Beyond Sweeney Todd: Sondheim on Video - Page 2

He wrote both the music and the lyrics (book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart) for the 1962 Broadway hit A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which became a 1966 movie with Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford recreating their Broadway roles. Buster Keaton and Phil Silvers were also featured. This is available on DVD. The plot revolves around three neighboring houses. One is a brothel. Another belongs to an elderly man whose children were stolen by pirates. The house in between these two is where Pseudolus, a slave, lives. He schemes to get his freedom while helping his master, Hero, son of the master of the house, find true love with a slave girl who has been promised to a war hero.

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.

Article Author: Purple Tigress

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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