Sondheim at 75 (Part Five)

This review ran originally in The Metro Herald in June 2002. An earlier review of the same show, which I wrote in 1997, can be found here.

Catharsis in the Park With George
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Practice makes perfect? Third time’s the charm?

However you put it, with Eric Schaeffer’s third attempt at directing Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1984 musical, Sunday in the Park with George, he accomplishes the near-impossible: He has completely re-imagined the play, transforming Sondheim’s most static, most dated—dare I say it?—most sterile musical into an emotionally wrenching masterpiece. Schaeffer has rediscovered the dynamics of what had become a tepid work. It is a stunning achievement.

Forgive me for confessing, but in the past the only musical play ever to move me to tears was The King & I. That last scene, when the King dies and his son takes his place, always opens the waterworks for me, whether in live performance or on film—even listening to the cast recording. That reaction was mawkish sentimentality compared to what happened after Sunday in the Park with George.

Eschewing, as he should, cheap sentiment, Schaeffer renders a true emotional catharsis in the Kennedy Center’s Sunday. I am not much given to hyperbole, but mark this, readers: On Sunday afternoon, June 2, 2002, the Platonic Form of Beauty graced the stage at the Eisenhower Theater. Only by great forbearance did I avoid bawling like a baby in the lobby—the full impact of what I had seen did not hit until after the exit music ended. Even now, some 10 hours later as I write this, temblors shake my body, my hands trembling, and my teeth clattering. Live performance being so ephemeral, I grieve that the Form of Beauty eludes our permanent grasp. But we can witness it, alive but fleeting, in Washington for the next few weeks. (Keep in mind that beauty need not be pretty, nor even pleasant. True beauty transcends the superficial to metamorphose into the sublime. As George sings in “Beautiful,” in Act I: “Pretty isn’t beautiful, Mother,/Pretty is what changes./What the eye arranges/Is what is beautiful.”)

Sunday is a musical play about “the art of making art.” Sondheim denies it, of course, but it is a highly personal and autobiographical work. (Sondheim claims the only autobiographical thing he’s written is the “Opening Doors” sequence in Merrily We Roll Along.)

For those unfamiliar with this Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the first act focuses on French artist Georges Seurat, whose pointillist painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. Sunday in the Park with George shows us Seurat’s creative process, his relationships with his lover, Dot, and other people (his mother, fellow artists, Parisians). Act II focuses on Seurat’s fictional great-grandson, George, who uses new technology to create art but, like his ancestor, fails to “connect” . . . with people, with himself.

Both halves of the play also reflect on how the “arts establishment” deals with challenging and original works. Seurat was rejected by the establishment in his short lifetime (he died at age 31) and never sold a painting. Act II’s George has to engage in politics to get the commissions he needs to create his own art, a process he finds undignified at best and slimy at worst.
Seurat was said, by his critics, to be “inaccessible” (the word is in the script) and “cold,” that there was “no life in his art,” charges also leveled against Sondheim, whose intellectually rigorous and challenging music contrasts with the melodism of Richard Rodgers or Jerome Kern, for instance. (Not to denigrate those composers; they are different, not better or worse.)

Sondheim says that of the three elements of music—melody, rhythm, and harmony —it is harmony that defines music for him, with rhythm and melody being secondary. That should come as no surprise, since Sondheim was a mathematical prodigy whose chief avocation even today is puzzles and brain-teasers. Harmony is built with mathematical precision. (By the way, Sondheim says the richest and most inventive harmonics he has encountered are those of George Gershwin and Harold Arlen.) So obsessed was Sondheim with mathematics that, when he entered Williams College, he conscientiously chose to major in music rather than math because, with math, he would be too self-absorbed and lose himself in the subject. (“I chose, and my world was shaken–/So what?,” sings Dot in “Move On”; “The choice may have been mistaken,/The choosing was not.”)

There is also, Sondheim says, a tension between music and lyrics. Poetry (lyrics), he says, “is about concision,” while music is “about explosion.” Fitting words to music is much like creating a crossword puzzle, where each choice impinges on all the others.

These comments were delivered on the Kennedy Center Concert Hall stage on April 28, when Sondheim told interviewer Frank Rich of The New York Times and an appreciative, knowledgeable audience that a major part of his creative process is “getting inside characters” created by his collaborating librettist “like an actor does.” Asserting that he knows the books of his musicals better than the librettist himself, he said, “I really act well when I’m writing”—not so well, apparently, when he’s performing.

Similarly, Act I’s George immerses himself in the models he uses for his painting. He does not hide behind his painting, he says, “I am living in it.” He voices the thoughts of the otherwise mute dogs that he paints.

We know, too, from published biographies (notably Meryle Secrest’s) that, like Sunday’s Seurat, Sondheim had a tense, distant relationship with his mother and difficulty forming other, significant close human bonds until late in life. (Seurat did not have the benefit of living long and prosperously.) The song “Beautiful,” a duet between George and his mother, is as much a statement of personal perpendicularities as it is about disagreement over art, form, and beauty.

What is it that, given this background, makes this particular production of Sunday in the Park with George so spectacularly successful? One element that must be taken into account is director Schaeffer’s earlier career as a graphic artist. He understands what George seeks: order, design, tension, composition, balance, light, harmony. He has himself faced a blank page or canvas and brought it to life.

Schaeffer, with his collaborators, is able to combine all these with movement, words, music, emotion, meaning, costumes, set design, props. There are so many details that deserve attention (and praise) that a review like this cannot do justice to them. The monochromatic design of the “Putting It Together” sequence in Act II is amazing in itself, but just one element that calls out for notice.

The fact is, Eric Schaeffer has completely reexamined the material in Sunday. He has reached down to the foundations, rebuilt the exoskeleton of the play, creating something new yet familiar.

The new can be challenging, it can be tough for audiences. (American theatregoers are unlikely to tear down an auditorium as Parisians did when Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring premiered early in the last century. But they won’t buy tickets for shows they don’t like, either.)

Schaeffer’s direction—assemblage of the various elements of theatrical performance—produces a meditation on how artists try “to get through to something new, something that is mine,” as George says. Work, another character relates, is what you do for others; art is what you do for yourself. “I do not paint for your approval,” George tells the establishment’s Jules.

George is driven by his art, which is also his science. He is excited by his discoveries of how the human eye mixes colors together to produce a new color. That intensity is seen by others as dehumanized eccentricity. Failing at relationships, George creates not love but art. Uncaring for his biological progeny, the product of his loins, he is drawn only to the product of his intellect.

Act II’s song, “Children and Art,” reflects this apparent dichotomy. We only leave behind two things in this world, says Marie (George and Dot’s daughter, George II’s grandmother): children and art. Children or art. All else is barren.

