Monday, December 29, 2008
Road Show by Stephen Sondheim & John Weidman
Road Show has had an unusually public (and apparently tortuous) development process. The various titles suggest the different emphases the creators and various others have thought of it:
In his book The American Film Musical, Rick Altman succinctly sums up the formula for all musicals: 1) people fall in love with one another; or 2) someone has a transformative experience leading to a new level of thinking or understanding. Most musicals are no. 1, but a work like The Wizard of Oz falls under no. 2. Many combine both (in a Shirley Temple film Shirly has the experience, but it's usually the adults who fall in love). Although Altman doesn't say it, I feel one should not look at the genre cynically. Rather, creators of these shows found early on that to achieve the maximum cathartic effect on the audience, the most elemental plots are best - subjects that nearly everyone can relate to. It apparently boils down to these two ideas.
The problem with Road Show is that it doesn't use either. There is nothing about love, and neither of the protagonists ever reach a new level of understanding. One could say that the journey is what matters (hence the title), but the journey does not add appreciably to what we first see of the brothers. In fact, the brothers' childish fight at the drama's outset foreshadows their later relationship - they were "born to fight" and continuing so until they die. Whatever drama Sondheim saw in the story is not carried over in his creation.
The choice of showing the final state of the brothers' relationship at the outset (when they've already died) dissipates the possibility of building up tension over the course of the show. Once the flashback begins one sees that the antipathy after they're dead was already present at the beginning--a situation that does not really change over the course of the show. So there's no transformative development there, and therefore not much reason to see it dramatized.
Clearly the interest is not in the brothers themselves but their allegorical implications. It would appear that Wilson Mizner stands for greed, opportunism, cheating - all those characteristics which are evil and are a part of United States history. What about Addison? He unwillingly falls in with some of his brother's schemes, and then seems to be unavoidably drawn into them, leading to both their downfalls. Presumably the viewer should be drawn into Addison's world, although with minimal character development that is very hard to do. We see someone who is trying to escape his brother and never succeeds. Perhaps Addison stands for what the ordinary person thinks of themselves: trying to always escape evil but never fully being able to.
(I'm thinking of Morton Gould's Billion Dollar Baby which has a vaguely similar theme. In that show, the "evil" protagonist in the form of a gold-digger is provided with more deeply drawn character. We see how she becomes more opportunistic - and smile in satisfaction when she is given a final comeuppance due to the 1929 stock market crash - something that never happens in Road Show.)
So Road Show has inherent structural problems that can't be solved without substantially changing the story. What about the music?
I've always had problems with Sondheim's relationship to music. He feels music exists to help tell the story (no problem there), but that it should always be subserviant to the text. In so doing, I've felt that Sondheim violates what music is about. However you want it to function, music tells its own story, with or without text. To fully work with it, one must realize how music achieves this through respecting what the music wants to do and how it wants to behave.
I find it telling that the best part of the show was removed from it: the song "A Little House For Mama" (as heard on the cast recording of Bounce). Within it one can feel something for Addison - it seems to be the way of letting the audience achieve some identification with Addison, because he reaches out to a mother that never offered love. It makes us identify with him.
For me, the best song conceived for the show is You. The point of the song is to show both how Addison becomes a star architect and how his friend and business partner, Hollis Bessemer, becomes his lover. But more than that, the gradual build up to a tremendous climax strongly suggests that, at one point, this song might have been the finale of act 1 (although typical musicals of today introduce an element of doubt prior to the act 1 curtain - a cliff-hanger). It's so infrequent that Sondheim allows music to breathe this way - to allow itself to grow and provide a strong foundation for the parallel narrative, of the growth of Florida real estate, of Addison's aspirations, and the growing "friendship" between Addison and Hollis.
- Gold - suggesting the show's core is the pursuit of money
- Wise Guys - underscoring Sondheim's stated idea that the show is like a modern version of a Bing Crosby-Bob Hope movie
- Bounce - suggesting that the relationship of the Mizner brothers is the central point
- Road Show - puts the emphasis less on the brothers' relationship than what happens to them
In his book The American Film Musical, Rick Altman succinctly sums up the formula for all musicals: 1) people fall in love with one another; or 2) someone has a transformative experience leading to a new level of thinking or understanding. Most musicals are no. 1, but a work like The Wizard of Oz falls under no. 2. Many combine both (in a Shirley Temple film Shirly has the experience, but it's usually the adults who fall in love). Although Altman doesn't say it, I feel one should not look at the genre cynically. Rather, creators of these shows found early on that to achieve the maximum cathartic effect on the audience, the most elemental plots are best - subjects that nearly everyone can relate to. It apparently boils down to these two ideas.
