Showing posts with label Stephen Sondheim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Sondheim. Show all posts
Friday, June 20, 2008
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE
I was rooting for Broadway veteran (and all-around lighting design big shot) Ken Billington and Sunday in the Park with George to receive a Tony for Lighting Design because the lighting is so dang impressive, eliciting gasps from audience members from the very beginning. Not merely a technical feat, the creative lighting is like a character in the musical—very fitting, considering the extreme importance of light for the artists (George Seurat included) who are the musical's central characters.
Discounted tickets (including rush tickets) have been available for a while, but go for centrally located seats and certainly be wary of upper-level seats on audience right. The sound of the musicians, who sit in a balcony on audience right, can be overwhelming in that zone, so in this case (having learned from Myra's advice) I'd recommend seats toward the back, not the front, of the section.
As of yesterday on Talkin' Broadway, the General Rush ticket policy is as follows:
Subject to availability, a limited number of tickets are sold at the box office, when it opens, on the day of the performance. The tickets are $26.25 each and 2 tickets are sold per person. The seats are usually located in the rear mezzanine.
From what I could tell from NY1, it seems that the Tony nominees were posted online before they were announced live, in a very subdued, almost grim, fashion, by David Hyde Pierce and Sara Ramirez. (They were at the Lincoln Center Library for Performing Arts, so maybe scads of scary librarians were shooshing them the whole time.)
Perhaps because I've yet to see a bunch of productions (and I missed the opportunity to see a bunch of others), I'm most excited that Stephen Sondheim will be the recipient of the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He's had at least a hand in creating such shows as Gypsy, Follies, Sweeney Todd, West Side Story, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum—and revivals of his work remain Broadway staples to this day, with Gypsy and Sunday in the Park with George running and West Side Story on the way. Sunday... is one of the big nominees of this season; garnering even more nominations than Sunday (9) are In the Heights (the leader at 13) and South Pacific (11)...oops, I mean Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. I believe that August: Osage County is the top-nominated play, with strong showings from Macbeth (by William Shakespeare, another staple of Broadway programming), Boeing, Boeing, and The 39 Steps.
As you might imagine based on my recent coverage, I'm sorry that Alli Mauzey of Cry-Baby didn't score a nomination. Also among the missing: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Not nominated for Best Musical: Young Frankenstein. Oops, I mean The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein. Grease managed to score one nomination, for Best Musical Revival.
Here's a newly posted video of yet another side of Mauzey: in character as Galinda/Glinda in Wicked.
Each version I've seen of the mad barber musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street continues to be more pared down than the one before it, but I've still enjoyed them all. In the new movie version, director Tim Burton and screenwriter John Logan slice and dice the Stephen Sondheim original to such a degree that I'm not surprised that gallons of blood are spilled in the process. If you can stand the blood and you have any interest at all in Sweeney Todd, I encourage you to give the movie a whirl while it's at the Ziegfeld or a similarly large and well-outfitted theater.
I still remember what it was like to see a new movie musical at a big plush theater such as Radio City Music Hall or the now bemoaned Cinema 150 in Syosset, Long Island. It was an "event" that was somehow like going to an opening night of a real Broadway musical. And that says something about how atmosphere, anticipation, and enthusiasm help to make such events memorable (though it also helps if the musical happens to be any good).
These days you can still get that special "opening night" feeling at the Ziegfeld, which has a sound system that enabled even the organ music accompanying the opening production credits of Sweeney Todd to make a strong impression. Now and then there was some distortion, but the projection of the images was wonderfully crisp throughout.
As director, Burton infuses Sweeney Todd with morbid despair, furthering the recent trend that emphasizes the grimness of the story while downplaying (but hardly eliminating) its potential for giddy gallows humor and even some moments of vital optimism. He makes the mood visible in the production design and audible in the reduction of certain lyrics to the equivalent of mad mutterings. On stage, the great number "A Little Priest" gives the leads a golden opportunity to "work the audience" with exquisitely timed delivery of some of Sondheim's cleverest lyrics, but on screen it is easy to not even notice the wordplay as Burton abandons the theatrics and hews to his very cinematic approach. That approach works, but don't leave with the impression that Burton's take on Todd is the only one possible, as the video clips below should illustrate.
Seeing Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter as the grotesque leads (pictured, with Depp resembling Susan Sontag), I couldn't help but reflect on how far they've come from their early days as a teen idol and a Merchant-Ivory ingenue. Good for them! I don't know who's responsible for the moment in Sweeney Todd when Carter's Mrs. Lovett moves her feet this way and that on a beach blanket, but I love that little touch. It's also amusing (to me, at least) to think of her and Alan Rickman (who plays Judge Turpin) and Timothy Spall (who plays Beadle Bamford) in terms of their nasty alter-egos from the Harry Potter movies. Hermione ought to do some research to learn if Voldemort's hordes had anything to do with the Sweeney Todd affair.
And now, here's "A Little Priest" with Angela Lansbury, Broadway's original Mrs. Lovett, and George Hearn as the barber.
And here is a rare view of Lansbury with the original barber, Len Cariou. The quality of the video is poor, but just listen to the interplay between the performers and the audience, which laughs all the way through. That's not likely to happen with the movie version.
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