UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As Desiree, singing) Are we a pair? And have the characters sing about it all in waltz time.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As Desiree, singing) Isn't it rich? (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEND IN THE CLOWNS") MONDELLO: In "A Little Night Music," the concept was to take a three-tiered romance. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As Phyllis, singing) You'll believe the lies ill-concealed and the wounds never healed. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COULD I LEAVE YOU?") Centered on a Ziegfeld-style metaphor for marital folly. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Roscoe's here, as always, to bring out the (unintelligible). His musicals were structured around concept. Sondheim later took that evolution a step further. In the 1940s, when the budding songwriter was just a kid, Rodgers and Hammerstein were transforming Broadway's lighthearted song-and-dance shows into musical plays. MONDELLO: When he finally hums what the character thinks is a hummable melody, it's Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Some Enchanted Evening." That's an in-joke because in real life, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein Jr. There's not a tune you go bump, bump, bump. But, fellas, if I may, there's only one thing wrong. STEPHEN SONDHEIM: (Singing) It isn't every day I hear a score this strong. Here from an HBO special, Sondheim doubles the joke by stepping into the role of a producer in "Merrily We Roll Along" and growling the thing people kept telling him back when he was starting out. He joked about it in the only song he ever called autobiographical. MONDELLO: It was a show that both established Sondheim as a lyricist and gave him a pet peeve about the way sophisticated music tends to be received on Broadway. UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (As characters, singing) I like to be in America - OK by me in America. Tricky interior rhymes are more his thing - say, we have so much in common, it's a phenomenon, a line written for another composer's music early in his career, as were his lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's semi-symphonic "West Side Story." When you hear moon-June-croon lyrics in one of his shows, they're probably a joke. A lover of brain teasers and games, Sondheim delighted in turning the Broadway musical into a playground for thinkers. MONDELLO: That's Sondheim puzzling out on stage how the world works. The second act has princes who are terrible husbands, witches who may be nasty but know things.īERNADETTE PETERS: (Singing) You're so nice. MONDELLO: The first act of this fairy tale show gives us fables like Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk more or less straight, basically what you expect of musical comedy. And then into the woods you go again to take another journey. It's always when you think at last you're through. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As the Baker, singing) Into the woods. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ACT II PROLOGUE: SO HAPPY") To what happens after happily ever after in "Into The Woods." And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit. LEN CARIOU: (As Sweeney Todd, singing) There's a hole in the world like a great black pit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NO PLACE LIKE LONDON") PATRICK KINSER-LAU: (As Dutch Admiral, singing) Two ports, one of them not too rocky. MONDELLO: This is not the way most musicals wrap things up, but Sondheim shows almost always send audiences out not just singing but thinking about everything from the Westernization of Japan in "Pacific Overtures". Somebody, pull me up short and put me through hell and give me support. KERT: (As Bobby, singing) Somebody, need me too much. He looks at his friends' marriages and cringes. MONDELLO: This is Bobby in "Company," the musical that established the Sondheim template back in 1970 - not his first show but the first big hit in which his characters sing less to move the action forward than to offer a sort of psychological profile. LARRY KERT: (As Bobby, singing) Somebody, hold me too close. Sondheim characters sing about ambivalence, about feeling conflicted. MANDY PATINKIN: (As George, singing) Bit by bit, putting it together piece by piece - only way to make a work of art.ĬORNISH: It would be hard to overstate Stephen Sondheim's influence on Broadway form or on critic Bob Mondello, who offers this remembrance.īOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: At the climax of most musicals, characters sing their hearts out about enchanted evenings or defying gravity or what I did for love. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PUTTING IT TOGETHER") To the concept musical "Sunday In The Park With George" about the art of making art. UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #1: (As characters, singing) Something for everybody - comedy tonight.ĬORNISH. His shows range from the vaudeville-inspired romp "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum". Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, the most respected figure in American musical theater, died earlier today.