The problem with Road Show is that it doesn't use either. There is nothing about love, and neither of the protagonists ever reach a new level of understanding. One could say that the journey is what matters (hence the title), but the journey does not add appreciably to what we first see of the brothers. In fact, the brothers' childish fight at the drama's outset foreshadows their later relationship - they were "born to fight" and continuing so until they die. Whatever drama Sondheim saw in the story is not carried over in his creation.
The choice of showing the final state of the brothers' relationship at the outset (when they've already died) dissipates the possibility of building up tension over the course of the show. Once the flashback begins one sees that the antipathy after they're dead was already present at the beginning--a situation that does not really change over the course of the show. So there's no transformative development there, and therefore not much reason to see it dramatized.
Clearly the interest is not in the brothers themselves but their allegorical implications. It would appear that Wilson Mizner stands for greed, opportunism, cheating - all those characteristics which are evil and are a part of United States history. What about Addison? He unwillingly falls in with some of his brother's schemes, and then seems to be unavoidably drawn into them, leading to both their downfalls. Presumably the viewer should be drawn into Addison's world, although with minimal character development that is very hard to do. We see someone who is trying to escape his brother and never succeeds. Perhaps Addison stands for what the ordinary person thinks of themselves: trying to always escape evil but never fully being able to.
(I'm thinking of Morton Gould's Billion Dollar Baby which has a vaguely similar theme. In that show, the "evil" protagonist in the form of a gold-digger is provided with more deeply drawn character. We see how she becomes more opportunistic - and smile in satisfaction when she is given a final comeuppance due to the 1929 stock market crash - something that never happens in Road Show.)
So Road Show has inherent structural problems that can't be solved without substantially changing the story. What about the music?
I've always had problems with Sondheim's relationship to music. He feels music exists to help tell the story (no problem there), but that it should always be subserviant to the text. In so doing, I've felt that Sondheim violates what music is about. However you want it to function, music tells its own story, with or without text. To fully work with it, one must realize how music achieves this through respecting what the music wants to do and how it wants to behave.
I find it telling that the best part of the show was removed from it: the song "A Little House For Mama" (as heard on the cast recording of Bounce). Within it one can feel something for Addison - it seems to be the way of letting the audience achieve some identification with Addison, because he reaches out to a mother that never offered love. It makes us identify with him.
For me, the best song conceived for the show is You. The point of the song is to show both how Addison becomes a star architect and how his friend and business partner, Hollis Bessemer, becomes his lover. But more than that, the gradual build up to a tremendous climax strongly suggests that, at one point, this song might have been the finale of act 1 (although typical musicals of today introduce an element of doubt prior to the act 1 curtain - a cliff-hanger). It's so infrequent that Sondheim allows music to breathe this way - to allow itself to grow and provide a strong foundation for the parallel narrative, of the growth of Florida real estate, of Addison's aspirations, and the growing "friendship" between Addison and Hollis.
So it's a great disappointment to find that in Road Show "You" has been musically disected presumably to achieve greater narrative cohesion. Instead of that marvous gradual crescendo of sound and pitch, now there are occasional parenthetical interjections of recitative-like passages which significantly reduce the musical effect. No doubt Sondheim or the producers/director of the current production thought it would be enhance or clarify the narrative, but it totally kills the musical effect. It's a pity that, whoever was responsible, miserably failed to perceive "You" as a musical unity.
I find myself asking what is the point? Is the show a statement about society and the folly of capitalism? Or is it really just about two brothers whose exploits happen to intersect with some of the issues today? I prefer to believe the former, if only because the show appears so minimal if it's just about the brothers. But nowadays, the idea of "message" shows (be they stage, movie, or opera presentations) seems quaint since it's an idea that was popular in the 1930s and went out of fashion with World War II.
It's a pity that the show's song, formerly named "Bounce," has now been changed to "Waste." I can't help but feel it might be an indication of where all the effort in this show has lead.
Labels: Bounce, musicals, Road Show, Sondheim
