''Somewhere in a Tree''? ... ''There's a tree for us, somewhere a tree for us. Peace and quiet and open air ...''
Kidding aside, in his book ''Finishing the Hat,'' Sondheim wrote: ''When I'm asked to name my favorite song ... I often proffer this one ['Someone in a Tree'}. I like the swing and relentlessness of the music and poetic Orientalism of the lyric, but what I love is its ambition, its attempt to collapse past, present and future into one packaged song form. ... The song is a distillation of a five-page scene [Weidman] wrote. ... This song comes closest to the heart of 'Pacific Overtures': historical narrative as written by a Japanese who's seen a lot of American musicals.''
In 1976, a ''Camera Three'' documentary, ''Anatomy of a Song,'' detailed the tune's creation. Frank Rich chatted with Weidman and Sondheim, and it culminated in a performance of ''Someone in a Tree'' with Mako, Gedde Watanabe, James Dybas and Mark Hsu Syers, accompanied by Sondheim. |
