ART & DESIG N
B O O K RE V I EW
VODKA STINGER →Master
lyricist /composer Stephen Sondheim gets a rise out of a musical theatre fan Writer David Bateman
Sir Noel’s stylistic brilliance.
along in our graves.
Bringing the late Coward into
Ultimately this can be the stuff
the larger picture of Sondheim’s
of good, bitchy fun, and Sondheim
text reveals a general dilemma. By
is careful to include the words
taking his own work so seriously
“grudges and whines” in his title.
Sondheim has produced a strange
My only major complaint is that
hybrid of academic text and slight
there isn’t enough bitching. For the
whimsy, sidestepping any insight
most part it’s a dry ride through a
into ways in which his life may
museum of lyric proliferation that
have affected his art. Considered
W
a private person who didn’t yank
course entitled Sondheim 101. But
open the closet door until he was
it’s not very gay, and when it is,
40, Sondheim, now 80, certainly
it seems Sondheim has a distaste
has a right to privacy. In analyz-
-
ing his own lyrics, and to a lesser
tion that some of his homosexual
extent his music, he sprinkles in
cohorts favoured.
the odd bitchy-licious anecdote
Are sung, frequently dirge-like
without including any juicy mor-
ballads à la Sondheim really all
sels about himself.
that different from campy, smoul-
Delightful hen musical queens collide it can be stren-
→ SIDE BY SIDE Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein circa 1957.
uous to decide whose
celebrity
moments
occur when he reminisces about
dering ditties? Or is it just a deceptive change of tone?
Ethel Merman and Elaine Stritch,
I adore Sondheim’s morbid fas-
two legendary Broadway divas.
cination with murderers (Sweeney
royal ally to become — Stephen
pages or so he takes another loving
Stritch is reported to have said to
Todd, Assassins), horny bache-
Sondheim, the revolutionary mas-
jab at the gay bard’s wordplay. At
a bartender, “just give me a bot-
lors (Company), and polyamorous
ter craftsman of darkly comic real-
one point he claims that Coward’s
ism in mid- to late-twentieth-
interpretation of “Mad Dogs and
Sondheim’s Merman quote reveals
Music). I just cannot for the life of
century musical theatre, or Noel
Englishmen” is delivered with such
more about his distaste for the voy-
me see why he considers them less
Coward, the campy aesthete of
“dispassionate, breakneck speed,
euristic gaze of drooling fans and
campy than the characters who
an earlier, bygone era when we
every word clipped as if it were
nothing about dear Ethel herself.
have inhabited some of the other
gay men of a more bitchy mien
topiary in order to give the impres-
He complains about an audience of
great musicals of the past century.
were given all kinds of musical air
sion of brilliance” that it becomes
“mostly middle-aged culture seek-
They are singing about their lives,
time onstage to disguise our heart-
“almost incomprehensible.” This
ers” less interested in “anapests
after all, and what could be camp-
and sprung rhythm and tonic-
ier, what could be gayer, than that?
soaked romances under the fabu-
upper-class divas (A Little Night
lous guise of mostly heterosexual
like me, constantly delighted by
subdominant progressions” than
couplings and word play.
the live in Las Vegas recording of
the pressing question, “What was
You may feel compelled to take
this particular lyric. I am always
Ethel Merman really like?” What
sides while reading Sondheim’s
impressed by the articulate enun-
Sondheim must know, but seems to forget in this instance, is that
account of his life within the pantheon of Broadway lyricist/com-
“patter” (as Sondheim calls the
the same audiences he eschews
posers. On page one of his intro-
lyric). Clever cultural critique and
have been his bread and butter
duction, Sondheim writes that he
breathlessly paced delivery are
for the past 50 years, and if we’re
“cordially but intensely dislikes”
perfectly matched with the quick
not dead yet some of Sondheim’s
Coward’s lyrics; every hundred
rhymes and repetition integral to
quips may have us rolling merrily
FINISHING THE HAT: Collected Lyrics (19541981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. Stephen Sondheim. Knopf. $30. AN EVENING WITH STEPHEN SONDHEIM $22$69. 8pm. Mon, Dec 6. Princess of Wales Theatre. 300 King St W. (416) 872-1212. mirvish.com. intorontomag.com
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