A is for Annie, Get Your Gun. Irving Berlin wrote this when he was sort-of-washed-up. It was a come-back. He had help from Rodgers and Hammerstein. There's some speculation that the help was more extensive than the surface story would suggest.
Bernadette Peters won her second Tony--after a long dry spell--for a Gun revival. She maybe didn't deserve it. Her accent was very, very broad and distracting. People felt that her replacement--Reba McEntire--actually did a better job than she, BP, had done. (It pains me to type this.)
I spent a fair amount of the latter half of my high school years visiting the Bernadette Peters website. She wrote quite a bit about her touring schedule, and her love for dogs. I went to NYC, ostensibly to tour a university, but really to see Ms. Peters on stage (in 1999). Years later, after the big British Petroleum spill, I was given a Bernadette shirt with her image, centered, on the front, under a tagline: "The BP who Isn't Fucking up the Planet."
B is for Bernadette Peters, because there's still more to say about her. I really loved her Royal Albert Hall concert, but I wasn't wild about her decision to turn "Happiness" into a solo.
"Happiness" is the start of Stephen Sondheim's "Passion." It's shocking and revolutionary (because, of course, we're talking about Sondheim). There are many moments of profound weirdness: Two naked lovers reach climax (on-stage!), the climax is matched by a striking discordant note, the opening observation is the bizarre declaration, "I'm so happy I'm afraid I'll die!" ... The lovers admit that their love grew out of the pity they once felt for each other ... The lovers actually argue, and correct, each other, over and over, for most of the song ... The lovers mock themselves for being cliches ... The woman mourns being "not young enough" ... All these little twists are ways in which "Happiness" differs from a more-boilerplate Broadway love song. Fascinating and rich and oddly-close-to-life and radical.
This is lost in Bernadette's version, because she turns the duet into a solo. So it becomes formless, and it seems to ramble. So Bernadette soured me on "Passion," before I actually saw the show. Again, I don't mean to tamp down your BP love. But this is some real talk.
C is for Columbia University. That's the school I was ostensibly visiting when I instead put all of my attention on Bernadette Peters. In that same weekend, my parents and I saw LaChanze in "Ragtime." What a thrill--because she had replaced Audra McDonald, and yet she was just as talented as Audra. (And maybe more talented? Maybe more vibrant and effortless, on stage? I know it's heresy to type that.)
I had seen "Ragtime" once before, in Toronto, but this is my problem: I don't always love trying new things. Why discover a new author when you can go back to the reliable pleasures of Barbara Pym, or Ron Rash, or Ian Rankin? (This has always been my issue.) The original "Ragtime," in Toronto, had a typo in the cast recording: "He Wanted to Say" was misprinted as "He Wanted to Sa." Impetuous gay boy that I was, I immediately concluded that "Sa" was some kind of early American dance-step, and that the number in question would be some tedious bit of comic relief, some moment of canned levity while we paused to catch our breath between big ballads. (Sort of like "Life Upon the Wicked Stage," in "Showboat." Blech.) Boy, was I wrong!
"He Wanted to Say" was like an effort to be Sondheim-ian. It was F-and-A saying, "Look, *we* can do subtext, too!" But, like so many other moments in "Ragtime," the subtext here was leaden and overwrought and not as clever as it wanted to be. I thought that at seventeen. I think it now.
I share these thoughts, in part, because I feel inspired by Tim Federle's "Nate Expectations." Which might as well be my spiritual autobiography. Fun asides about Mazzie, Chenoweth, Patti Lupone. ("Even though she has won like thirty Tony Awards, I still think she is underrated.") Have we made it only to C? My goodness! More later.
Bernadette Peters won her second Tony--after a long dry spell--for a Gun revival. She maybe didn't deserve it. Her accent was very, very broad and distracting. People felt that her replacement--Reba McEntire--actually did a better job than she, BP, had done. (It pains me to type this.)
I spent a fair amount of the latter half of my high school years visiting the Bernadette Peters website. She wrote quite a bit about her touring schedule, and her love for dogs. I went to NYC, ostensibly to tour a university, but really to see Ms. Peters on stage (in 1999). Years later, after the big British Petroleum spill, I was given a Bernadette shirt with her image, centered, on the front, under a tagline: "The BP who Isn't Fucking up the Planet."
B is for Bernadette Peters, because there's still more to say about her. I really loved her Royal Albert Hall concert, but I wasn't wild about her decision to turn "Happiness" into a solo.
"Happiness" is the start of Stephen Sondheim's "Passion." It's shocking and revolutionary (because, of course, we're talking about Sondheim). There are many moments of profound weirdness: Two naked lovers reach climax (on-stage!), the climax is matched by a striking discordant note, the opening observation is the bizarre declaration, "I'm so happy I'm afraid I'll die!" ... The lovers admit that their love grew out of the pity they once felt for each other ... The lovers actually argue, and correct, each other, over and over, for most of the song ... The lovers mock themselves for being cliches ... The woman mourns being "not young enough" ... All these little twists are ways in which "Happiness" differs from a more-boilerplate Broadway love song. Fascinating and rich and oddly-close-to-life and radical.
This is lost in Bernadette's version, because she turns the duet into a solo. So it becomes formless, and it seems to ramble. So Bernadette soured me on "Passion," before I actually saw the show. Again, I don't mean to tamp down your BP love. But this is some real talk.
C is for Columbia University. That's the school I was ostensibly visiting when I instead put all of my attention on Bernadette Peters. In that same weekend, my parents and I saw LaChanze in "Ragtime." What a thrill--because she had replaced Audra McDonald, and yet she was just as talented as Audra. (And maybe more talented? Maybe more vibrant and effortless, on stage? I know it's heresy to type that.)
I had seen "Ragtime" once before, in Toronto, but this is my problem: I don't always love trying new things. Why discover a new author when you can go back to the reliable pleasures of Barbara Pym, or Ron Rash, or Ian Rankin? (This has always been my issue.) The original "Ragtime," in Toronto, had a typo in the cast recording: "He Wanted to Say" was misprinted as "He Wanted to Sa." Impetuous gay boy that I was, I immediately concluded that "Sa" was some kind of early American dance-step, and that the number in question would be some tedious bit of comic relief, some moment of canned levity while we paused to catch our breath between big ballads. (Sort of like "Life Upon the Wicked Stage," in "Showboat." Blech.) Boy, was I wrong!
"He Wanted to Say" was like an effort to be Sondheim-ian. It was F-and-A saying, "Look, *we* can do subtext, too!" But, like so many other moments in "Ragtime," the subtext here was leaden and overwrought and not as clever as it wanted to be. I thought that at seventeen. I think it now.
I share these thoughts, in part, because I feel inspired by Tim Federle's "Nate Expectations." Which might as well be my spiritual autobiography. Fun asides about Mazzie, Chenoweth, Patti Lupone. ("Even though she has won like thirty Tony Awards, I still think she is underrated.") Have we made it only to C? My goodness! More later.
Comments
Post a Comment