Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! Greetings from Eppley Airfield outside of beautiful Omaha, Nebraska! I'm so sad I will not be with you all on Wednesday, March 29th when Linda presents on Stephen Sondheim, but perhaps it's all for the best since I would be unable to keep myself from bursting into song every time our presenter mentions any one of his masterworks, or I would talk your ear off with musings about everything I love about Sondheim and my experiences with his work. Some topics I'd feel compelled to share, but luckily for you I won't be there to talk your ear off! See end of blog*
The overture will begin at 12:30pm in the Orr Room and the first act will begin promptly at 1pm.
Have a lovely time being in each other's COMPANY!! x Jacquie
Christine's Minutes Ten members of the Literature Club gathered once again in the Orr Room at the Hastings Library. Two members joined us via Zoom.
President Constance rang the bell at 1 pm. The minutes of our previous meeting were read and accepted. Absent the treasurer, there was no treasury report.
Harking back to our discussion two weeks ago, Constance informed us that the charter school in Yonkers does not accept any book donations, except for graded books. Other possibilities for getting books into the hands of children in need are being looked at.
Meanwhile, the tension in the room is only becoming more and more palpable.
Finally, will all due ceremony (bugles, trumpets, court jesters and the like) Vice President Joanna Reisman announced that our topic for the coming season, 2023-to 2024, will be…..
The Literature Club Topic from the Year You Were Born. In other words, referring to the list of all Literature Club Programs from our founding in 1909, members can find the program given when they were born. Given that our seasons follow the academic year, each of us will have two possible topics to choose from. Unless we want to be pettifogging quibblers and insist that the topic chosen also correspond to the month of a member’s birth.
With that momentous announcement behind us, members were at last allowed to settle in for an afternoon of musical theater, and Linda Tucker’s much anticipated program on Stephen Sondheim.
Linda began by telling us that for the past decade she has been voting for Drama as our topic. Yet when that finally came to pass, she did not choose to present on Lillian Hellman, thankfully, but instead landed on Stephen Sondheim, because she and her grandson Sam share an abiding love of all things Sondheimian. Not only that, but Sam already owned several large tomes about Sondheim. The choice was clearly meant for the big stage.
Our first reading was from the 2021 New York Times obit by Bruce Weber, who called Sondheim a “songwriting titan, whose music and lyrics reset the artistic standard for the American stage musical.”
Stephen Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930 in NYC. His parents, Etta and Herbert, were the children of Lithuanian and German Jews. An only child, he lived on the Upper West Side until his parents divorced, when he moved with his mother to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. This outcome was not an easy one, as Stephen hated his mother and the feeling was reciprocated. On the night before going in for heart surgery, she wrote him a letter stating that her only regret was having given birth to him.
Etta’s friendship with Dorothy Hammerstein, wife of Oscar, was perhaps the only upside in their relationship. Stephen was friends with their son Jamie, and Oscar became a surrogate father and mentor. After telling young Stephen that his first musical, written while still in prep school, was terrible, Oscar then set out a program for him to follow: 1. Adapt a good play into a musical. 2. Adapt a flawed play… 3. Adapt a story from another medium…and finally, 4. Write a musical from your own original story. Sondheim followed these precepts all the way through Williams College, where he studied harmony with Robert Barrow.
Sondheim explained that lyrics exist in time – that is, you only hear a lyric once, maybe twice, thus they must be simple and they must go with music, as well as lights, costumes and everything else happening on a stage.
His first Broadway gig was as a lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy. He did not love writing lyrics without the music, but Hammerstein encouraged him, and he learned working with the greats.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was the first show for which he wrote both music and lyrics. He never looked back. But it was not initially a success with out-of-town audiences, until Sondheim wrote a new first number, “Comedy Tonight”, following Hammerstein’s wisdom about the importance of an opening number. When the show came to New York, it was a smash hit.
As an aside that is especially significant on account of the Literature Club’s very own crossword puzzler, Linda, Sondheim was himself a fan and even created cryptic puzzles for the New York Magazine.