In the end, Act II’s George realizes that connection and creativity are not at odds. He can do both, he can “move on” to create something new and unexpected. What he creates, we do not know.

Philosophy aside, the physical presence of the actors on stage was a major factor in this production’s achievement. Melissa Errico as Dot/Marie and Raúl Esparza as George/George are cast well. Errico is smooth and shimmering, while Esparza distinguishes the two Georges smartly. He adds a youthful spark to the dual role.

Washington audiences will recognize Signature Theatre regulars Donna Migliaccio, Sherri Edelen, Daniel Felton, and Jason Gilbert, among others, in this cast. Accomplished Broadway actors like Cris Groenendaal (who was in Sunday’s original Broadway cast) and Florence Lacey shore up the ensemble as well. As highly competent as their performances are, however—and it is hard to identify any flaws—they are subsidiary to Errico and Esparza, satellites to their sun.

I spent the second act of Sunday in the Park with George with my eyes wide and my mouth agape. I only wish more tickets were available, that more performances would be added to this run, since the Sondheim Celebration is of limited duration, not open-ended like a Broadway show. It is a crime that so few theatre lovers will see this production.

Each show so far—Sweeney Todd, Company, and now Sunday—has been great on its own merits, but successive productions have each been better than the preceding. Where can the Sondheim Celebration go from here? Three more major productions —Passion, Merrily We Roll Along, and A Little Night Music—are planned. What’s in store for us there?

Check out my CafePress shop for greeting cards, t-shirts, and other theatrical items!

Sondheim at 75 (Part Four)

This article originally appeared in The Metro Herald (Alexandria, Virginia) on March 26, 1999:

A Too-Brief Review of London Theatre
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Last month, the Metro Herald's Rick Sincere went to London to check out the theatre scene there. In one week, he was able to see five plays -- four musicals and one non-musical. Here Rick reports on what he saw.

(LONDON) --- For most American tourists, their experience of London theatre is the West End -- London's equivalent of Broadway. A wide array of non-West End (off-Broadway) plays and musicals is also available, but the West End theatres are the most convenient for short-term visitors to Central London.

The best way to find out what is playing, and at what price, is to pick up a copy of Time Out, a weekly magazine that includes a comprehensive entertainment guide -- it covers theatre, film, music, television, and radio, as well as current events. Time Out features capsule reviews of all shows playing in the West End and beyond. It should be the first purchase for any tourist arriving in London (along with the necessary A-Z London Street Guide). Time Out also notes the location of each theatre, including the nearest Underground ("Tube") station.

Ticket prices in London are cheaper than they are in New York. (Prices for almost everything else in London, however, are substantially more than they are here -- there seems to be a one-to-one correspondence of the pound to the dollar, even though a pound is worth about $1.65. That is, if a Big Mac costs $2.99 in Washington, it will cost £2.99 in London, or about $4.93. This price inflation is not the case outside of London, in the rest of Britain, however.) Half-price, same-day tickets are available at a kiosk in Leicester Square, near the center of the theatre district. Most of the more popular shows will have half-price tickets available, but if there is something in particular that you absolutely must see, it is best to pay full price in advance at the theatre box office itself, or to reserve tickets by telephone. Some theatres also offer discounts to students and senior citizens ("OAPs," or old-age pensioners); as a student in London in 1986-87, I was able to take in at least one play or musical per week on a very limited budget.

London theatres tend to be more intimate -- that is, smaller -- than American venues. They are closer in size to the National Theatre than to the Kennedy Center Opera House. While this has advantages in terms of seeing and hearing better, one should be alert to the more constricted seats and narrower aisles. One should also be aware that programs, which are given away free in American theatres, must be purchased in London, usually for one pound but sometimes as little as 50 pence. Glossy, souvenir programs cost extra. At the same time, during the interval ("intermission" on this side of the Atlantic), ice cream and other refreshments are sold in the auditorium itself by itinerant concessionaires. And every theatre includes a bar where wine, beer, and spirits are available before the show and between acts.

In London, one can see long-running musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber -- Cats, Starlight Express, The Phantom of the Opera -- as well as his new musical, Whistle Down the Wind, which failed miserably when it played in Washington but has been extended through the year 2000 at the Aldwych Theatre here. There are also productions of classic plays in repertory by the Royal Shakespeare Company, new plays mostly of interest to British audiences, plays that cater to tourists (like Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, almost 50 years into its continuous run), and American imports like Grease and Chicago.

In seven days, I was able to see five popular and highly-acclaimed shows: revivals of West Side Story, Oklahoma!, and Into the Woods, the West End production of Rent, and a new play by Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love.

West Side Story

My friend, Nigel Ashford, who teaches at the University of Staffordshire in England, joined me for a matinee performance of a revival of West Side Story at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Coventry Street, near Soho and Piccadilly Circus. This revival is designed to be a re-creation of the original 1957 production of West Side Story, and in this it succeeds. The production includes the original set design by Oliver Smith, costume design by Irene Sharaff, and orchestrations by Leonard Bernstein, Sid Ramin, and Irwin Kostal. Jerome Robbins' original direction and choreography is reproduced by Alan Johnson.

Looking at West Side Story like this is like looking at an artifact in a museum: it is interesting, it is instructive, but it is ultimately lifeless. Dr. Ashford's reaction to the production was that it is "old-fashioned," and, indeed, it seems that way. The cast was talented, delivered the songs and dances competently and with energy, and the story is as compelling as ever. But something seemed vaguely "off" about this production -- it lacked the cutting edge, the shocking sharpness, that West Side Story presented to audiences more than 40 years ago.

My own reaction was that the show seemed much like any high school production of West Side Story. It had an amateurish quality to it, despite the clear professionalism of the cast and production staff. The reason is, I suppose, that over the past 40 years we have become accustomed to higher gloss productions that take advantage of modern technology.

Moreover, the decision of playwright Arthur Laurents and lyricist Stephen Sondheim to use made-up slang, rather than real slang, in the dialogue no longer works. They decided to do this because they were afraid that by using current (1950s) slang, the show would become dated too quickly. The opposite is the case; their made-up slang sounds more dated than ever, and as a result the show loses some authenticity.

During the first act, it seemed that Katie Knight-Adams, who was playing Maria, was having trouble with her voice. This turned out to be the case, and during the interval it was announced that she would be replaced in the second act by her understudy, Celia Graham. An amusing moment took place about two minutes into the second act when Rosalia says of Maria: "She looks somehow different." Laughter rumbled through the audience, which evoked puzzlement at first, then barely constrained smiles from the actors -- that line had been delivered hundreds of times in the past, and never before got a laugh. But that day it had a special meaning. As it turned out, Graham sparkled for the rest of the performance.

Among the rest of the cast, David Habbin was a strong Tony. Alex Harkins stood out as Baby John and Jennifer Ashton was an excellent Anybodys.

