After Stephen Sondheim’s debut on Broadway as lyricist of the 1957 West Side Story, he chose to always compose as well
Illustration/Uday Mohite
My daddy beats my mommy,
My mommy clobbers me,
My grandpa is a Commie,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a moustache,
My brother wears a dress.
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Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m such a mess!
Stephen Sondheim, lyricist West Side Story.
Interestingly, after Stephen Sondheim’s debut on Broadway as lyricist of the 1957 West Side Story, he chose to always compose as well.
And yet, the seriousness of themes, the melodic experimentation, the emotional discord — Sondheim’s shows, though mostly received with critical accolades, were almost never popular hits. He suffered from a reputation that he didn’t write hummable tunes, that his outlook was sparse, if not harrowing.
Growing up on a diet of Andrew Lloyd Webber, his Jesus Christ Superstar’s 1971 studio recording, ringing in my ears, with the opening ‘Heaven On Their Minds ‘ and the epic ‘Gethsemane’ I had got used to hummable songs in the musical theatre.
Sondheim’s work was by comparison, not earworm worthy.
Sondheim believed, “You don’t get a chance to hear the lyric once, and if it doesn’t sit and bounce when the music bounces and rise when the music rises, the audience becomes confused.”
All his work began with the underlying understanding—“We’re all adults here so let’s not lie to each other about what life is.”
The lyricist-composer’s work was rooted in truth, no embellishments, no soft edges,—the truth was messy.
So his characters were unheralded, out of the spotlight, often damaged and occasionally dysfunctional—but mostly his characters were ordinary, they were everyday, he explored their inner lives, those of aging women, single men, married couples, bystanders—even when he went dramatic, he went dark, like Sweeney Todd.
Sondheim asked a basic question, why does a piece need songs and if so, does the song take the plot forward—seeing himself as a playwright, a kind of American Shakespeare, he once said, ‘If you ask me to write a love song, I wouldn’t know what to write. But if ask me to write a love song, about a girl who’s just been jilted by a guy and she comes into a bar and she’s wearing a red dress and she orders a margarita, that I can write, because of the specifics, the girl has a character, why is she wearing a red dress, why has the guy left her.”
Sondheim wanted to explore new worlds every time he put pen to paper.
“It’s not that I want to leave audiences unhappy… but if I’m not re-inventing, trying something new, what’s the point.”
Sondheim broke many of the rules of conventional stage musicals—When others were grand, he went gritty, they were spectacular, he was sinister, they were earnest and escapist, he went edgy.
He explored love-sex- commitment in the 1970s Company, but not in ways audiences were used to. He always questioned conventions.
Take this excerpt from the song, The Little Things You Do Together.
‘It’s the little things you share together
Swear together
Wear together
That make perfect relationships
The concerts you enjoy together
Neighbours you annoy together
Children you destroy together
That keep marriage intact
It’s the little ways you try together
Cry together
Lie together
That makes perfect relationships
Becoming a cliché together
Growing old and grey together
Withering away together
That make a marriage a joy
And the musical’s protagonist, the commitment-phobic Bobby sings-
Someone to hold you too close
Someone to hold you too deep
Someone to sit in your chair
Someone to ruin your sleep
Someone to need you too much
Someone to know you too well
Someone to pull you up short
Someone to put you through hell
Most musicals were about happy things.
His were about the difficult things, the uncertainty, the not-knowing, the having to live with.
You were never supposed to leave a Sondheim musical feeling comfortable. Over dinner you argued, you were angered, felt abused, because he asked questions without supplying answers.
There was never self- indulgence in his work, just a relentless turning that searchlight towards the self.
Take these four lines from Move from his Sunday In The Park With George -
I chose and my world was shaken
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken
The choosing was not
Rest in peace, sir.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at [email protected]
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