OPINION

Beyond Sweeney Todd: Sondheim on Video

Written by Purple Tigress
Published January 13, 2008
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The movie changed the plot and cut some songs. Keaton was terminally ill with cancer at the time and this was his last movie role. This musical has been revived with Nathan Lane and Whoopi Goldberg as Pseudolus.

His 1973 Broadway hit, from which the song "Send in the Clowns" came, became the dreadful 1978 A Little Night Music, with Elizabeth Taylor, Lesley-Anne Down, and Diana Rigg. This received mixed reviews and was relatively unsuccessful. Taylor provides her own singing (unlike Russell or Wood), which isn't bad since is it more spoken, however the director Hal Prince doesn't elicit the fire that Taylor showed in Taming of the Shrew and seems content that this piece about passion and love be rather pastoral. The DVD was recently issued in the summer of 2007.

The original Broadway show won Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Musical, Best Book (Hugh Wheeler) and Best Actress (Glynis Johns). Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples, with the music set almost entirely in waltz time.

Sondheim's 1994 Passion (book by Lapin), is available as filmed for American Playhouse with the original Broadway cast. Based on the Ettore Scola film , this musical won Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book (Lapine), Best Score, Best Actor (Jere Shea), and Best Actress (Donna Murphy). The story takes place in 19th century Italy. A young soldier is in love with a married woman, and when transferred to a remote outpost, becomes the obsessive love object of the commanding officer's ugly niece.

Sondheim's 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George is on DVD as recorded before a live audience with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters for TV (Showtime and American Playhouse). Patinkin portrays French Pointillist painter George Seurat. The first act revolves around the painting of his famous Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte. Peters plays his mistress, Dot. Act II takes place 100 years later with Patinkin as Seurat's great grandson and Peters as his grandmother. From this play comes the song "Putting It Together," which later served as the title of a Sondheim musical review, starring Carol Burnett and George Hearn in the Los Angeles 1998 production (DVD).

In 1987, Peters was part of the original Broadway cast for Sondheim's Into the Woods. With book by Lapine, this musical won several Tony awards including Best Score and Best Book. It basically looks at what happened after happily ever after in several fairy tales (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstock). The original cast video is available on DVD, taped in 1989 and shown on public television in 1991.

Sondheim's musicals are alive and well on Broadway. If you can't afford pricey tickets, you can still see some great performances on video.

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Former theater critic for the LA Weekly and Los Angeles Times . For the last five years, an editing slave at a dot-com but recently laid off. Currently an under-employed freelance writer and artist.
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Beyond Sweeney Todd: Sondheim on Video
Published: January 13, 2008
Type: Opinion
Section: Culture
Filed Under: Video: Performing Arts, Culture: Theater
Part of a feature: Breaking Legs in Lalaland
Writer: Purple Tigress
Purple Tigress's BC Writer page
Purple Tigress's personal site
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#1 — January 14, 2008 @ 23:48PM — NancyGail [URL]

Whoops! Len Cariou, not Carious. Also, Rosaline Russell? That sounds a bit off.

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