West Side Story opened on January 22, 1999, and is in an unlimited run.

Into the Woods

In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's fairy-tale world, happy endings are only the beginning of misery. Into the Woods is their highly intellectual look at what goes on behind the scenes at familiar fairy stories like Jack and the Beanstalk, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Rapunzel.

The folk tales gathered by the Brothers Grimm were much more violent than the bowdlerized versions that most of us grew up with. Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim explored their deeper meaning a generation ago, and Sondheim and Lapine have taken over where Bettelheim left off.

A new production of Into the Woods at the Donmar Warehouse -- a small theatre comparable to the Signature Theatre in Arlington, except that it has a balcony and can seat about 100 more audience members -- does not do much to update the 1987 Sondheim-Lapine work. Director John Crowley and designer Bob Crowley, along with lighting designer Paul Pyant, have been able to accomplish much, however, in the small space available to them. The "woods" themselves have a remarkable depth, but it is all an illusion, almost a trompe d'oeil effect.

The musical itself asks profound questions about our ability to tell the difference between good and evil and our ability to act on that discernment. Faithfulness, naivete, faithlessness, and cynicism all play a part.

A few of the performances are worth noting: Sheridan Smith is, quite literally, a scream as Little Red Riding Hood. Christopher Pizzey delivers a touching, if simple, Jack (the one with the Beanstalk). And there is genuine affection between the Baker (Nick Holder) and his Wife (Sophie Thompson). Clare Burt plays the key role of the Witch with appropriate malice, but her singing voice does not reach the heights it should.

Unfortunately, for the most part, the actors do not sing their roles as well as they act them. Sondheim's music and lyrics are difficult, to be sure, but there seems to be a tendency of British companies to be less competent in bringing Sondheim to the stage than Americans. I don't have an explanation for this odd phenomenon, it just seems to be the case. (An example can be found in the new British cast recording of A Little Night Music from 1997.)

It was difficult to get tickets for Into the Woods, because the Donmar Warehouse has such an excellent reputation for delivering strong products. (Donmar originated the current production of Cabaret, which will be coming on tour to Washington this summer, and hosted the world premiere of The Fix, which had its American premiere at Signature Theatre last year.) The production closed shortly after my colleague, Anthony McCall-Judson, and I saw it, but it was well worth the effort to obtain the seats.

Oklahoma!

Someone told me recently that there has been a performance of Oklahoma! at least once each day since the play premiered on March 31, 1943, almost 60 years ago. Right now the production to see is at the Lyceum Theatre in London, transferred from the Royal National Theatre on the South Bank. Run, don't walk, to the nearest airport and catch the next flight to London. This Oklahoma! will only be on stage until late July, and you do not want to miss it. Director Trevor Nunn and choreographer Susan Stroman have reinvented this classic American musical, and without a doubt it is the truest manifestation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's vision in decades.

True, this is a darker vision of Oklahoma! than we are used to seeing. (An earlier Royal National Theatre version of Carousel did much the same to R&H's second collaboration.) But the darkness, the sense of foreboding, the infestation is all there in the script and in the music. Not a line has been changed, yet because the tone is different, the musical feels brand new.

A couple of obvious changes may illustrate the genius behind this production. When Laurey appears on stage, and through most of the first act, she is dressed in blue-denim overalls, not the frilly dress of the sort worn by Shirley Jones in the familiar movie version. This gives her a tom-boyish appearance, but also marks her independence, her inner strength. At first it is puzzling why Curly would be attracted to this boyish girl, but it soon become clear that he likes her for her mind and spirit, rather than just her purported girlishness.

The second stroke of ingenuity belongs largely to Stroman (I'd guess). In the second act, the famous title song -- an eleven o'clock number usually characterized by lots of movement and vitality -- is staged at the wedding dinner of Curly and Laurey, as it usually is, with the whole cast (minus Jud Fry), as expected. What is unexpected is that almost the entire number is performed while sitting down. The understatement is sublime.

Moreover, as the second act continues, Nunn puts more emphasis on Jud's death -- was it murder? suicide? -- and the impromptu trial of Curly than we are used to. It is hard to tell precisely what makes up this new emphasis. It might be pacing, it might be staging -- but whatever it is, it is clear that most productions of Oklahoma! like to gloss over this whole episode so that they can hurry along to the finale, when we get to see Curly and Laurey wander off, happily ever after, in their "surrey with the fringe on top." Under Nunn's direction, we cannot forget or ignore the violence that is key to this play.

Maureen Lipman, a veteran West End actress who has earlier starred in Bernstein's Wonderful Town, among other shows, is a delightful Aunt Eller. Hugh Jackman, an Australian, offers a strong Curly with a voice that reaches into the farthest rows of seats in the theatre -- and apparently without amplification and without straining. Josefina Gabrielle plays Laurey perfectly, with balance and energy. One American in the cast is Vicki Simon, who plays Ado Annie with comic authenticity, and is a perfect foil for Jimmy Johnston's Will Parker.

The set design by Anthony Ward and the lighting design by David Hersey are, in a word, magnificent. No, make that two words: They are breathtaking. Magnificent and breathtaking. Who could imagine an Oklahoma! where the orchestra is on stage, behind a scrim (though hidden through most of the show)? Or with authentic looking cornfields, windmills, barns, and sheds? Or with a moving railroad train and a horseless-carriage surrey that put-puts across the stage?

We can only hope that producer Cameron Mackintosh brings this production of Oklahoma! back to the United States, so that we can see how it should be done. In case he doesn't, however, see it now before it's too late.

Rent

Rent is offensive. Now playing at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End, and continuing to be performed in New York, Rent is the least-deserving recipient of the Tony Award for best new musical and the Pulitzer Prize for drama that I have ever seen.

Rent is offensive because its basic message -- you should expect to get whatever you want without working for it, that "success" and "selling out" are synonymous -- is abhorrent. Rent is a story about squatters and "artists" who take advantage of hard-working property owners and productive members of society in order to feed their own egos and wallow in their own self-pity.

Rent is offensive because it rejects an ethic of personal responsibility.

Rent is offensive because its music and lyrics are loud, raucous, and decidedly non-musical.

It is clear that Rent achieved its fame -- no, notoriety -- largely on the basis that its primary creator, composer-lyricist Jonathan Larson, died on the night of the final dress rehearsal. This gave Rent a plethora of undeserved publicity followed quickly by sympathy for a "fallen artist." Just as his character, Mimi, dies for her "art" -- What? Heroin addiction and promiscuity? -- so did Larson die for his.

While some of the young actors in this production show some promise -- Andy Señor as Angel, Peter Eldridge as Roger -- they need to find another vehicle. And Krysten Cummings (Mimi) should worry about being typecast -- she also played a drug-addled prostitute in The Fix.

