updated On: 12/15/13 at 09:33 PM

[jv92]

Posted: 12/15/13 at 1:25am

Perhaps because the film was more "Stephen Sondheim: His Work...and a little bit about his personal life" more than "Stephen Sondheim: His Work AND Personal Life", there was less Dorothy H.

In his introduction to Hugh Fordin's biography on Hammerstein, he writes, "He saved my life. He and Dorothy." There's the story about his inability to make it through her funeral without breaking into convulsive tears. (As I said, he was abroad when Foxy died and according to an anecdote, someone asked how she was a few months later and he said, "Oh, she's the same", blinked and then said, "Wait, I forgot. She died.")

And actually, that was that golden warbler Steve Sondheim himself singing "Broadway Baby" over the credits. An apropos story-- I accidentally put his demo of "Happily Ever After" on an iPod playlist for a New Year's Eve party a year or so ago, and someone asked, "What he HELL is this? It sounds like a dying dog!" (Which it does...a very charming dying dog.)

Oh, and back to the Hammersteins, I snooped around Hal Prince's papers at the Lincoln Center Library to read a few early drafts of COMPANY and FOLLIES, and came across a guest list for the 50th Birthday party Hal and Judy gave Sondheim in 1980. Among the invitees were the obvious: Betty and Adolph, John and Fred, Jerry and Sheldon, Tony Perkins, Mary and Henry Guettel, and other theatrical pals...and SS's step mother and half brothers, and the ENTIRE Hammerstein clan-- Henry and Susan (from Dorothy's first marriage), Alice and William (from Oscar's first marriage), Jimmy Hammerstein, and Dorothy Hammerstein. So it was most definitely a family affair. (Of course, Foxy was not invited.) Also invited, his therapist. (I recognized the name from the Secrest biography.) I think Dorothy and the whole Hammerstein family meant and still mean a great deal to him.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/15/13 at 7:41pm

Thank you very much, jv! That was a very generous reply.

I didn't meant to suggest I doubted Sondheim's regard for Mrs. Hammerstein. I would just like to know more about their relationship--but, as you say, the doc is primarily about his work, not his personal life.

I wish I had known that was Sondheim singing "Broadway Baby". I'm not a fan of his singing, but I do have different standards when a writer is singing his own work.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/15/13 at 8:42pm

It cracks me up that you assumed it was the singer in the show that you didn't "get". Cracks. Me. Up. Yup.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/15/13 at 8:48pm

Actually, the assumption wasn't mine, originally, but my husband's. I think we both just figured nobody would put TWO off-key singers in one documentary.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/15/13 at 8:56pm

Total L-seven.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/15/13 at 11:48pm

I have loved hearing Sondheim sing ever since I was first told that the voice of Maria's father in "Tonight" on the West Side Story original Broadway cast recording, yelling from offstage "Marrrrooooooooooca!" was not the actor who played Maria's father but Stephen Sondheim himself.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 12/16/13 at 5:28am

There was an actor playing her father? Do we ever SEE either parent? (I never knew it was Sondheim, either.)

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 12/16/13 at 6:11am

No, Maria's parents are heard off stage and never seen.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/16/13 at 7:08am

I think Joey is joking. Sondheim is heard on the GYPSY OBCR as Rose's (Ethel Merman's) father during "Some People":

"You ain't gettin' 88 cents from me, Rose!"



Updated On: 12/16/13 at 07:08 AM