Search Results

This chapter examines the work of Stephen Sondheim. It begins with an extended commentary of his career, followed by details on productions, with data and song information. Sondheim moved at the age of eleven from Manhattan to Doylestown, Pennsylvania—Doylestown, the country home of Oscar Hammerstein 2nd. A friendship with young James Hammerstein led to a close teacher/student relationship with James’s father, the man who helped create the modern musical in his work with Jerome Kern and who over the next few years would write Oklahoma! (Rodgers: March 31, 1943) and Carousel (Rodgers: April 19, 1945).

West Side Story, a collaboration of four extraordinary individuals Jerome Robbins (choreographer and director), Arthur Laurents (librettist), Leonard Bernstein (composer), and Stephen Sondheim (lyricist)-premiered on Broadway on September 26, 1957, and ran for 734 performances. After a national tour that lasted a year, it returned to Broadway for an additional 249 performances. A bona fide hit but not a megahit like Oklahoma! or My Fair Lady, West Side Story eventually logged in as the twelfth longest-running show of the 1950s. The Bernstein-Sondheim-Laurents-Robbins collaboration contains a dream ballet and a mimed prologue that creates a backdrop for the story to follow. More than perhaps any previous book musical, West Side Story uses dance for many additional purposes, not only in musical numbers where characters would be expected to dance (the “Dance at the Gym” and “America”), but in more stylized choreographic settings for several of the show's crucial dramatic events (“The Rumble” and “Taunting Scene”). The creators of West Side Story also managed to take a canonic and extremely well-loved Shakespeare play and adapt it for 1950s audiences while remaining faithful to the spirit of the original. Most significantly, the adaptation both provides dramatically credible and audible musical equivalents of Shakespeare's literary techniques and captures his central themes.

This introductory chapter describes the life and subsequent Broadway career of American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Born into an upper-middle class family in New York, Sondheim enjoyed the privilege of private schooling, a secular worldview, and a wide cultural perspective. Growing up, Sondheim formed a strong bond with Oscar Hammerstein, who gave him the stable relationship of an appreciative “parent,” and later became his mentor. Sondheim eventually launched a career in music theatre, and later worked on play and movie scripts. By the 1960s, Sondheim began flourishing in the New York theatre world. He wrote the music and lyrics for A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum (1962) and Anyone Can Whistle (1964), in addition to West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). Some of his most celebrated works include Company (1970), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Into the Woods (1987).

This chapter focuses on examples of American japonisme and interactions with traditional Japanese culture from the past few decades, thereby revealing connections with older representational techniques and concerns. The chapter starts with an extended discussion of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical Pacific Overtures and a brief discussion of films during the trade war period. The second section focuses on Weezer’s Pinkerton album as a continuation of Tin Pan Alley exoticism. In the early twenty-first century, multiple female pop stars (Madonna, Katy Perry) appropriated the geisha image in performance. The chapter then turns toward Asian American postmodern attempts to undermine Orientalism, as in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly. Recently, organizations such as the Japan Society have commissioned numerous American composers to create works for Japanese instruments. In addition, numerous Americans have become professional shakuhachi players and teachers. The chapter concludes with recent examples of japonisme aimed particularly at children (animation, video games).

This chapter first considers the work of Stephen Sondheim, including Company, Follies, A Little Night of Music, and Pacific Overtures. It then describes the advent of rock musicals, the first successful one being Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar, which introduced the genre loosely termed “pop opera.” The chapter also discusses other popular musicals The Phantom of the Opera (1987), Annie (1977), Chicago (1975), and Nine (1982).

Chapter 2 focuses on the rise of the gay rights movement, the Caffe Cino scene, and the growth and development of the Off Off Broadway scene through the late 1960s. The play The Boys in the Band and the musical Company, both of which influenced the depiction of the gay man in post-Oh! Calcutta! adult musicals, are analyzed.

By the early 1970s, Broadway music would be branded “middle of the road,” but the expressway of popular music left little, if any, room for the show music for an earlier or current generation. Various new teams and new songwriters attempted a cross-generational sound, a way of bringing rock-infused scores to Broadway: Burt Bacharach and Hal David, John Barry, Stephen Schwartz, and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Not all of their experiments were successful—either on the pop charts or on stage. Stephen Sondheim emerged as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his generation and, in the midst of commercial failure within the world of cast albums, Sondheim emerged with a hit song that eventually became a pop standard in an increasingly obstreperous time: “Send in the Clowns,” introduced as a crossover single by Frank Sinatra.

Allegro represented de Mille’s final collaboration with Rodgers and Hammerstein. She served as both director and choreographer for the musical. The show did not find the same level of success as Oklahoma! and Carousel. Its plot lacked coherence, and it had no hit songs. Like Carousel, Allegro operated in the realm of fantasy in its attempt to surface the inner consciousness of the main character, Joseph Taylor Junior. De Mille and Hammerstein collaborated to produce innovative staging, using minimal sets, lighting, and a stage with multiple tiers to show fantasy on one level and reality on another. The show established principles that were later used to great effect in South Pacific. At the time of his death, Hammerstein was working to revise Allegro for television, suggesting that it posed creative challenges that he still hoped to solve.

This chapter discusses how the events during 9/11 have forever destroyed the innocence of Americans, as well as their craving for art and entertainment. For three or four days after September 11th, all Broadway shows, The Producers included, were cancelled. New openings were delayed for a week or more. The Roundabout revival of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins was postponed until further notice because, as the director, Joe Mantello, observed, it is a musical “which asks audiences to think critically about various aspects of the American experience,” and in light of the murderous assault on our nation, “this is not an appropriate time to present a show which makes such a demand.” Especially when the musical is about the assassination of American presidents.

This chapter explains how Ziegfeld became an icon for generations to come through the lavish biopic The Great Ziegfeld (1936). Burke is an adviser on the set of the film and is now working at MGM. Next, the chapter provides an in-depth look at other films that use Ziegfeldian production techniques. The chapter concludes with a summary of Broadway and other theatrical productions from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that paid homage to Ziegfeld and his legacy.