Stephen Sondheim

Sondheim's mentor, Oscar Hammerstein, wrote "Oklahoma," and that show famously ends with a stoic aunt giving advice to an ingenue.

The ingenue is devastated by a shocking community event; Aunt Eller looks the girl in the eye and says, "We are frontier people. We are hearty. We keep going."

In the eighties, Sondheim invented his own Aunt Eller--one of his all-time great characters, Mary, in "Merrily We Roll Along." Mary is impatient when her friend, Frank, struggles with disappointment. So Mary offers tough love:

All right, now you know.

Life is crummy.

Well, now you know.

I mean, big surprise:

People love you and tell you lies.

Bricks can tumble from clear blue skies.

Put your dimple down...

Now you know.

Mary is urging her friend away from coyness. "Put your dimple down": Drop the Shirley Temple facial expressions.

It's called flowers wilt.

It's called apples rot.

It's called thieves get rich and saints get shot.

It's called God don't answer prayers a lot--

Okay? Now you know.

So many musicals try to comfort the comfortable--but Sondheim does something different. "The world is a mess. Keep going, regardless." It's striking that one of his wisest speakers, Mary, is in fact an alcoholic who is buried under her own mound of frustration and regret. Insight isn't always a cure-all.

Also, it's amazing to me that this show hasn't been seen on Broadway in forty years (!). I'm ready.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co2XqIid3b0

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