West Side Story 2021

 

	1961	2021
Tony	Richard Beymer (voice:  Jimmy Bryant)	Ansel Elgort
Maria (Bernardo's sister)	Natalie Wood (voice:  Marni Nixon)	Rachel Zegler
Anita (Bernardo's girlfriend)	Rita Moreno (voice:  Betty Wand)	Ariana DeBose
Bernardo (head Shark)	George Chakiris	David Alvarez
Riff (head Jet)	Russ Tamblyn (voice:  Tucker Smith)	Mike Faist
Officer Krupke	William Bramley	Brian d'Arcy James
Lieutenant Schrank	Simon Oakland	Corey Stoll
Doc's shop keeper	Ned Glass as Doc	Rita Moreno as Valentina

These are comparative cast lists for the two movie versions of Bernstein's West Side Story.  The lyrics are by Sondheim.  All the main roles were dubbed in the 1961 movie while none were in the new one.  Voice:  means the name of the person who is actually singing.  I was fascinated to see Rita Moreno sang here but was dubbed in the earlier version.  Curious.  After all, Rita has a Grammy.

If you were paying attention, at the very beginning they are talking about urban renewal in that part of New York City and show a photo of Lincoln Center which opened in 1962.  The film showed street signs from that neighborhood.  So there was a slum there before it was torn down.  I liked all the old cars seen parked in the street.  This is my era, apparently.

I enjoyed this remake and found it very emotional.  The dancing was top quality and very professional, but the same cannot be said for the singing.  Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if the volume was turned up a bit.  The singing wasn't bad, just insignificant.  Live in the theater it would be louder because the cast would be chosen partly for their singing and then amplified. 

There was a lot of untranslated Spanish with quite a lot of "Speak English" remarks.  I only know tiny bits of Spanish.  The story was darker and more violent.

In my review of West Side Story at the Sacramento Music Circus I said, "The way the production looks is how the story is told.  One group runs quickly off the stage and is replaced by another.  'Who are these people?' is a question that should be instantly answered." It was at the Music Circus, but it was not here.  It was no easy trick to tell the two groups apart.  I found this a particular problem.

Tony loses his cool for a moment and changes everything.  This is the heart of the story.  One should see it again.  Don't miss this.  The young man who plays Tony is particularly beautiful.

Stephen Sondheim 1930-2021

Stephen Sondheim has died.  I was not a connoisseur.  He was responsible for the lyrics to Bernstein's West Side Story, for me the greatest of all American musicals.  A new movie version of this is coming out on December 10 which I must see.

West Side Story  [lyrics only]

• I loved the original movie of this with Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno.  It was done at the Sacramento Music Circus in 2015 where I saw it live.  I seem to have complained about the production.

Sweeney Todd   Since I began blogging I have seen three different versions of this show.

• In 2008 came the incredible movie starring Johnny Depp as the demon barber,  Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett and Sacha Baron Cohen.  I seem to have enjoyed it rather more than expected.

• In 2014 the New York Philharmonic put on a semi-staged version with an amazing cast:  Bryn Terfel as Todd, Emma Thompson as Mrs. Lovett, Erin Mackey as Johanna and Audra McDonald as The Beggar Woman.  They made this work and made a fantastic group.

• In 2015 the San Francisco Opera presented it as an opera which I saw live.  It didn't fill the seats.  The cast:  Sweeney Todd: Brian Mulligan, Mrs. Lovett: Stephanie Blythe, Johanna: Heidi Stober and Beggar Woman: Elizabeth Futral.  Stephanie is great in anything she does.  I feel like I've done this, but nothing erases the Mrs Lovett of Angela Lansbury.
  

Sunday in the Park with George   I tried to see this in London, but couldn't get a ticket.

• So instead I saw it live on Broadway in 2008.  It set me to thinking about art.
  

Into the Woods It's a mash up of fairy tale stories.

• In 2013 I saw this live presented by the Sacramento Light Opera theater.   I enjoyed it.
  

• Then in 2015 came the movie with Meryl Streep.  I called it an excellent film adaptation.

It is strange to realize that there are no hit tunes from any of these where the music is by Sondheim.  I haven't seen A Little Night Music.

Sweeney Todd

Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production Designer: Tanya McCallin *

Sweeney Todd: Brian Mulligan
Mrs. Lovett: Stephanie Blythe
Johanna: Heidi Stober
Beggar Woman: Elizabeth Futral
Anthony Hope: Elliot Madore *
Adolfo Pirelli: David Curry *
Tobias Ragg: Matthew Grills
Judge Turpin: Wayne Tigges
Beadle Bamford: AJ Glueckert

The great performers fund of the San Francisco Opera is accumulating money.  Gerald Finley who was supposed to sing here and Diana Damrau who was supposed to sing Lucia have both cancelled to be replaced by less expensive but still very fine singers.  My Brian Mulligan experiences have included an excellent Valentin in Faust, a very nice Marcello in La Boheme, and a less significant role in last season's magnificent Les Troyens.   He was everything you might want in a Sweeney Todd.  The entire cast is made up of excellent American singers.  The star of the evening was the very distinguished Stephanie Blythe.  Heidi Stober and Elizabeth Futral deserve special mention.

