Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Watched Gypsy in school last Thursday. A very engaging student production. Music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents. Mother Rose was hungry for stardom for her daughters. When the older one June eloped, the younger one Louise bore the brunt of maternal attention until she gained fame as a stripper and renamed herself Gypsy Rose Lee. The musical also bore witness to the fall of vaudeville and the rise of burlesque. Then on Sunday, with TB I watched The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess , directed by alumnus Diane Paulus, and adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre Murray from the original folk opera by George Gershwin, DuBose, Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Crippled Porgy took Bess in after her man Crown killed someone and had to flee. Crown returned to claim his woman, and Porgy killed him after a struggle. I have not watched the original, but was told by a colleague that the adaptation cut a few of Porgy's arias, and so shifted the attention to...

In these last weeks I have been viewing the whole of what I had known up till then only in parts. First, Godot , then Superman , and last Thursday, with TCH,  South Pacific at Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont. I like musicals, but am not a devotee, and so was surprised to learn from the program that familiar songs like "Some Enchanted Evening," "Bali Ha'i," A Wonderful Guy," and "Happy Talk" come from South Pacific . The music, by Richard Rodgers, is unabashedly popular. The lyrics, by Oscar Hammerstein II, derive their staying power from coming close to cliche, but never quite crossing over into it. They are not clever, like Sondheim's, but they cleave to the ear. Emile de Becque, the French planter who fell in love with a young American nurse, was played by William Michals, the understudy for Paulo Szot. Michals sang with a great deal of power and warmth, but his romance with Ensign Nellie Forbush was not convincing. The diffic...

Studio 54, where the Roundabout Theater Company is now presenting the Stephen Sondheim musical, has quite a history . It was an opera house, a live dinner theater, a radio and TV stage, a wildly fashionable discotheque, before Roundabout bought it in 2003 for a permanent home for musicals. I loved the dark green and gold detailing on the doors and lobby, the Venus and Cupid moldings, and the faded chandeliers. The theater's faded elegance was in sharp and productive contrast with this high-tech revival of Sunday in the Park with George . Seurat's painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was not only projected onto the white walls and doors on stage, it came alive in animation, blurring the line between life and art, the blurring a theme of the musical. The director Sam Buntrock worked as an animation director on numerous commercial and corporate projects, besides creating animation for BBC and HBO. The great moment in the animation came for me right at the en...