If you go to London, don't bother with Rent. It's not even worth the half-price of a ticket that I paid.

The Invention of Love

Luckily for me, I followed up a matinee performance of Rent with an evening performance of The Invention of Love, a brilliant new play by Tom Stoppard, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Stoppard has, without a doubt, the nimblest mind of any playwright working today. He is inventive, imaginative, creative, and intellectual. The career that got its start with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead more than 30 years ago and recently got a boost with an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love is in full bloom and shows no sign of fading away.

The Invention of Love is definitely not a play for those seeking light-hearted, unchallenging entertainment. Because it is a play about a keen intellect -- poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman -- it requires concentration and reflection to appreciate its intricacies. The Invention of Love is not just a biographical play, however -- it is a fantasy, a mind-game, a well-crafted character study. Who but Stoppard could create compelling drama out of arcane debates about ancient Latin poetry among the intellectual elite of Victorian and Edwardian England? And who but Stoppard could tie this all in to contemporary political events, such as the Labouchère Amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill that passed Parliament in 1885, which led to the downfall of Oscar Wilde 10 years later?

The characters in this play are real people, including Wilde, John Ruskin, and Benjamin Jowett. Housman is portrayed as a young man by Ben Porter, in a stunning performance, and as an old man about to die (or is he already dead?) by the incomparable John Wood, who is movingly profound, witty, and romantic all at the same time.

I have encouraged at least one local theatre to consider producing the American premiere of The Invention of Love, but I would not be surprised if some smart New York producer beats them to it. Unfortunately, the play has closed in London. I feel privileged -- and enlightened -- to have seen its original production just a few days before it closed.

Check out my CafePress shop for greeting cards, t-shirts, and other theatrical items!

Oh, And It's Andrew Lloyd Webber's Birthday, Too

[This page is intentionally left blank.]

Sondheim at 75 (Part Three)

This review originally appeared in The Metro Herald in September 1998:

A Late Summer Night's Dream:
Signature's A Little Night Music Sings
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

How does one approach a dream deferred? With considerable creativity and verve, it would seem, if Signature Theatre's new production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music is any guide.

Originally announced for last season [spring 1998], Signature had to delay staging A Little Night Music for budgetary reasons. Yet the delay paid off, both because the replacement last season (A Stephen Sondheim Evening) was a low-budget delight, and because the extra time permitted artistic director Eric D. Schaeffer to uncover new orchestrations for A Little Night Music that had been performed just once before, in England, which allow a rich, 14-piece sound to resonate through Signature's intimate space instead of the smaller sound of a quartet that the producers had initially expected to use.

A Little Night Music is a visual stunner. Lou Stancari's sets and Anne Kennedy's costumes remind one of Jonathan Miller's 1987 production of The Mikado for the English National Opera, in which sets and costumes were all done in shades of white, with splashes of color serving only as punctuation. So, too, here at Signature: Stancari's basic set, an outdoor garden, is shaded in the grey-white of cement and unpainted plaster. Kennedy's sumptuous costumes range from bright white to ecru to eggshell to light beige, punctuated with occasional color splashes. Exceptions are the costumes for the quintet that serves as a kind of "Greek chorus," who are clothed in black, which has the psychological effect of rendering them invisible. (But why put Jean Cantrell into a knee-length black cocktail dress when the rest of the adult females wear floor-length gowns appropriate to the turn-of-the-century setting?) Young Fredrika's angel's wings in the second act, while curious, are not out of place for a playful adolescent, and make her into something of a Cupid for previously mismatched lovers.

Complementing and elevating these visual elements is the lighting design by Jonathan Blandin. Through subtle shading and coloring, through gobo projections, Blandin transports us to the "perpetual sunset" of a Nordic summer. If anything other than acting itself can wrench emotion out of an audience, it is lighting such as this.

And then there is the music itself. This play is called, after all, "A Little Night Music." (In a subtle musical pun, Fredrik whistles the opening bars of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.") This is perhaps Sondheim's most tuneful score, as difficult as that may be to judge. It produced his only Top Ten single, Judy Collins' recording of "Send in the Clowns." That song alone has been recorded at least 700 times by artists as diverse as Acker Bilk, Mabel Mercer, and Frank Sinatra.

What's not well-known about "Send in the Clowns" is that it was a late addition to the score. Sensing something missing from a key scene in the second act, director Harold Prince consulted with Glynis Johns, the original Desiree Armfeldt, and Len Cariou, the original Fredrik Egerman, about the underlying emotions of the scene. From their conversations, Sondheim wrote a new song that was inserted into the score just two days before the show opened in Boston on its pre-Broadway tryout. Earlier this year, Johns told the quarterly Sondheim Review her feelings about other singers and actresses performing the song that she introduced 25 years ago:

"When it comes out of context of the play, it's acceptable when you have a lovely singer like Judy Collins doing it. She does it in the most acceptable way for me. One singer, who shall be nameless, said to me, ‘I've never known what that lyric meant!' And I nearly said, ‘That's pretty obvious, dear!'"

In context, the song itself flows seamlessly from the libretto and the delicate conversation between Desiree and Fredrik as they discuss their fates. Its reprise in the finale links the two characters together charmingly and endearingly.

This is not to say that A Little Night Music is a one-song show. The eleven o'clock number, "The Miller's Son," is handed to a rather minor character, Petra the maid. Yet this lusty song, in the style of an English folk song, sums up the carpe diem, "gather ye rosebuds while ye may" philosophy that animates the entire play. Sherri L. Edelen delivers it randily.

Then there is "Liaisons," a bolero sung by the aged Madame Armfeldt, who reminisces about her own youth while reflecting on her daughter's current life and future. Interestingly, this song bears echoes of both "Maria" and "Quintet" from West Side Story (Sondheim's collaboration with composer Leonard Bernstein), which might be Sondheim's nuanced way of drawing comparisons between headstrong youth and wiser, more deliberate grown-ups.

But how to choose? The trio of "Now," "Later," and "Soon" (sung, respectively, by Fredrik, his son Henrik, and his child bride Anne) is woven together ingeniously. "You Must Meet My Wife" is a darkly comic musical conversation between Fredrik and Desiree, while "Every Day a Little Death" is a biting commentary on love and faithlessness by Charlotte and Anne.

There is not a wasted musical moment in this play.

Still, the magnificent score would go nowhere were it not for a remarkably talented cast. Stephanie Waters is simply delightful as Anne, whose youthful enthusiasm delays her sexual and romantic awakening. Robb McKindles is Henrik, the theology student and personification of Kierkegardian angst, whose dark night of the soul leads the way not only to his own spiritual and physical redemption, but that of his father and stepmother as well.

Christopher Flint portrays a pompous and slightly dense Count Carl-Magnus, and Donna Migliaccio deftly handles him as his long-suffering wife, Charlotte.