The way you tell what is an opera is by including all musical theater that can be performed by an opera company made up of opera singers and an opera orchestra.  Sondheim's Sweeney Todd qualifies.  This work has only recently seeped into the opera house where it can be heard with supertitles.  The libretto, also by Sondheim, is very wordy, and sung quickly with fake English accents.  Tough.  The real Brits Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel were much easier to understand.  The most fun part was the section where Todd and Lovett are describing the taste of the pies according to the profession of the victim.

I think this was a Sweeney Todd of very high quality, if you like that sort of thing.  As my fourth viewing, I found that I was growing tired of it.

Editorial comment:  the only excuse for doing a musical instead of real opera would be the filling of the seats.  This did not happen.

After the performance Patrick Summers received the San Francisco Opera medal.

Into the Woods

I was going around the circle at Curves the other day, and the attendant was complaining about the new movie Into the Woods.  For her it had two endings:  the expected fairytale ending and the second dark one.  She also was surprised that there were musical numbers.  I tried to explain that this was a film adaptation of a classic musical comedy by Stephen Sondheim.  Who?

There has been a wide range of reactions to this film.  I imagine the range would depend on whether you had ever seen it as a musical.  It was done live here in Sacramento a couple of years ago, so nothing really surprised me when I saw it today.  I thought as film adaptations go, this one was excellent.

How could you want a better witch than Meryl Streep?  Or a better wolf than Johnny Depp?  I was especially impressed with the diction.  Every one of Sondheim's words could be clearly understood.  I think the movie's flaws are the musical's flaws.  I think Sondheim couldn't bear to write a fairytale ending.

Anything can happen in the woods.

P.S.  I've never really been a fan of Sondheim, except as a lyricist.  His first big project was writing the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957), possibly the best of all American musicals.  These are truly great songs. Sondheim, it seems, thinks they're too poetic.

He's been very busy since then.  He's done a lot of shows that I've never seen, and people seem to like to sing his songs.  But a string of songs by Sondheim generally makes me cringe.  I can only tolerate Judi Dench singing "Bring in the Clowns," for instance.

Early in the blog I wrote:  "While I was in London, I tried to see Sunday in the Park with George, mainly because I've never seen a Stephen Sondheim musical. Unless Sweeney Todd is Sondheim."  I went on to say,  "Sondheim is short choppy phrases of three to six syllables with tunes played on the black keys. All the tunes sound exactly the same. How does he do that? Perhaps it's a minimalist musical."

But then I kind of liked Sunday in the Park with George when I saw it on Broadway.  Still no hit tunes, but I kind of liked the content.  With Sondheim it's more words over music.  Ideas over execution.

And then this year came the marvelous Sweeney Todd at Lincoln Center with Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson, a truly great event.  Their gigantic personalities raised it above itself.

I can only shrug.  He's too significant to simply ignore, but musically he never grabs me. I'm now going to retire Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd.  Enough.
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Sweeney Todd at Lincoln Center

This was my third Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim:  the first was a pirate DVD with Angela Lansbury; the second the movie with Johnny Depp, and the third this wonderful concoction from Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic.  I must say I much prefer this cast with the always charismatic Bryn Terfel as Todd, Emma Thompson as a completely daffy Mrs. Lovett, Philip Quast as Judge Turpin, Jeff Blumenkrantz as The Beadle, Christian Borle as Pirelli, Erin Mackey as Johanna and Audra (The Great One) McDonald as The Beggar Woman.  Audra also introduced the show for PBS.

If you look behind the performers you can see people playing instruments.  They wandered crazily along narrow paths between sections of the orchestra.  The performers carried the show.

If you missed it, perhaps you can find it on PBS.

Into the Woods

I'm trying to get out and about in Sacramento a bit more and happened on Sondheim's Into the Woods produced by the Light Opera Theater of Sacramento.  The overall quality was very pleasing.  I and the audience liked very much Little Red Riding Hood played by Kelly Cullity.

You'll find it tonight, tomorrow and next weekend at 2791 24th st, but watch out for the neighborhood parking.

Judi

I am currently reading Judi Dench's memoir And Furthermore. She advises that the way to learn to speak Shakespeare properly is to listen to John Gielgud and Frank Sinatra. "Sinatra presents you the entire arc. He never lingers too long on one thing. You appreciate the essence of the whole. You're led through a song with Sinatra. There's a beginning, a middle and end."

Judi Dench's career has included quite a lot of singing. A few examples are

She appeared in Sondheim's A Little Night Music
She sang Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
She sang "Plaisir d'amour" in Hay Fever
For my money she was the best singer in the movie Nine.
She sings the title music "This is a Fine Romance" in the TV series A Fine Romance.


