"Good Thing Going" is maybe the most famous song from "Merrily We Roll Along" and, given that we're talking about Sondheim, a few things are happening here, all at once.
The song is an item Frank writes for a show, about the slow, quiet death of a relationship. Something is counterintuitive here: No one is a spectacular villain in the breakup song. It's more a slightly queasy statement of ambivalence, a prolonged shrug. "And if I wanted too much, was that such a mistake at the time? You never wanted enough--all right, tough. I don't make that a crime. And while it's going along, you take for granted some love will wear away...."
I'm reminded of the speaker from "Marry Me a Little"--a person too "in his head," afraid to live. "You can be my best friend; I can be your right arm. We'll go through a fight or two--no harm, no harm. We'll look not too deep....We'll go not too far...." Sondheim's neurotic characters refuse to take risks; in a state of paralysis, they allow life to pass by.
"Good Thing Going" has a nice sound/sense moment. All through the song, we heard the word "going"--two syllables, a gerund, a state of unfolding. Then, the final button, the last word in the song: A blunt, monosyllabic "gone." The abruptness of the syllable matches the abruptness of the story's end. For a long while, you half-experience something subtly slipping away--then, suddenly, the thing is absent. Or dead.
Of course, on another level, "Good Thing Going" is a comment on the action we're witnessing on-stage. It's Sondheim saying: This is my show's theme. Frank and Mary have a good thing going--a sense of fondness and mutual respect--and it dies. It dies not because of fireworks or an earthquake. It dies because both parties are somewhat lazy and timid and careless. Mary is too afraid to confess her love, or to do anything about that love. Frank is too craven to stick to his principles, to be the artist Mary suspects he can be. Death through a million tiny wounds. The slowly spreading disease that is cowardice. Just as in actual life!
A good story shows change in a character, over time. "Merrily" is a show that moves backward, so we start with Frank and Mary at their worst, in the present. Frank is deluded and surrounded by hollow money-grubbers. Their emptiness is suggested through the chattering lyrics Sondheim assigns to them: "Mexico! Beautiful, Frank! Acapulco, Mexico! Beautiful, Frank!" Meanwhile, Mary makes a spectacle of her bad behavior. A faceless suit asks her what she does--and she says, I DRINK. Asked what she REALLY does, she says, I REALLY drink. (It's impossible not to choose Mary as your favorite character in this show.) Later, Mary can't tolerate a guest complaining about a home without a pool: "My toilet is permanently busted and the kitchen should be condemned, but....NO POOL??? Trash it!"
There's heartbreak in slowly realizing how far these characters have fallen. At the end of the show, in the youth phase, Sondheim assigns to the protagonists the only strictly autobiographical song he has ever written (or so he claims): "Opening Doors." This is one of Sondheim's greatest moments. We see three lo mein-chomping Columbia grads gently goading one another on. Ready to swallow the world. "I'm moving to POPULAR SCIENCE!" "I'll rewrite the one-act!" "Right, I know, yes...Me and Balzac...." The pleasure Sondheim feels is evident in the virtuosic specificity, the breeziness, of his writing: "The cops, the cabbies, the salesgirls up at Saks..." "I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit...." "Brand-new concept...Pop-up pictures!" Pure delight.
Sondheim always has one eye on subtext, and this show has one of my favorite moments in this tradition. After Frank has his first hit, his wife imagines danging the news in front of her repressed, bitchy parents. "No more HONEY NOT THAT HE'S A PHONY...BUT WHAT DOES HE DO?" "Not that he's a phony" of course means its opposite. Sondheim the anthropologist shows people giving themselves away, even when they believe they are behaving as adults.
I wonder if this show would have been more successful if it had branded itself a concept musical, more similar to COMPANY than to A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. But it's not really a concept musical. It's sort of a hybrid: half-concept-show, half-old-fashioned story. At the least, it's evidence of A Mind at Work.
The song is an item Frank writes for a show, about the slow, quiet death of a relationship. Something is counterintuitive here: No one is a spectacular villain in the breakup song. It's more a slightly queasy statement of ambivalence, a prolonged shrug. "And if I wanted too much, was that such a mistake at the time? You never wanted enough--all right, tough. I don't make that a crime. And while it's going along, you take for granted some love will wear away...."
I'm reminded of the speaker from "Marry Me a Little"--a person too "in his head," afraid to live. "You can be my best friend; I can be your right arm. We'll go through a fight or two--no harm, no harm. We'll look not too deep....We'll go not too far...." Sondheim's neurotic characters refuse to take risks; in a state of paralysis, they allow life to pass by.
"Good Thing Going" has a nice sound/sense moment. All through the song, we heard the word "going"--two syllables, a gerund, a state of unfolding. Then, the final button, the last word in the song: A blunt, monosyllabic "gone." The abruptness of the syllable matches the abruptness of the story's end. For a long while, you half-experience something subtly slipping away--then, suddenly, the thing is absent. Or dead.
Of course, on another level, "Good Thing Going" is a comment on the action we're witnessing on-stage. It's Sondheim saying: This is my show's theme. Frank and Mary have a good thing going--a sense of fondness and mutual respect--and it dies. It dies not because of fireworks or an earthquake. It dies because both parties are somewhat lazy and timid and careless. Mary is too afraid to confess her love, or to do anything about that love. Frank is too craven to stick to his principles, to be the artist Mary suspects he can be. Death through a million tiny wounds. The slowly spreading disease that is cowardice. Just as in actual life!
A good story shows change in a character, over time. "Merrily" is a show that moves backward, so we start with Frank and Mary at their worst, in the present. Frank is deluded and surrounded by hollow money-grubbers. Their emptiness is suggested through the chattering lyrics Sondheim assigns to them: "Mexico! Beautiful, Frank! Acapulco, Mexico! Beautiful, Frank!" Meanwhile, Mary makes a spectacle of her bad behavior. A faceless suit asks her what she does--and she says, I DRINK. Asked what she REALLY does, she says, I REALLY drink. (It's impossible not to choose Mary as your favorite character in this show.) Later, Mary can't tolerate a guest complaining about a home without a pool: "My toilet is permanently busted and the kitchen should be condemned, but....NO POOL??? Trash it!"
There's heartbreak in slowly realizing how far these characters have fallen. At the end of the show, in the youth phase, Sondheim assigns to the protagonists the only strictly autobiographical song he has ever written (or so he claims): "Opening Doors." This is one of Sondheim's greatest moments. We see three lo mein-chomping Columbia grads gently goading one another on. Ready to swallow the world. "I'm moving to POPULAR SCIENCE!" "I'll rewrite the one-act!" "Right, I know, yes...Me and Balzac...." The pleasure Sondheim feels is evident in the virtuosic specificity, the breeziness, of his writing: "The cops, the cabbies, the salesgirls up at Saks..." "I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit...." "Brand-new concept...Pop-up pictures!" Pure delight.
Sondheim always has one eye on subtext, and this show has one of my favorite moments in this tradition. After Frank has his first hit, his wife imagines danging the news in front of her repressed, bitchy parents. "No more HONEY NOT THAT HE'S A PHONY...BUT WHAT DOES HE DO?" "Not that he's a phony" of course means its opposite. Sondheim the anthropologist shows people giving themselves away, even when they believe they are behaving as adults.
I wonder if this show would have been more successful if it had branded itself a concept musical, more similar to COMPANY than to A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. But it's not really a concept musical. It's sort of a hybrid: half-concept-show, half-old-fashioned story. At the least, it's evidence of A Mind at Work.
Comments
Post a Comment