Ilona Dulaski sparkles as Madame Armfeldt, whose pithy, aphoristic comments on life and love frame the play. John Herrera gives us a Fredrik who is lawyerly and stuffy on the outside, but clearly yearning for something deeper on the inside. Similarly, Patricia Pearce Gentry takes a character, Desiree Armfeldt, who could be dismissed as a flighty celebrity, and infuses her with depth and maturity.

Director Frank Lombardi has assembled a remarkable collection of talent both on stage and behind it. He has created a breathtaking Night Music that deserves to be seen by every Sondheim aficionado within driving distance of Arlington.

A Little Night Music runs through September 27 at the Signature Theatre, 3806 S. Four Mile Run Drive in Arlington.

Check out my CafePress shop for greeting cards, t-shirts, and other theatrical items!

Sondheim at 75 (Part Two)

This review originally appeared in The Metro Herald in June 1998:

From Show Boat to Sondheim
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Last year, Oxford University Press published a new book by Professor Geoffrey Block entitled Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim. In an interesting blend of theatre history and musicology, Block traces the changes and the commonalities that occur in the uniquely American art form, the musical play. On the surface, the differences between Show Boat and any Sondheim musical seem to predominate. The fact is, however, that Stephen Sondheim represents the best of a 70-plus year tradition even as he massages the form and takes it to a new level of both intellect and entertainment.

The tradition was literally handed down personally to Sondheim. Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyricist of Show Boat, served as a mentor to the teenage Sondheim, guiding him as he learned the tasks of playwriting, musical composition, and lyric writing. When Sondheim was 15 years old, Hammerstein -- who was a neighbor of Sondheim's family in rural Pennsylvania -- gave the ambitious youngster a three-tiered assignment to help him learn the craft: first, write a musical based upon a previously produced play; second, write a musical based upon a novel or short story not previously dramatized; and third, write an original musical play based upon nothing but the imagination. Hammerstein then took a brutal but fair editing pencil to each work, teaching Sondheim the art of concise writing that is necessary to any creation that has both passion and wit. Later, Sondheim served as a gofer for the production company during the creation of Allegro, the original 1948 musical that became Rodgers and Hammerstein's first Broadway flop. (Nothing teaches the principles of success better than a magnificent failure.)

Washington area audiences have the opportunity this summer to observe both the beginnings of the American musical theatre tradition and its culmination in the early works of Stephen Sondheim. Show Boat, in the form of Harold Prince's award-winning 1994 Broadway revival, is playing at the Kennedy Center Opera House through July 19. At the same time, Arlington's Signature Theatre is presenting a revue of Sondheim songs originally performed at New York's Whitney Museum in 1983, You're Gonna Love Tomorrow: A Stephen Sondheim Evening, playing through July 5.

The contrasts are most striking. Show Boat is a big musical of cinematic proportions. It has a cast of 61 actors, singers, and dancers, who together wear about 500 costumes and 300 pairs of shoes and boots (not to mention 402 hats, caps, bandannas, and hair bows). There is a 20-person orchestra. The main set, the Cotton Blossom show boat itself, measures 25 feet tall, 5 feet wide, and 40 feet long. Eight computers control the scenery and lighting changes through 22 miles of steel cable, 17.5 miles of electric cable, and 2 miles of computer cable. The performers are amplified by 83 microphones and 120 sound speakers.

At Signature, the cast of seven performs on a set consisting of three small platforms and seven matched chairs. They are accompanied by four musicians (including the musical director on piano) and sing without amplification devices. Except for a few novelty accessories, the performers wear the same simple, dark-and-earth-tone costumes throughout the 90-minute show. Lighting is simple, stark, and dramatic.

Even though Signature's production is a revue -- covering Sondheim's first 25 years as a professional composer and lyricist -- it is typical of Sondheim musicals. Only Follies (1971) approaches Show Boat in sheer size, and that should come as no surprise. After all, Follies was meant as a (serious) pastiche of the kind of spectacles produced by legendary impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, who produced the original Show Boat in 1927. In historical scope, the closest comparison to Show Boat's 40-year time period might be Sondheim's Pacific Overtures (1976), but even that comparison would be strained. More generally, Sondheim musicals rely on a much smaller cast within the constraints of a more manageable time period. (Exceptions can be found, of course. Sunday in the Park with George [1984] sets its first act and second act 100 years apart. Merrily We Roll Along [1981] traces the lives of three close friends over a 25-year period.)

The seven actors in A Stephen Sondheim Evening are perfectly suited to sing Sondheim's difficult music and intelligent lyrics. Each of them -- Jean Cantrell, Donna Migliaccio, Judy Simmons, Daniel Felton, Gregg Glaviano, Lawrence Redmond, and Matthew Shepard -- has extensive experience performing in previous Sondheim shows (as well as other musicals, operas, and non-musical plays). Signature's black-box theatre possesses a special intimacy that permits tremendous nuance in delivery -- from the sotto voce "Being Alive" sung by Simmons to a bombastic medley of songs (both used and discarded) from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962).

Show Boat is a different animal entirely. Director Harold Prince -- who was also a longtime collaborator of Stephen Sondheim's -- has consolidated a wide variety of different versions of Show Boat, from the original production of 1927 through the second movie version of 1936 to the 1946 Broadway revival as well as London productions and music and lyrics set aside by the creators during tryouts in Washington in the late autumn of 1927. Drawing upon scholarly research that in the late 1970s and early 1980s followed the discovery of the original scripts and scores (which were presumed lost) in Warner Brothers' New Jersey warehouse in 1977, Prince has been able to recreate what will long be known as the definitive Show Boat.

With a 1990s sensibility, Prince has been true to the intentions of the creators -- not only lyricist Hammerstein and composer Jerome Kern, but also Edna Ferber, the novelist who wrote the story upon which the play is based -- while eliminating some awkward and unnecessary moments. He has renewed an emphasis on the sorry state of race relations in the years between 1880 and 1930. At the same time, he has failed to eliminate (or at least soften the improbability of) several remarkable -- almost Dickensian -- coincidences that take place in the second act and drive the plot forward. Perhaps he tried but gave up because, despite the unbelievability of five major characters "accidentally" running into each other in Chicago on New Year's Eve 1899-1900, to change this facet of the play would require a wholesale reworking of the plot.

Show Boat benefits from a tremendously talented ensemble, including Dean Jones (another Sondheim connection, the original Robert in Company [1970]) as Cap'n Andy, Oscar-winning actress Cloris Leachman as his shrewish wife, Parthy (spelling the role recreated on Broadway in 1994 by Elaine Stritch, who also played Joanne with Jones in the original Company). Stand-outs include Gay Willis and Keith Buterbaugh as the lovers Magnolia and Gaylord Ravenal, Karen-Angela Bishop as the doomed mulatto Julie, and Jo Ann Hawkins White as Queenie. The entire production is undergirded by Kenneth Nichols' continuo as Joe, singing "Ol' Man River" in whole and in part several times during the show, linking the plot and the characters to the power and the glory of the troublesome but lifegiving Mississippi River, which despite everything "jes keeps rollin' along."