I promise to love Sondheim if he's always done with Judi.

Compliment: Judi tells of rehearsing A Little Night Music with Stephen Sondheim watching. Afterward she asked him for a note--a suggestion or criticism. He replied, "It's yours now."

Sunday in the Park with George

I wanted to see Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George because I wanted to see a musical about painting, in this case George Seurat's most famous painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." Each person in the picture becomes a character in the drama. I tried to see it in London, but couldn't get a ticket.  So here I am in New York and I am finally seeing it.

To be a play this requires enormous technical sophistication. My favorite bit concerned the draperies seen on the stage while the audience files in. George sees them and says, "Too many trees," and one of them immediately leaves. Later his mother complains that her accustomed tree is no more. Films of dogs replace actual dogs, a great theatrical improvement. The projector is the primary actor in a musical about lighting.

It is surprisingly not another Sister Wendy version of art. Art is about seeing. Art is about making your vision real. And this goes for when it is pictures and when it is notes. Have a vision and make it live.

Seurat invented a style of painting and this painting is his most famous example. He is following his vision of making whole pictures out of tiny dots of color. [Coincidence girl friend is called Dot?] He is following his vision. He says that what the girlfriends don't know is that even when he is with them, he is still working on the painting.

I've never been a Sondheim fan, but maybe I was looking from the wrong direction. It seems he is less words and music than he is vision.

The main actors were Daniel Evans, very lively and amusing as George, and Jenna Russell as Dot and Marie. I knew I had seen Jenna Russell before--she just felt familiar--and I have. She was in Guys and Dolls when I saw it in London. She has a very touching, emotional quality. It is a very emotional play.

Here is a sketch for the same painting--the content without the style. I am gradually coming to realize that Sondheim is bringing us ideas more than poetry and music.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

It was perfect to see this movie so soon after returning from London. Practically the opening line is "There's no place like London." This London is dark and menacing.

I went to see Sweeney Todd at my local cinema. I knew what I was getting into since I have seen the video of the Broadway version with Angela Lansbury. There's quite a difference between a video of a stage play and a movie. People getting their throats cut in the theater is going to exist mostly in your imagination, but a movie has to have all the gore you would have imagined right out where you can see it. I'm a little squeamish, but I just close my eyes when it gets too rough.

Could you ask for more in a movie of Sweeney Todd? More than the utter madness of Johnny Depp as the demon barber with his bride of Frankenstein hair? More than Helena Bonham Carter in her corpse-like makeup? More than Sacha Baron Cohen in his fabulous outing as the fake Italian barber with his elixirs and testimonials from the Pope? Could you ask for a more perfect villain than the always nasty Alan Rickman?

I liked the scene of the judge's office where the walls are painted with the famous paintings of Dionysian initiation from ancient Pompey. Further character development is hardly necessary. (This opinion may only reflect my art obsession.)

Mrs. Lovett, Carter's character, is only trying to be practical. We have a lot of meat going to waste, so why not make it into meat pies? Then hers will no longer be the worst meat pies in London. The movie shifts the balance of the drama back to the title character. On the stage Angela Lansbury dominated the action.

I think the singing will always stay in Angela Lansbury's voice when it plays in my head, but I didn't mind anyone here. Carter was occasionally difficult to understand. I suppose this is the place to mention it is by Stephen Sondheim whom I usually loathe. I don't here. Everything seems completely suitable. I mean, if you're going to write an opera--I think it's considered an opera--about a barber who slits people's throats and a woman who makes meat pies out of the dead bodies, well then I suppose it should sound exactly like this. It was exactly as spooky as it needed to be. I laughed fairly often. Is that bad?

Jane Wisener and Jamie Campbell Bower play the young couple who we will assume live happily ever after. Almost everybody else is dead.

Here are a lot of photos.
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Into the Woods

While I was in London, I tried to see Sunday in the Park with George, mainly because I've never seen a Stephen Sondheim musical. Unless Sweeney Todd is Sondheim. Oh, I guess it is. That was fun. Grotesque and absurd, but fun, and available on video.

So I'm watching a DVD of Into the Woods, a musical based on the combination of a few stories from Grimm:
Little Red Riding Hood
Rapunsel
Cinderella
Jack and the Beanstalk
What? A barren couple who have been cursed by a witch, and are collecting Jack's cow, Little's cape, Cinderella's slipper and Rapunsel's hair so that they can break the witch's spell and have a baby.

Sondheim is short choppy phrases of three to six syllables with tunes played on the black keys. All the tunes sound exactly the same. How does he do that? Perhaps it's a minimalist musical.

The fairy tales all reach their expected endings, the ugly old witch is turned into Bernadette Peters and a sign comes on the screen saying "Intermission." They have to make up the rest of the plot themselves. A female giant shows up to complain that Jack has killed her husband and demands justice. The second half is pretty violent and about half of the cast are killed.

There are a few good jokes and no good songs.
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