Banfield's confusing passage on the song seems to suggest — or maybe seems to suggest, it's written so unclearly — that Carlotta is doing just that: starting with her old song and then adding to it. Anyway, I think he just misunderstood Sondheim.
Anyway, in the original production, she started the song by addressing it to the men (not just waiters but various men at the reunion, who were in a group listening to her when the focus switched away from Phyllis and Kevin). I suppose it could be staged with them leaving before she starts singing. What made no sense to me was the way it was done in the Roundabout production, which used the completely rewritten lead-in in which she's talking to Weismann, but after starting the song just to Weismann, she moved from table to table where other partygoers were seated in conversation with each other. It was like she went from table to table interrupting their conversations to say to them things like, "Danced in my scanties, three bucks a night was the play, but I'm here." And then she'd move on to another to interrupt those people's conversations and throw a non-sequitur at them. So bizarre. |
