It's Still Here

Happy 53rd anniversary to Follies, the glorious, epic, mold-breaking 1971 musical by Stephen Sondheim, James Goldman, Harold Prince and Michael Bennett that ended up being too lavish and probably too jarringly mold-breaking for its own good. The most expensive Broadway production to date when it opened, it drew a full spectrum of critical reviews but didn't get the musical-theater-pantheon foothold it deserved and closed after 500 performances without recouping any of its investments.

I was unfortunately three when it opened and I couldn't get tickets, but my heart and endless fascination and I were eventually—inevitably—pulled into its magical, inspiring, gorgeous, heartbreaking world when I saw the 1987 London revival, which gave Eartha Kitt a much-needed comeback when she replaced the broken-ankled Delores Gray (just like what happened to her in 42nd Street!) to belt the iconic "I'm Still Here"—which, as coincidences never cease, was the song in the 1971 production that brought Yvonne De Carlo back from the brink of terminal embarrassment after playing Lily Munster on TV.

Thankfully—inevitably—Follies has since then finally achieved the musical-theater-pantheon stature it deserves, and I've been fortunate enough to have seen more productions of it than I can count in New York, D.C., Chicago and beyond. I'm obviously overflowing with fanboy knowledge and trivia and opinions and lyrics (oh boy, am I overflowing with lyrics) about the show, but if I even want to come close to sharing everything about its brilliance that's waiting to burst out of me, I'll have to schedule a six-week subscription-series symposium at a local college to get it all Jakesplained to you. 

Fun fact: It opened at the Winter Garden Theater in NYC, which—again with the coincidences—is the theater where I just so happen to have seen my first-ever Broadway show (Cats, the fact of which I am hard-stop-sun-comes-up-coffee-cup not willing to discuss).

Something nice with swans

Well there are WORSE. THINGS.
Than weeding and deadheading on a Sunday.

 
There are WORSE. THINGS.
Than weeding and deadheading
In your pebbled front-yard garden
As the hot sun beats down on you
And you’re wearing a black T-shirt
That just proves thermodynamics
Make you swelter, sweat and trickle
To the point that you might pass out
In your pebbled front-yard garden
(Oops but I already said that)
And your lilies have stopped blooming
Plus your hostas look anemic
But you’re using your new snippers
That have been a great investment
‘Cause they’re making it so easy
To snip dying and dead plant parts
And please don’t forget the dog poop
Yes you must pick up the dog poop
That has hit the yard like shrapnel
So please watch where you are stepping
Did I mention that I’m schvitzing
In our weedy front rock garden
That Versailles would mock and laugh at
But EXCUSE ME ‘cause I’m trying
Now my forearms started itching
Because weeds are toxic bastards
And they’re sending caustic weed slime
Up my sweaty tired firearms
But I stopped to take a selfie
With my profile facing leftward
Like the lady in that painting
Who was named Dot by Steve Sondheim
In the musical with Lapine
That I’m curiously quoting
As I’m weeding and deadheading
In my pebbled front-yard garden
On a SUN DAAAAAAAY.
On a SUN DAAAAAAAY
In the yard. with.

*Don’t say your name!*

jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake.

Happy 91st birthday, Stephen Sondheim!

Thank you for redefining musical theater. For redefining music. For redefining theater.

Thank you for composing music that's at once asymmetrical and balanced, halting and fluid, atonal and lush, messy and perfect.

Thank you for finding lyrics that explore the outer limits of rhythm and structure and rhyme, that tell a story or define a character or celebrate a moment or break a heart in sometimes just a handful of words, that always seem fresh, that always seem timeless, that always seem effortless.

Thank you for creating an apotheosis of creative and intellectual order, design, tension, composition, balance, light and harmony.

Thank you for inspiring as only you can an enraptured young writer to think outside his own thoughts, to feel outside his own feelings, to never stop searching for the perfect word or the lyrical phrase or the essential defining idea in a universe of creative entropy, to always make sure he's proud of how he creates and proud of what he writes.

And thank you for the phrase that I rely on almost daily to turn an undefined someday into a compelling now ... to pull me out of inertia and propel me sometimes through a bipolar fog and sometimes just through my own complacency to run a marathon, broaden my perspective, take on a challenging writing project, upgrade to a difficult tap class, find a solution, emerge unscathed or at least unbroken, or some days to just show up.

Careful the things you say; children will listen. And sometimes they'll turn your inspiring lyrics into kick-ass tattoos.

Feel the flow,
Hear what's happening:
We're what's happening!
Long ago
All we had was that funny feeling,
Saying someday we'd send 'em reeling.
Now it looks like we can!
Someday just began ...

Theater: "Sunday," Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim

Never has a song captured me on so many levels and left me with goosebumps every time I hear it. Sunday in the Park with George is one of the first shows I ever saw on Broadway, and "Sunday" finishes Act I by bringing together all the characters we've met as individual people as they stand and relocate and adjust as a growing ensemble and ultimately form a living, singing, haunting, as-close-as-humanly-possible re-creation of Georges Seurat's defining painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The score of the entire show is peppered with quick little notes that evoke the peppered-dot painting style of Pointillism, and the dreamy lyrics meander through the endless combinations of colors Pointillist painters used to create light and shade and depth and movement in their work. And the last sung lyrics—"... on an ordinary Sunday!"—stand in gloriously stark contrast to the shimmering, fortissimo, every-possible-note chording in the orchestra that is powerfully, thrillingly anything but normal.