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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: peter3053 11:19 pm EDT 04/09/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 10:46 pm EDT 04/09/21 | |
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| Often when Merrily is revived, the same doubts get expressed - "it never really works", "the lead isn't likeable" - but then audiences see it and come out pondering their life choices. It works at the deepest level. The authorial skill on hand is the reason. It may be the one Sondheim musical that is still performed two hundred years from now, because the struggle between idealism and compromise is inherent in our human species. And I speak as someone who loves Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and so many others with a passion. And even Passion. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 12:28 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - peter3053 11:19 pm EDT 04/09/21 | |
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| I think you're talking for a lot of people when you say "the audience". This audience member finally saw the show at the Menier in 2013, and he went in expecting to see the naysayers proved wrong... and left realizing that the naysayers were right all along and that the show simply does not work. The book is shallow, the characters unlikable, and the dramatic stakes ultimately pretty slight: a rather mediocre composer decides to pursue popular success rather than the artistic success that his two friends who overestimate his talent mistakenly think him capable of. Meh. Yes, the score is gorgeous, but a score does not make a musical succeed, and in this case I don't think it can (and so far hasn't). Whether or not the show will be performed in two hundred years is beyond our knowledge, but what we do know is that it's one of the few Sondheim shows not to get a Broadway revival ("Saturday Night", "Anyone Can Whistle", "Passion", and "Road Show" being the others), and it's not for lack of trying. If I had to pick the one show of his that would still be done in 200 years, I think "Into the Woods", "Sweeney Todd", and "Forum" are the best candidates; they are based on or inspired by stories that have stood the test of time, and they work very solidly as pieces of entertainment. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: peter3053 04:15 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 12:28 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| In Merrily, a young man is inspired to transform the world for the better, using his gift, music, to do so; he intends to write shows which will illuminate ( "tell 'em things they don't know") the human condition, to sustain idealism and forge social progress ("Me and you/ Me and you / Me and you / Me and you!"). However, through a weakness for personal comfort over commitment (a weakness many of us share), he chooses the path of expedient rewards - fame, glamor, the use of women for personal ambition and sexual pleasure (not an abiding love), and riches. His work ceases to be an expression of his art, and becomes merely a populist means to a self-indulgent end. Thus he moves from the chance to be genuinely productive in this world, for the greater good of all, to a form of despair which is mere selfish comfort - despair at its root meaning means to be de-spirited, usually by too much attachment to the rewards of materialism. He moves from "me and you" to being a card-carrying member of the "Me" generation. (The "Us" of "Who's Like us?" is progressively ghosted as he vanishes inside "Franklin Shephard Inc.") At the same time, ironically, his thirst for public success co-incides with the loss of his own privacy and public exposure by a gossip-thirsty media mob; his human distinctiveness becomes swallowed by the fashionable, integrity-less blob, and he is rendered artistically and therefore, for him, morally impotent and expressively infertile. He loses his greater humanity. This is a profound tale, told in an alarming way - that is, told in a way that alarms us the most the more beautiful his character becomes, at the beginning which is the end. There are many great works of art that incorporate flaws - flaws which become mysteries over time (Does Gertrude know her new husband murdered Hamlet's father? How many children hath Lady Macbeth? Why didn't Emilia protest about the handkerchief in time before Othello killed Desdemona?). There are many great works which include dislikeable characters; as Sondheim and Weidman themselves said in Road Show, sometimes the worst example is the best. For ambition, for insight, for artistry which cries out for the value of love over selfihsness, Merrily ranks among the greats. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 11:57 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - peter3053 04:15 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| I loved your analysis. I would only argue that a major flaw of the book of MERRILY, and maybe even some of the score (at least one song of it, anyway), is that Charley's constant wheedling and condemnation of Frank for "selling out" is laid on way too thick and is sometimes presented in a way that makes Charley seem irrational-- as in that weird moment when he freaks out after hearing that Frank has worked out a deal for a film version of a musical that Charley and Frank wrote together. This sends Charley off the deep end, because work on that film will prevent work on the other, passion-project musical that the team has been planning to complete for years. Yes, I would say it makes some sense for Charley to be upset about the film for that reason, at least to a certain degree, but.....come on! He's still going to get a MOVIE VERSION of a musical that he co-wrote. So I would say his reaction is a bit much, to put it mildly. | |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: peter3053 05:30 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Michael_Portantiere 11:57 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| I see your point, but I wonder if it is not more of a case of the straw that broke the camel's back - a build up of disappointments and broken promises from Frank. Often in relationships, little things become a catalyst and cause a blow-up which may seem out of proportion to the passerby, but really indicate a subterranean pressure in the friendship that has built over a long time before the eruption? And Mary is always trying to paper over the cracks, because she likens their togetherness to the ideal world she envisioned way back on the rooftop - and of course, Charley , being more naturally compassionate than Frank, withdraws his anger too often, for her sake. The complications of long-term relationship festering? So I wonder if the issue is not the movie deal itself, but that as a sign to Charley of a whole pattern he has resented for years? One other interesting thing, for me, is that, in youth, Frank has the magnetism of an idealist, but not the integrity of the authentic idealist. Charley and Mary lack the surface charm, but each in their own way have more authenticity about what they hold to be important. Charley's anger helps him survive and remain true to his beliefs; Mary can't be angry without condemning her own illusion of Frank, and so sinks into alcoholism. