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Sondheim at Ninety (Cont'd, Cont'd.)

Sondheim's Contemporaries.

 (1) Lin-Manuel Miranda. My favorite Miranda moments are tiny, quiet scenes where character is revealed through word-choice. (Miranda has praised Howard Ashman, who is the king of matching words to characters).

In Miranda's world, a cocky Hamilton interrupts an overly-tactful George Washington: "Do you want me to run the Treasury, or should I be the Secretary of State?" A verbose Hamilton can't really manage a courtroom, and he learns from a far-more-circumspect Burr: "Ladies and Gentlemen, my client is innocent. That's all you need to say." An extremely nervous young man--startled when his love brings him champagne--can't really pay attention to the romance of the moment. He interrupts his friend: "How do you get this gold shit off?"

(2) Tony Kushner. People don't really think of Tony Kushner as a lyricist, but indeed he is.

I appreciate the supreme weirdness of "Caroline, or Change." We normally expect a protagonist to learn and grow--but Caroline doesn't really "deliver," in a conventional way. We expect some dazzle and excitement at the climax of a show; Kushner gives us a depressed woman by a laundry machine, singing, "Murder me, God....down in the basement...." We don't expect a statue to talk, or to sing. But Kushner says, Why not? And he gives us a talking statue, as well.

(3) William Finn. This guy's great talent is for surprise. In a potentially sappy number, friends exclaim, "We don't know what life has in store!" And the bitchy protagonist, nearby, dying of AIDS, sings quietly, "I've a clue...."

A bereaved man thinks about his dead boyfriend, and offers this startling observation: "All too soon, I'll remember your faults....Meanwhile, though, it's tears and schmaltz..."

One of my favorite Finn inventions: Why not pay close attention to a small child, and why not *refuse* to make that child merely cute or predictable? In "Falsettos," a kid can't cope with the knowledge that his friend will die, and so he acts out by cancelling his own bar mitzvah. He wields power in the one way he can: No bar mitzvah. This is such a strange thing to highlight in a musical. It seems to come directly from actual life. I love that.

These are the greats.
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