Under Linda’s direction, members examined three shows, in chronological order. So as not to interrupt the lyrics and rhythm, each reader read the entire song…musically if possible.
There was also musical accompaniment. Before launching into A Little Night Music, 1973, Linda played “Send in the Clowns”. Set in Sweden and ‘suggested’ by a film by Ingmar Bergman (a dour Swede not usually associated with musical theater), it presents the various romantic complications that ensue during a weekend in the country. Members read the “Now”, sung by Frederick, then “You Must Meet my Wife”, and then the finale of Act 1, “A Weekend in the Country”. In Act 2, we read “It Would Have Been Wonderful”, a duet by the 2 lovers of Desirée, Frederik and Carl-Magnus. Next was Sondheim’s most famous song, “Send in The Clowns”, in a stirring rendition by our own Sharon DeLevie. The play ends happily.
As another not-quite-aside, Linda made sure we noted Sondheim’s many remarkable rhymes, such as glacier with Chateau, sir, denied with abide, vicious with delicious, and penchant with trenchant. This last required a footnote regarding the British pronunciation of penchant.
Next up was Sunday in the Park with George, 1984, based on George Seurat’s iconic pointillist painting that hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago (and graces 45% of the themed tchotchkes sold in their gift shop). First, we heard “Finishing the Hat” sung by Mandy Potemkin and Bernadette Peters. Members read the opening number, “Sunday in the Park with George”; then from Act 2, “Sunday in the Park”, “Finishing the Hat”, “Children and Art” (in which he rhymes rapturous with capture us), “Lesson #8” and “Move On”.
For our last act, Linda presented Into the Woods, from 1987, a kind of mash-up of Cinderella, Jack in the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and a quest tale. Again, we heard a tape of the song, “Into the Words.” Members read from Act 1.
Linda told us, “I feel that Into the Woods is an existential show about what life is really like. Everything is OK, and then one day a giant steps on you.”
Much as I would like to end on those words of wisdom, a few more rhymes must be noted: I hate to ask it, but do you have a basket? cried and mollified, and finally, I’ll tell what I tell kings and queens, Don’t mess with my greens, Especially the beans.
The meeting was adjourned at 3 pm, and exeunt omnes, humming.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary
*Topics Jacquie would have discussed if she'd been at the meeting
- The first album I ever owned was Company, which I received for Hanukkah when I was nine after my mother was told I had borrowed it too many times from the Adriance Memorial Library and others needed a turn. I remember that night so clearly because my father had also gotten us a new stereo to take the place of our old Victrola, and he set it up on the floor in the living room. We all huddled around it to hear those first distinctive chords, and then marveled as the voices emanated from alternating speakers as they sang "Bobby!"
- Angela Lansbury delighting and heartbreaking as Mrs. Lovett
- Glynnis Johns as Desirée with that otherworldly and world weary voice and hearing "Send in the Clowns" for the first time
- Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters marveling themselves at the extraordinary harmony they created together in "Move On" as the audience marveled along with them
- Chip Zein and Joanna Gleason delighting in Into the Woods, and my being unable to move after sitting through it for the first time, my theater companion turning to me gravely and declaring, "he's dying." Luckily for us all this was not to happen for another 34 years
- Waiting on line for hours three nights in a row at Playwriters Horizon with the hope of getting a ticket to Assassins and giving up on the third night when I was the second person in line and still didn't get in, but then seeing the excellent revival with Michael Cerveris and Neal Patrick Harris at Studio 54
- Trying to understand why Sondheim and Lapine thought Passion was a good vehicle for a musical, but haunted by the story and music nonetheless
- Spending hours listening to songs that were cut from shows and attempting to mimic the sound of the perfect Sondheim soprano with my wobbly alto
- Loving The Frogs on vinyl and hating The Frogs on the stage
- Wishing I had seen Pacific Overtures staged
- Wishing I hadn't seen Follies with an obstructed view
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