It is worth mentioning that five local youngsters -- Jeremiah West Ford, Samantha Glass, Brent Hudson, Nina Hudson, and Samantha Zavras -- supplement the ensemble of the Washington company of Show Boat in juvenile roles.

Show Boat represents the most successful venture so far by Canadian impresario Garth Drabinsky, who may be filling the role left empty by Florenz Ziegfeld's death almost sixty years ago. Together with his production of Ragtime (now playing at the National Theatre and the winner of four Tony Awards on June 7), his Livent (U.S.) Inc. demonstrates a unique capacity to present historically ambitious, spectacular musical plays.

Check out my CafePress shop for greeting cards, t-shirts, and other theatrical items!

Sondheim at 75 (Part One)

Broadway's top composer-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, was born on March 22, 1930. That means he celebrates his 75th birthday today.

National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday ran a terrific story marking the occasion, and NPR's web site has a collection of additional materials (songs and interviews) that expand on that report.

I am trying to track down a copy of an interview I did in May 2002 with several critics and theatre professionals, in anticipation of that year's Sondheim Celebration at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (My original was lost in a computer crash last year.) Once that text is found, I will be posting it here.

In the meantime, I have dug into the archives to reproduce several reviews I have written about Sondheim shows: West Side Story, A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Passion, and You're Gonna Love Tomorrow: A Stephen Sondheim Evening (the revue originally presented at the Whitney Museum). (Click on each title to see the referenced review.)

Check out my CafePress shop for greeting cards, t-shirts, and other theatrical items!

Truth about Truth

Tonight on the TV Land Awards, while accepting the best singing siblings award with his brother, Dick, Tom Smothers gave a definition of truth that is exceptionally apt in this new Age of Information:

"Truth is what you can get others to believe it is."

Get Virginia Government Out of the Arts Business

My post on the LPVA and the Virginia Fine Arts Museum brought to mind a piece I published in early 2003 in The Metro Herald and other newspapers. (Someone told me it appeared in the Northern Virginia Journal -- now the Washington Examiner -- but I was unable to access the newspaper's web site without a subscription, so I never saw it there.)

In this article, I argue that the arts are better off without government funding.

Read and enjoy. This article ran in The Metro Herald (Alexandria, Virginia), on Friday, January 10, 2003:

Get Virginia Government Out of the Arts Business
Richard E. Sincere

(Charlottesville) — Virginia arts organizations have raised the alarm about Governor Mark Warner's proposed budget cuts.

The January 5 Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that most such organizations face "at least 15 percent cuts to their operating budgets, while the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which funds nonprofit arts groups, could lose as much as 45 percent. Some institutions were proposed for mergers, such as the Virginia Museum of Natural History and the Science Museum of Virginia." Roger Neathawk, executive director of the lobbying group Virginians for the Arts, predicted that the Virginia Commission for the Arts "could have its budget slashed from $4.9 million to $2.7 million if the General Assembly approves Warner's budget proposals."

The General Assembly should stand firm and support the Governor's proposed cuts. The situation provides an excellent, bipartisan opportunity for the majority-Republican state Senate and House of Delegates and the Democratic Governor to demonstrate that arts funding is not a necessary or proper function of government. State funding of the arts simply politicizes art, theatre, and music, which should succeed or fail on their own merits.

Virginia boasts a number of noteworthy arts organizations. In theatre alone, we have the internationally renowned Signature Theatre in Arlington County, the Shenandoah Shakespeare Company in Staunton, Charlottesville's cutting-edge Live Arts, and Abingdon's famous Barter Theatre, just to mention a few examples.

There is no question that the arts deserve to thrive. Whether painting and sculpture, music and drama, or literature and folk art, humanistic pursuits contribute to our larger culture and make our lives richer and more challenging. But acknowledging this is not the same as admitting that the arts deserve to be underwritten by taxpayers rather than by private, voluntary donors.

In his 1998 book, In Praise of Commercial Culture, economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University in Fairfax notes that "art and democratic politics, although both beneficial activities, operate on conflicting principles. In the field of art new masterpieces usually bring aesthetic revolutions, which tend to offend majority opinion or go over its head. In the field of politics we seek stability, compromise, and consensus. This same conservatism, so valuable in politics, stifles beauty and innovation in art."

Cowen goes on to say that "government involvement in cultural preservation involves costs beyond the immediate tax burden – state support makes the arts more bureaucratic and less dynamic."

The marketplace is inherently flexible; government is inherently sclerotic. Just as markets for food, furniture, and fashion adjust readily to the needs and wants of consumers, so too do markets for the arts. Arts organizations that rely on government funding find themselves either stultified by the slow pace of political decisionmaking, or they end up paying obeisance to their political masters -- or both. "He that pays the piper, calls the tune," applies precisely here. Government funding always comes with strings attached.

Although it is more difficult to finance an arts organization through private contributions alone, it is worth the extra effort – and it can be done. In Charlottesville, for instance, Live Arts and two other organizations – Second Street Gallery, a graphic arts group, and Light House, which teaches film and video techniques to young people – are constructing a new building without any government assistance.

This fundraising effort is led by civic activist and artist Thane Kerner, who has designed album covers for the Dave Matthews Band. Under his leadership, the groups' umbrella organization, Charlottesville Contemporary Arts, has eschewed government funding in favor of the independence that private funding provides. The community benefits both artistically and financially. At a Charlottesville City Council meeting last February, Kerner testified that a cultural facility of this type can bring $650,000 in revenues a year to the city based on the current size of the participating organizations.

Private financing reduces the complacency that comes with government dependence. It forces arts organizations to be disciplined, cost-conscious, resourceful, innovative, and adaptable.

The prospect of cuts in state funding under Governor Warner is already having this desirable effect on several Virginia institutions.

Dr. Walter R.T. Witschey, director of the Science Museum of Virginia, told the Associated Press: "We have cranked up our creative energies to take advantage of every possibility to generate revenue from [non-state] sources." Executive Director G. John Avoli of the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton added that the budget proposals have "made us leaner and meaner. We have a team writing grants now. We're putting people together and coming up with creative ideas and moving forward."

Republicans and Democrats in state government have an unprecedented opportunity this year to free the arts from government funding and associated control. With freedom comes energy, creativity, new chances to take risks, and previously unpredictable avenues for success.

