When you hit middle age you really only have two choices: you can get fat and lazy until you roll over and die, or you can can get off your ass and do something, like maybe ride a bike.
Bluntness
I've also been told I have little tact, so if this offends you simply ride on.
Showing posts with label Sunday in the Park with George. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunday in the Park with George. Show all posts
My Black Friday at the store was... boring, no customers came to the flooring department and I was never needed in appliances.
And then, just after dinner, as I was sitting at my desk working on the next book, the headline flashed that Stephen Sondheim had died. Ah, yes, this was Black Friday.
I was lucky enough to see three of his shows on Broadway and each, in its own way, was riveting. The first I saw when I was in college. I, and two of my friends, jaunted up to New York to see a little show titled Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, no less. Amazing. The show turned Broadway on its ears. How audacious! To write a show with great music, great lyrics, and then mix in a little blood and revenge. I was hooked on Sondheim.
Then, when I was working for Marriott, I went to see Sunday in the Park with George. The friend I went with was expecting some bold and splashy. That was not the case. Instead, we got to see Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters doing what they do best, sing great lyrics to great music. Sitting in the 14th row of the orchestra, this show was simply amazing.
A few years later I saw my third and last Sondheim show on Broadway, a little thing called Into the Woods. This is, I believe, the most accessible of Sondheim's musicals. Into the Woods is that bold and splashy musical (at least as far as Sondheim could go) people had been waiting for.
The movie versions are... well, some of them are passable. However, if you get a chance to see a Sondheim show on the stage, do so. They can be almost life changing.
A couple of notes before I go to work:
How about that terse letter Bruce Jenner sent to DT (you know, I'll always call him Bruce until he has the surgery)? Nasty, eh? Well, not quite. But then, what more could you expect from a Box of Rocks, as my friend Jack likes to call him. He needs to take some sort of primary course in order to understand what Conservatives really think of him... and his... shall we say problems. I suspect that in his thimble sized mind he might have believed he would change minds. As I said, dumb as a box of rocks.
Neither DT, nor the GOP, nor the dictator in training, Steve Bannon, like the press. If they had their druthers they'd just shut down everything that didn't kiss the ass of DT. Unfortunately for them, this is America, and they are a minority, and even the fact that the excluded members of the press from that Silly Spicer's gaggle... well that pissed people off. Someone should tell them that if they want people to get on their side, to give DT a chance, they've got to stop looking at the majority and saying "Bend Over Buddy."
And on the lighter side, the NYT gave "Sunday in the Park with George" a big thumbs up. I like this. You see back in '84 I went to see this show. I loved it. And, of course, I bought a program.
When I went to see it, Mandy Patinkin had just left, but Bernadette was still staring. That's right, sitting in the 18th row, I got to watch and hear Bernadette Peters singing Sondheim. Simply Amazing!
