Sublime Sondheim

My kids have developed an obsession with the music from Into the Woods, the Broadway musical written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, and I don't even mind the constant show tunes in my head because it has reminded me of how completely brilliant Sondheim is.  In fairness, Lapine wrote a divine story and directed it flawlessly, but the amazing thing about Sondheim's music is that it tells so much of the story by itself so deftly--and the kids are absolutely right to fall in love with it, even if for different reasons than I have always loved it (there's certainly a reason I've owned the soundtrack for so long).

In fact, I love it for more reasons now than I did when I first discovered it as a teenager. Then, I loved the story itself, how cleverly the characters' lives were woven together, and the music was quite catchy.  Now, I still love the intricate and interdependent weave, but I am ultimately wooed by Sondheim's lyrical genius.  He expects an extraordinary amount of verbal acrobatics from his actors, his lyrics are deftly chosen and fleet of foot--he provides ballad when necessary, but most of the songs showcase quick exchanges between characters, verbal sparring, unexpected rhymes, and good old-fashioned cleverness.

If you're not familiar with the show, a handful of fairy tales are woven together into one story.  Cinderella and her family, Jack and his mother (of beanstalk fame), and Little Red Ridinghood and her grandmother all live in the same community.  A childless baker (who happens to be Rapunzel's brother) and his wife live next door to a witch, all three of whom really provide the glue that cements the storyline.  Cinderella's and Rapunzel's princes are two hilariously egotistical and melodramatic brothers.

Sondheim demands such fast and hard elocution from his singers that at one point in the recording you can hear Bernadette Peters (who adroitly portrays the witch) take an audible breath between lines just to get herself through to the end of her rant.  At times the quick percussion of lyrics turns itself in circles creating a masterful sort of doublespeak.  My favorite is the witch's assertion, It's your father's fault / That the curse got placed / And the place got cursed / In the first place. 

Some of Sondheim's lines cause me to chuckle even after two decades of listening to them.  The wolf (ingester of the Ridinghood clan) sings, There's no possible way / To describe what you feel / When you're talking to your meal, in a voice worthy of a punk singer.  In one of my many favorite small moments, Jack's mother insists that her son take his favorite cow to market by crooning, Son, / We've no time to sit and dither / While her withers wither with her-- / And no one keeps a cow for a friend! / Sometimes I fear you're touched.  The baker's wife (I swear Joanna Gleason was born for this role, she plays it so perfectly) gets one of the best one-liners of the show when she justifies buying Jack's cow for "magic" beans by asserting, If the end is right, it justifies the beans!

Joanna Gleason really steals the show, and certainly in the songs Sondheim has given her ample opportunity, because she comes through as the most complex and developed character of them all.  (Although Bernadette Peters headlined, it was Gleason who won the Tony that year for Best Actress in a Musical--in a year that was also dominated by Phantom of the Opera.)  She runs the gamut of emotions, from comic asides to the audience (This is ridiculous. / What am I going here? / I'm in the wrong story.) when she is seduced by Cinderella's prince, to waxing philosophical in a conversation with Cinderella (When you know you can't have what you want, / Where's the profit in wishing?), to consoling her husband and infant from beyond the grave (Sometimes people leave you / halfway through the wood... be father and mother, / you'll know what to do).  She somehow manages to be convincingly fierce and strong, willing to strive for what she wants, susceptible to the magic of the woods and the charms of a philandering prince, and ultimately sympathetic all the way.

Said philandering prince and his equally playboy brother provide a fair amount of the melodrama and comic relief, being both quite aware of their station in life and ridiculously unaware of any moral boundaries.  The brother known as Cinderella's Prince (who also happens to be chasing Snow White and the Baker's Wife in Act II) successfully woos the Baker's Wife through song, at one point imparting, Life is often so unpleasant-- / You must know that, as a peasant.  While conventional mores should cause me to be repelled by him, I can't help but be amused by his candor.  When the brothers sing their anthem "Agony" together (Agony! / Such that princes must weep!), wherein they relate all the hurdles standing between them and their maidens (The harder to get, / The better to have in Act I, and later The harder to wake / The better to have when they are chasing Snow White and Sleeping Beauty), we get treated to some of Sondheim's deft rhymes (how many showtune writers use words like dissolution in their songs?).

Part of the charm of this show is watching what happens after the characters get everything they've dreamed by the end of the first act, culminating in Boy Wonder's current favorite song Ever After, wherein the narrator claims that Those who deserved to were certain to live a long and happy life.  This song includes the satisfying moment when Cinderella's stepsisters sing alternately, I was greedy. / I was vain. / I was haughty. / I was smug. / We were happy. / It was fun.  (They get their comeuppance.)  The second act is dedicated to exploring what happens after Happy Ever After.  The characters are all "so happy," but their lives have also slipped into mundanity and they've developed new wishes.  In a line that always cracks me up, amid everyone singing about how happy they are, the Baker sings, Where's the cheesecloth? and Cinderella's Prince tells her, Darling, I must go now (he's bored and seeking new adventure).  Happy Ever After begins to dissolve, and new desires and events send them back into the woods (with more trepidation and a key change) in search of solutions.

The situation quickly deteriorates, and the remaining characters are left to perform four-year-old Spitfire's current favorite song, Your Fault, in which they engage in the glorious verbal sparring that Sondheim is so good at writing, where the lines come so quickly that you almost can't follow who's speaking.  At times in songs like these, Sondheim has his actors singing in cacophony over each other and then suddenly come into unison for a refrain.  This musical geek finds it all highly satisfying.

I'm not saying anything here that others haven't already.  Sondheim did win the Tony for Best Original Score for this show.  But I also really love that the music can capture the imaginations of young children, even though it's a show written to a much more adult audience (and I've been careful not to introduce the sensitive Boy Wonder to a few of the songs, like the Wolf's).  Spitfire has gotten so attached to these characters, simply through their songs and the photos she's pored over in the liner notes, that she had a complete and utter breakdown sobbing on her bed when I let slip that some of the characters died in the second act.  I assumed she had figured it out already from the songs, but I forget sometimes that even a verbally astute and articulate kid doesn't always catch all the adult allusions.  Mama's lesson learned.

I thank both of the kids for bringing me back to this music and to Sondheim, whose brilliance I had forgotten for a while.  The fact is, any writer who can get Angela Lansbury to sing about cuttin' people up for pie (see Sweeney Todd) is good in my book.