Governor Warner's proposed budget cuts deserve our support. They are fiscally, politically, and morally responsible.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Richard Sincere. a former member of the Arlington County Arts Commission, is a Charlottesville-based theatre critic as well as entertainment editor for The Metro Herald in Alexandria.

Libertarians Say: Privatize Virginia Fine Arts Museum

It seems that I (and six other LP candidates for the General Assembly) suggested way back in 1993 that the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts should be privatized, along with several other museums, libraries, and cultural institutions that suck money from the taxpayers.

Still, it is good to see that someone, even if it is only the leadership of the Libertarian Party of Virginia, is keeping an eye on the state budget for cuts that the House of Delegates and state Senate avoid.

Here's the text of a news release from the LPVA's communications director:

LIBERTARIANS FIND $15 MILLION IN GOVERNMENT WASTE

Privatize the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, state party says

RICHMOND, VA - Libertarians have found another $15 million in the state budget that should be eliminated.

"The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is yet another program that could be handled better by the private sector," comments Steve Damerell, Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Virginia. "This represents a biennial savings of $15 million to taxpayers."

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is a state-supported, privately endowed educational institution created for the benefit of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art, and to encourage the study of the arts.

According to the VMFA's Annual Report (2003-04), individuals gave $6.4 million in gifts to VMFA Foundation for 2003-04, an increase of $1.2 million over 2002-03. Another $3 million came from corporations, foundations and other non-governmental orginizations. Total attendance at VMFA events and galleries increased by 32% to 359,743 attendees in 2003-04. "With significantly increasing donations and attendance, it is clear the private sector could support the VMFA," notes Damerell.

Critics of privitization argue that because of increased fees, the museum would serve fewer people. Libertarians disagree. Damerell notes, "If privatized, the museum would have a greater incentive to keep costs down and expand its membership. More people would be served, not less."

Privitization would also decrease the tax burden on Virginians. Damerell observes, "Lower taxes mean that people will have to work less to fund the government. They will have more time and money to spend on cultural activities like the VMFA."

Even Communist China has realized museum privatization is the best way to preserve history. In 2002, China amended its Cultural Relics Law to allow private ownership. In less than a year, there were over 1,000 new private museums and a thriving trade in relics.

Damerell concludes, "Communist China, after decades of oppression and suffering, finally understands that private, market-based institutions are better than government-supported institutions. It is a sad commentary that Virginia's politicians do not understand this."

One must wonder, however: Why did the LPVA distribute this news release after the General Assembly adjourned, therefore losing any chance of having an impact on deliberations on the state budget in Richmond?

In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything. Not that there is much of a difference between the two.

Conservative(s) for Jaquith?

Waldo Jaquith -- one-time candidate for Charlottesville City Council, founder of the Virginia Family Values PAC, creator of cvillenews.com and other web sites -- has found himself on more than one list of potential candidates to succeed retiring Delegate Mitch Van Yahres (D-57). (Of course, to my surprise, I have found myself on one of those lists, too, but remember: I am not a candidate.)

Waldo is getting support from unexpected quarters: John Behan, who bills himself as the internet's "first elected blogger", says this on Commonwealth Conservative:

At any rate, I’m not sure what to think of a potential Waldo candidacy. On one hand, I’ve had the opportunity to correspond with Jaquith quite a bit, and I like him personally very much. On the other hand, we disagree on nearly every political issue.

Then again, it might be nice to have another elected blogger here in Virginia. Perhaps he’ll make a statement soon; inquiring minds want to know.

I predict the Democrats in the 57th District will choose their candidate by party primary on June 14.

Lloyd Snook, the Charlottesville representative on the 57th District committee, reports: "Since sending out my e-mail a few nights ago to about 400 people, I have received about 30 responses from Charlottesville Democrats; they break 15-15; 15 favor a primary and 15 favor a caucus or convention." No official position has yet been taken by the Charlottesville Democratic Committee (or its executive committee).

At the same time, the Albemarle County Democratic chair's representative to the 57th District committee, Eric Strucko, favors a primary. As Strucko wrote to George Loper on March 10:

The Albemarle County Democratic Party representative to the 57th House of Delegates District Committee (me) voted clearly and without hesitation for a primary to determine the Democratic nominee for Mitch's seat. The county steering committee overwhelmingly endorsed a primary. I left last night's 57th District Committee meeting feeling that Mitch himself endorses the primary method. This is the most open and inclusive way of selecting our nominee, and will offer all candidates the opportunity to hit the campaign trail early, discuss the issues fully, and set the themes for the fall race. A primary is also the method of choosing nominees endorsed by the Democratic Party of Virginia.

We'll see where this goes -- and whether a primary process favors an establishment politician like David Toscano or a more unconventional candidate like Waldo Jaquith, who, by the way, is currently enrolled in the Sorensen Institute’s Political Leaders Program, a launching pad for many successful candidates (including Charlottesville's own Rob Schilling and the late Emily Couric).

Addendum, 6:01 p.m.: As found on George Loper's always up-to-date web site:

"At a 12:15 press conference today the leadership of the Charlottesville and Albemarle Democratic Committees announced that the nomination of a candidate for the 57th District House of Delegates seat should be made by a primary, to be held June 14 in conjunction with the nomination for state offices. . . .

"Prospective candidates must submit petitions containing the signatures of 125 registered voters in the 57th District, together with a filing fee of $352.80, to the registrar of the jurisdiction in which the candidate lives, no later than April 15, 2005." (Press Release, Electronic mail, March 14, 2005)

Metablogging 101

Consider yourself special, Dear Reader, because Americans who read and pay attention to blogs are a narrow elite when compared to the population as a whole.

Sunday's Washington Times reports that "a new Gallup poll finds that most Americans are clueless about blogs, bloggers and blogging."

Blogs are "not yet in the media big leagues," Gallup announced Friday. The poll found that while 76 percent of Americans regularly use the Internet, only 7 percent said they were "very familiar" with blogs. The poll of 1,008 adults was conducted Feb. 25-27.

* * *

The poll also found that only 3 percent of Americans consult blogs on a daily basis. The figure was pared down to 2 percent for political-themed blogs, which tend to resonate most in the mainstream press. CNN, for example, now hosts a daily "blog watch," highlighting piquant fare from a number of sites.

To my surprise, I learned from the Times story that the "term 'blog' is young, coined by pundit and blogger Andrew Sullivan, who called the phenomenon 'democratic journalism' in a 2002 Wired magazine article." (That "blog" is a neologism was not surprising; what surprised me was that Andrew Sullivan coined it.)

Some salient results from the Gallup Poll on blogs and their readers:

* Blog readers are younger than the population at large. Although 17% of the public is aged 18 to 29, a quarter of all blog readers (those who read even occasionally) are in this age bracket. At the older extreme, 17% of Americans are 65 and older, but only 6% of blog readers are this old.

