Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Frank and Steve
To spend some time with anyone who you can truthfully say made an impact in the last half of the twentieth century, especially in a creative field, it is probably worth being that room. And it is particularly satisfying if the subject of your time treats everyone to anecdote, insight, engagement, and they seem to glad to be there. Portland Arts and Lectures' on stage interview between Frank Rich and Stephen Sondheim delivered all of these elements.
The anecdotes were tasty. One involved Katherine Hepburn claiming to the directors of Coco that she couldn't rehearse past 3pm because Sondheim who lived next door was up all night pounding out the score of Company. He also told of two encounters, early in his career and late in Cole Porter's. He told how his childhood mentor Oscar Hammerstein gave him a picture towards the end of his life and inscribed it with "To Stevie, My Friend and Teacher." It seemed that a bottle of wine with Stephen would yield an entire evening's worth of colorful stories. Rich did his best to guide him towards and through some good tales.
His comments about art, musicals, and theater did not stay on a superficial level for very long. The topic of the Sweeney Todd movie came up, of course, and it gave Sondhei opportunity to talk about how film requires a strong narrative drive you don't necessarily need in the theater. Chicago worked because it was based on vignettes. The Tim Burton's recent film was "the most satisfactory version of a stage musical" was because it maintained the style, trying to pare it down to the essentials. He also talked about how some of his best known songs were written during the out of town rehearsal period, Comedy Tonight and Send In the Clowns. He talked about the advantage of writing songs for a show that is cast and being staged, of how you know what you are working with. But he was very careful to differentiate between writing a show for an actor or actress vs. an actor or actress in a particular role. For example, Gypsy was not necessarily written for Ethel Merman. It was written for Ethel Merman in the role of Mama Rose.
The evening was cozy. Both interviewer and interviewee seemed to enjoy themselves and the crowd was pretty much reverential. Rich and Sondheim did a similar kind of interview presentation six years ago at the Kennedy Center, now posted with a video stream. I haven't seen it all the way through, but I'm sure it didn't end like last night did with the crowd singing Happy Birthday for Sondheim's birthday. His 78th will be next week on March 22.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:52 PM
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