Deconstructing Putting It Together

Deconstructing Putting It Together

Notes From a Sondheim Ambivalent

In The First Place…

I wanted to write a great deal about my impressions of Stephen Sondheim and his art. That’s going to take up most of this blog entry. I know that lots of people will want to hear about the current Porchlight production of Putting It Together and won’t care a bit about what I think about Stephen Sondheim’s art. So up front, here’s the skinny, the low-down, the scoop, the cat’s meow and the cream from the milk:

This is a terrific production even if you’re not completely enamored of Sondheim’s output. Porchlight is superb; the venue is great, the staging is nothing short of miraculous, the music direction is flawless; the singers are just what you’d expect from Sondheim vocalists and then some.

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Now I can write about what really interests me. By the way, there are a lot of good reviews of this production already on the Internet. You can see some of them at Review: Putting It Together (Porchlight Music Theatre) | Chicago Theater Beat, or Porchlight season off to sizzling start - Chicago Sun-Times and THEATER REVIEW: Putting It Together from Porchlight Music Theatre at Theater Wit gets 3 stars - Chicago Tribune.

Why I Don’t Adore Sondheim (or His Art)

Let me start by saying I don’t dislike Stephen Sondheim’s artistic efforts; I simply don’t adore them. There seems to be an implicit polarization of Sondheim camps in the world; either you love the entire body of his work or you find it repulsive and unendurable. I’m in neither camp. I’m not particularly fond of his work, but I do enjoy hearing it. Some of it I can do without.

I view musical theater as a distinctly American form of opera. It has soliloquy, dialogue, scenery, action and nearly continuous music; these are all of the things that characterize opera. We might more succinctly summarize these parts as book, lyrics and music. I find Sondheim weakest when listening to his music.

Without music it’s simply not musical theater; it’s theater (without the music). Since I don’t find Sondheim’s music particularly noteworthy or even satisfying, I can’t really place him in my “most adored” category.

Lyrics, Book, Music

To be certain, his lyrics are among the most engaging and illuminated ever created in the English language. Cleverness is one of the Sondheim hallmarks as is his use of the unconventional and unexpected. It helps to stay very alert when listening to something with the Sondheim autograph.

His books, which is to say the topics he treats in a production, are generally interesting and always timely. (Sondheim has always collaborated with a book-writer of some sort.) He is the quintessential twentieth century artist in his reflections of all the angst and shortcomings of a world that emerged from the relative innocence of Late Romanticism into an era of two world wars, a host smaller ones, a constant stream of economic misery interspersed with periods of prosperity, a pace to life and change of dizzying speed, and finally the rise of the modern terrorist. No wonder he is generally concerned with some sort of disappointment or suffering among his characters.

It is the music that I find uninteresting. It is the composer, after all, who adds the drama, emotion and nuance to the words of the lyricist and librettist. For a musical to be really memorable it must synthesize all three major parts—book, lyrics and music—into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Sondheim fails to achieve that most of the time and it is his music that is simultaneously the most significant and weakest link in the chain. When Sondheim began to handle both lyrics and music on a regular basis it is as though his focus shifted completely to the lyrics, relegating the music to a supporting rather than a starring role.

I exclude from my evaluation those projects where he worked strictly as lyricist, most famously and successfully West Side Story and Gypsy. It is when Sondheim began tackling both music and lyrics that merit gave way to other considerations.

One of the key components that any composer must master is melodic invention. The principles of melody are well understood, especially as they apply to Broadway musicals that need to rapidly engage and entertain an audience not always sophisticated enough to grasp contemporary trends in musical invention. Through the devices of the motif, repetition, sequence and transformation a skilled composer can take some very fundamental elements and create an amazing kaleidoscope of musical experience for his listeners.

The starting point of the melody also has some bearing on things. Motifs that have a lyrical basis (ones that you would be inclined to sing) are generally easier and more memorable for an audience. Twentieth century practice has been to use melodic components that are not lyrical in nature. It is still possible to apply all of the techniques of invention to non-lyrical bases but it does require that the audience be somewhat more educated and sensitive to the processes taking place. Sondheim is able to utilize the tools of his trade and in fact is a reasonable craftsman when it comes to constructing melodies.

His music, however, doesn’t benefit a great deal from his craftsmanship as a composer for a couple of reasons: first, much of his music sounds like all of the rest of his music; it is monotonous; second, the music itself often does little to enhance the meaning of the book and lyrics. A musical is a synthesis after all, and unless there is a synergy injected by the composer, the whole will not be greater than the sum of the parts.

There are exceptions to these general criticisms, as there are always exceptions to nearly every generalization. But I maintain that the fundamental observations hold true and are the reasons that I don’t dislike the artistic efforts of Stephen Sondheim, but I don’t adore them, either.

Porchlight Is Superb

All of that being said, I again state that I found the Porchlight production superb in every aspect. Putting It Together is, after all, nothing more than a cabaret act with a bunch of songs strung together. Porchlite’s set, comfortable venue (Theater Wit) and plot exploits made the experience much more than just another song mash-up.

The singers, three men and two women, were what you’d expect from a group of solid professionals. Especially noteworthy was Alex Weisman whose banter and commentary added some needed breaks to the otherwise uninterrupted cascade of Sondheim songs.

Also deserving high praise is youthful Music Director Austin Cook. Cook’s piano wizardry helped alleviate some of the ennui surrounding Sondheim’s compositional shortcomings mentioned earlier.

Did I enjoy it? Of course I did. Would I recommend it? Yes. My level of enthusiasm in recommending this production should be in direct proportion to my listener’s devotion to the cult of Sondheim. If you adore Sondheim, you will definitely not want to miss this one.