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Last Edit: Singapore/Fling 10:41 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - peter3053 04:15 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| That's a great take on "Merrily", but I think it only really works if you listen to a few of the songs and ignore the actual book of the show and the characters as written - which people have tried to do for 40 years without cracking the code. Your take also presumes that the kind of things young 20 year olds say - "we're brilliant, unique, and going to change the world!" - have any real weight. My biggest disappointment in finally seeing Merrily was discovering that it *wasn't* the story you describe, and which I expected, because none of the characters rise to that level of greatness for even a moment - but that greatness is generally an illusion (or delusion) of youth to begin with. Instead, we have three people with high hopes who discover that in the act of living and making choices, they disappoint themselves and each other. And most of all, your version of the story is told forwards, but the show is told backwards. And that backwards telling really mucks things up without having a strong enough pay-off. The show only seems to work as an album, where we can dig into the arcana of the songs once we already know the story - or have the freedom to fill in the blanks and tell our own. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: peter3053 05:46 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| Fair points, but I think youthful idealism is a beautiful thing, and the tragedy of life - captured powerfully because of Merrily's reverse structure - is that the world, which is "us" and all our weaknesses we bring - plays havoc with our best intentions. The truly bold, who shed the shackles of human compromise, are usually arrested, removed, or lionised much later as saints. I recall the line from Anyone Can Whistle in which Hapgood says he is not only an idealist, but a "practising" one. They're very rare, which is the tragedy of the human condition. I think Merrily, told backwards, makes us especially aware of the tragedy. Personally, I don't mind sitting in a theatre studying unlikeable people when there is a moral purpose to it; I'm not all that fond of Oedipus, that arrogant sod; or that hormone-crazed Romeo, the fool; or Henry-bloody-Higgins, that egotistical power-hungry creep; and as for that narrow-minded Nellie Forbush, who grows more dislikeable as the show goes on, rather than the reverse (until the end....) - mind you, as for that overbearing lover she's got ........ or that Cable character .... or - or - Bloody Mary, a mother who does that !!! Sorry, where was I? As I say, better to study the unlikeable in a purposeful, artificial space - it's slightly better than having to put up with them in real life! |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: dbdbdb 01:55 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| This is exactly right. One of the show's biggest problems is that you're seeing the divorce before you know anything about the marriage, and you have no idea why you should care. Michael Porttantiere also alludes to the other big problem in his comments about Charley's hysterical overreaction to Frank's choices: The show seems to suggest that writing Broadway musicals is a beautiful, noble pure calling while making films is morally ruinous. Well, I guess that's true. Sometimes. Maybe. Under certain circumstances... | |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 03:12 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - dbdbdb 01:55 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| "The show seems to suggest that writing Broadway musicals is a beautiful, noble pure calling while making films is morally ruinous. Well, I guess that's true. Sometimes. Maybe. Under certain circumstances..." Ha! Exactly. But also, seriously: How believable is it that Charley would become enraged at the information that Frank has worked a deal so that the musical that Frank and Charley wrote TOGETHER will be made into a Hollywood film -- so enraged that he then utterly humiliates his longtime friend and writing partner during an interview on live television? I mean, I know that musical is not his passion project, but........seriously?? I was sad when I very belatedly realized some years ago that, while "Franklin Shepard, Inc." is a brilliant song and a tour-de-force in and of itself, it actually does great damage to the show as a whole and to the character of Charley in particular, because it portrays him as emotionally reckless and childish in his big moment, and I don't THINK that's how the authors wanted us to view him. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Last Edit: Quicheo 11:00 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| Posted by: Quicheo 10:59 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| I can speak only having seen the Kennedy Center production, which worked for me because in each scene, it showed the results of a choice made in the recent past, leading one step closer to the characters' eventual unhappiness and disappointment. I wondered, how could they be so foolish to have made that choice? Then we go back in time a bit and see exactly why, and even understand exactly why. And each time, the lead character makes a choice we know isn't good, he is influenced by a different set of people often with good intentions. There is no one set of people who would have guided him right, only small choices against his internal sense that chipped another piece off his integrity and moved him one more step off course. I have no idea if he is as talented as his friends think he is. I do know, he was happier when he made time to indulge that talent. I think, like Follies, it captures the regret of the late middle aged people of its time, in this case, wealthy 80s people, and allows them to wonder how they ended up so unhappy. |
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