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Sondheim: "Loveland"

Sondheim is in the news--now and always. The big revelation is that Off-Broadway will host a major revival of "Assassins" next year. And Andrew Rannells observes, in his new memoir, that he has not yet attained all his goals. He'd very much like to have "a weekly brunch with Stephen Sondheim." He says it's good to have big, unrealized wishes at all times.

I keep thinking about Sondheim's song "Loveland," from "Follies." Many writers before Sondheim (many writers even today) focus on the will-they-or-won't-they part of a love story. They write about the build-up to some kind of commitment. (Think of Darcy and Lizzie, or Mr. Big and Carrie Bradshaw.) Sondheim, by contrast, tends to focus on what happens *after* love is declared: the struggling marriages in "Company," the decaying couples in "Follies," the warm but bickering Baker and Baker's Wife in "Into the Woods."

Still, Sondheim appreciates the myth of love. The idea that love is a kind of ending--that all strife ceases when love is declared. "Loveland" is Sondheim's tip of the hat to this (silly) idea. It's written in a style that borrows heavily from Sondheim's (sunnier) literary ancestors. Many of these writers enjoyed cleverness-for-the-sake-of cleverness. They used devices and more devices. "I'm bromidic and bright as a moon-happy night..." "This verse I've started seems to me the Tin-Pan-tihesis of melody..." "Lose that long face! Go 'long and get that long face lost!" "The climax of the plot should be the marriage knot.....but there's no knot for me!"

We see this sense of cleverness in "Loveland." In this mystical land, "time stops" and "hearts are young." "See that sunny sun and honey moon..." "There where seven hundred days hath June..." "Every road is lover's lane in Loveland...." We see a reversal of word order, as we see in "Lose that long face; get that long face lost." From Sondheim: "In Loveland, everybody loves to live. In Loveland, everybody lives to love."

What's especially powerful in this song is that the performers are youthful versions of embittered old actors (and the embittered old actors are *also* characters that we know). There's an implied gap between idealistic expectations and the truth. It's like in "Merrily We Roll Along," when young people sing of "shifting grounds" and "worlds to win," even as we know that these young people will become angry, compromised failures in middle age.

Most Sondheim songs are one-act plays, and "Loveland" isn't an exception. After establishing how wondrous Loveland is, Sondheim makes a small turn. He invites the audience to make a decision. "Sweetheart? Take my hand. Let us find that wondrous land called Loveland! Loveland! Love, love, love...." We're drawn into this mystical place, where "folks use kisses 'stead of cash." A place where any separation results in "swooning" and "death." We know there's something sinister here, under all of the sweetness. But we're propelled onward. We have to find out what happens next.

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