I think Sondheim has a special love for the small, quiet numbers. This may be why, of all the Hammerstein options, “What’s the Use of Won’drin’” is the one that apparently really *speaks* to Sondheim.
I like the muted, daydreamy quality of the title song from “Anyone Can Whistle”: “Maybe if you show me how to let go....lower my guard....learn to be free....”
And I especially like the strange, brief, whispery solo that Gypsy gets in the first act of her battles with Rose. Gypsy is alone on-stage, on her birthday, singing (eerily) to her stuffed animals. If you were an imaginative child with few connections, would you not develop an intense relationship with your toys? I’m already hooked.
“Little cat, little cat....Why do you look so blue?” sings Gypsy. (She is addressing the cat, sure, but she is also addressing herself.) “Little lamb, little lamb....I wonder how old I am....”
No trumpets, no timpani, but this is an electrifying moment. A bizarre, chilling sentence, delivered to a non-speaking lump of cloth.
You don’t need a crescendo to get your guests’ attention.....
P.S. Sondheim says, “Less is more,” when you’re writing, and you see that principle at work in “Little Lamb.”
P.P.S. It seems to me Sondheim repeated the “Little Lamb” trick with “My Friends,” in “Sweeney Todd.” In “Little Lamb,” Gypsy wonders why her stuffed cat is “blue,” but really she is wondering why she herself feels so blue. In “My Friends,” Sweeney feels bad for a razor “locked out of sight all these years,” but really he is feeling bad for himself, since he has been sealed off in prison, unjustly, for a long while.
I like the muted, daydreamy quality of the title song from “Anyone Can Whistle”: “Maybe if you show me how to let go....lower my guard....learn to be free....”
And I especially like the strange, brief, whispery solo that Gypsy gets in the first act of her battles with Rose. Gypsy is alone on-stage, on her birthday, singing (eerily) to her stuffed animals. If you were an imaginative child with few connections, would you not develop an intense relationship with your toys? I’m already hooked.
“Little cat, little cat....Why do you look so blue?” sings Gypsy. (She is addressing the cat, sure, but she is also addressing herself.) “Little lamb, little lamb....I wonder how old I am....”
No trumpets, no timpani, but this is an electrifying moment. A bizarre, chilling sentence, delivered to a non-speaking lump of cloth.
You don’t need a crescendo to get your guests’ attention.....
P.S. Sondheim says, “Less is more,” when you’re writing, and you see that principle at work in “Little Lamb.”
P.P.S. It seems to me Sondheim repeated the “Little Lamb” trick with “My Friends,” in “Sweeney Todd.” In “Little Lamb,” Gypsy wonders why her stuffed cat is “blue,” but really she is wondering why she herself feels so blue. In “My Friends,” Sweeney feels bad for a razor “locked out of sight all these years,” but really he is feeling bad for himself, since he has been sealed off in prison, unjustly, for a long while.
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