Sunday in the Park with Steve

Dear Readers, I didn’t intend to be back in your email boxes so soon.

But last week, I- and the rest of the world- got some devastating news.

Stephen Sondheim was dead.

A genuine genius, a theatrical LEGEND, a wordsmith extraordinaire, a composer without peer, a visionary, a fellow crossword puzzle fiend, a creative role model and a lifesaver to a young girl all alone in her basement with a record player and two albums:

               

These two albums saved my life.

It was 1961 and I was twelve. My parents didn’t own a ton of records but for some reason, they did have these two.  I will never know what compelled me to play them.  But thank goodness I did.

Steve had me by the second song of Gypsy. Ethel Merman’s brassy, booming voice confidently belting out “Some People.”

In that one song, I had found a whole new world of fabulous lyrics.  Lyrics with clever, intricate rhymes.  And I had found my mantra.

It was okay to have big dreams.

And it was okay to be different.

I’ve written before about my struggles with my mother as I grew up.  She had never understood or liked me.  Stephen Sondheim had his own demon of a mother to contend with and he understood a monster- and a life force like Madame Rose- only too well.

Me, too.

And Gypsy –with its wonderful music and insightful lyrics- made my life an easier place to be.

It wasn’t all Freud. It was fun, too.

Even though I had no idea what stripteasers actually did, I listened to “You Gotta Have a Gimmick” so many times that I could have auditioned for Minsky’s.

I won’t play the whole album here.  I don’t have to. I still know every word to every song and the show’s personal meaning for me hasn’t faded over time.

The life and death struggle of a jealous mother and an overlooked daughter had been turned into art with a capital A and I wasn’t alone any more.

And then there was this album.  And this song.

Wow.

I was also wowed by “Officer Krupke.”

And this one.

The outrageous and hilarious rhymes just blew me away.  I marveled at the wordplay and it was so much fun singing along.

Fun Fact:  I once saw Cher being interviewed.  She said she did the exact same thing when she was young and she, too, still knew every word to West Side Story.

Back then, had I heard of Stephen Sondheim?  Heck, no.  I was twelve.

But I knew something very different had arrived on the musical scene.

Then in 1962, a funny thing happened. Mr. Sondheim got to exercise his full artistic chops and he wrote the words AND music to this.

Steve and I went our separate ways for awhile.  I had to grow up, get married, get divorced, get re-married and get separated from my second husband. (Whew.)

He had to write this.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: From this point on, the music you are about to hear is not hummable.  Jule Styne who wrote the music for Gypsy and Leonard Bernstein who did the same for West Side Story wrote tunes anyone could at least try to sing.

Not Mr. Sondheim.

His music is not user-friendly.  It’s complicated – with a big nod to Ravel, Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten.   You do not come out of the theater whistling the tunes.

Except for one.  Which we will get to later.

When I first heard Steve’s cynical view of marriage – and delivered in Elaine Stritch’s cyanide venom of a voice- it suited my mood down to the ground.

I was also cuh-razy about this little ditty.

(Here’s your chance to see it being recorded for the cast album.  (In case you don’t know, Steve is the guy with the cigarette.)

(Btw, this show also made me an Elaine Stritch fan for life.  When she played Jack Donaghy’s dragon of a mother on 30 Rock, I knew pitch perfect casting when I saw it.)

Company was review- a series of musical sketches- but it had a theme.

And a hero.

And the hero- Bobby- was not your typical, handsome, charming 1950’s Gordon MacCrae/John Raitt musical leading man type.

He was a loner, a singleton in the land of married couples.  He had problems.  He didn’t fit in.

Bobby was different.

Bingo.

Steve had written uncomfortable songs about this complicated, messy business of Life.

In 1984 Steve wrote the music and lyrics to this.

And once again, he hit it out of the park for me.

With this song.

He had put into (beautiful) words what it feels like to have to create something.  The artistic impulse to strong to resist.

Every writer, painter, dancer, musician, actor feels this and it’s hard to describe.

But through Mandy Patinkin’s masterful rendition of those exquisitely simple words, “Look I made a hat…where there never was a hat.” Any artist knows that joyous feeling of creation.

Coincidence: When Nick was in third grade, I volunteered to be the “Art Lady.”  My task was 1. To select a piece of art in the Art Institute and teach the little tykes all about it.  And 2.  Take the little darlings on a field trip to the museum and look at said work.

I picked this one.

I liked all the dots and the lady with the bustle walking the monkey and I hoped maybe the kids would, too.

They sort of liked the picture.

But they LOVED the field trip.  As soon as we hit the Art Institute, my twenty amped-up third graders immediately scattered and ran down two different staircases and attacked the Arthur Rubloff Collection of paperweights in the basement.

Chaos reigned.

I think we were all escorted out by a disgruntled security guard.

While I recover from the memory of that dark experience, let’s take a break.  Now seems like a good time to play you the one Sondheim hit to make it to the top of the Pop charts.

Since Stephen Sondheim passed away, social media has been flooded with obituaries and  tributes and appreciations and explanations of how and why he was so great and so important to our cultural landscape.

And Steven Spielberg is tipping his hat on December 10 with the release of his sixty year later remake of West Side Story.

But I thought the best way to remember and revere my idol was to let those who interpreted him best have the last (sung) word.

With a little help from David Hyde Pierce, here are Stephen Sondheim’s muses- and greatest interpreters: Patti LuPone, Marin Mazzie, Audra MacDonald, Donna Murphy, Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch.

Watch how each of these legends tells a whole play in one magnificent song.

And Steve, thanks for everything.  It’s been a ball.  God bless you.

And thanks to you, I’m still here.