* Said differently, monthly-plus readership of blogs is 21% among 18- to 29-year olds, 16% among those 30 to 49, 14% among those 50 to 64 and just 7% among those 65 and older.

* The age gap in blog reading is particularly noteworthy because it is a complete reversal of the typical age pattern gap for news consumption. Gallup finds Americans' use of all traditional news media to be positively correlated with age. (For instance, only 32% of 18- to 29-year-olds read a local paper every day, versus 61% of those 65 and older.)

* Gallup finds no gender differences in blog readership, or according to party affiliation. There are slight differences by political outlook, as about a quarter of liberals (24%) say they read blogs at least monthly, compared with 15% of conservatives and 12% of moderates.

By way of comparison, a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press report released in June 2004 noted:

Americans' news habits have changed little over the past two years. Network and local TV news viewership has been largely stable since 2002. Daily newspaper readership remains at 42% (it was 41% two years ago). And the percentage of Americans who listen to news on the radio on a typical day is virtually unchanged since the last Pew Research Center media consumption survey (40% now, 41% in 2002).

And, in what might be viewed as a negative- or mirror-image of the recent Gallup poll on blog readership (and pretty much agreeing with Gallup's findings), the Pew Research Center reported:

The decade-long slide in newspaper readership has leveled off. The percentage of Americans reporting that they read a newspaper "yesterday" fell from 58% in 1994 to 47% in 2000, and 41% in 2002. It now stands at 42%.

Newspaper readership among young people continues to be relatively limited. Among those under age 30, just 23% report having read a newspaper yesterday. This is down slightly from 26% in 2002 and stands in marked contrast to the 60% of older Americans who say they read a newspaper yesterday. Young people are more apt to read a magazine or a book for pleasure on a daily basis than they are to pick up a newspaper.

This is not news, of course. Young people are generally disengaged from public affairs, as shown by their lower likelihood to register to vote or to vote even when registered. As people grow older, form families, pay taxes, and contract mortgages, their interest in their communities and current issues grows stronger.

Whether the greater interest of young people and political liberals in blogs will be maintained -- blogging is, after all, still a new phenomenon -- in reference to other types of media remains to be seen. The question of whether blogs can be used to engage otherwise disengaged readers in the political process also remains to be answered. (Although my best guess is most young blog-readers are going to Jossip rather than Instapundit. I would be happy to be proved wrong.)

Considering how much blogs have been in the news lately -- especially during the last presidential campaign -- it's a mystery as to how so many Americans are ignorant of their existence. One explanation that makes sense to me is offered by Jossip's David Hauslaib, who told the Washington Times:

"It's not so surprising that mainstream America doesn't know what a blog is. But they might come upon a blog and not even realize it's a blog. So they could still be influenced by it nevertheless. It works that way, too."

Dear Reader, do you realize you are reading a blog right now? Were you aware of it when you started reading this article? If you are not aware of it by now, are you sure you know how to read at all?

SAT is to X as Y is to Z ... No More

News Item: The College Board has eliminated those vexing verbal analogies from the venerable SAT:

"Analogies are being dropped," confirmed Caren Scoropanos, a spokeswoman for the College Board, the nonprofit association of 4,500 colleges and universities that owns and administers the SAT. "The love-hate relationship with analogies has been removed because it's not something that's taught in high school. All the changes were made to be more reflective of the curriculum."

How disappointing. An SAT without analogies is like a BLT without bacon.

Patti LuPone as Regina but Not as Evita

Thursday evening I was at the Kennedy Center in Washington for the opening night performance of Regina, the 1948 opera by Marc Blitzstein, with Patti LuPone in the title role.

By coincidence, last night I saw a production of Evita -- the show that made Patti LuPone a star -- at Live Arts in Charlottesville. That production of Evita was sadly disappointing, as the director's leftist politics got in the way of his directorial responsibilities. The production was lifeless, static, airless, thin, and, ultimately, weak. You could read disappointment on the faces of the cast as they came out to take their bows at the end of the play.

Regina was another story. I don't know much about opera, but I do know this was well-produced and -directed. As I wrote to a friend yesterday, after he suggested I had a better background than he did to comment on an opera performance:

Please don't attribute more knowledge and experience to me than I actually have. Regina was perhaps the first full-length opera I've ever attended. (I saw Bernstein's "Trouble in Tahiti," a one-act, at PVCC a couple of years ago.)

I'm a musical-theatre guy. I know little about opera and usually depend on my colleague, Tim Hulsey (who accompanied me last night) to write about it and explain it to me. (He covers opera productions at Ash Lawn during the summer for me.)

My main interests in Regina were (a) it's a historical artifact from the 1940s and (b) it had Patti LuPone. Marc Blitzstein is a difficult composer who turns a lot of audiences off (there was, in fact, an unusual amount of attrition between Act I and Act II, with more empty seats after intermission than there were before). His weird dissonance and unmelodic phrasing don't bother me much, but I lack the grounding in musical theory to explain why he's weird and unmelodic.

Like Duke Ellington said, there are only two types of music, good music and bad music. It's up to the listener to decide which is which.

Seeing Evita again -- I last saw it on stage during the national tour following its initial Broadway run, sometime in the late 1970s or '80s -- reminded me that, at the time the movie version Evita (the one with Madonna in the title role) came out, I had written a brief review essay of then-recent books on Eva Peron for The Metro Herald. I dug it up and discovered it had been published in the newspaper in April 1997. Here it is:

Revisiting Eva Perón: A Book Review
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

With "You Must Love Me," the original song by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, winning the Academy Award on March 24, new life has been breathed into the film version of Evita. The film, which received mixed reviews from the critics when it was released on January 1, also was nominated for three other Oscars, in art direction, sound, and cinematography.

Twice before, when the original studio recording of Evita was released and when the opera was transferred to the stage, interest in the life of Eva Perón has been piqued. Previously an obscure figure except in her native Argentina, where she was beloved and remains a national heroine, the fictionalized, musicalized account of her life has kept her persona vivid and vibrant in the popular imagination.

In the wake of the release of Alan Parker's film, boosted by Madonna's star power in the title role, a number of books have been issued to examine and celebrate the life of Eva Maria Duarte de Perón.

Director Alan Parker himself has contributed a coffee-table book called The Making of Evita, with an introduction by Madonna (CollinsPublishers, $40 hardcover, $20 paperback; 130 pages). Like the film itself, this book is filled end-to-end with lush photographs. There is surprisingly little text, and most of that is in captions for the photos. Parker's essay takes up no more than six pages. Tidbits include the news that Madonna begged Parker to cast her as Evita, that she promised to work hard for the role, and that, indeed, while training with a vocal coach "she expanded her vocal range, finding parts of her voice that she had never used before in her own songs." Parker's book will be a nice addition to the libraries of film buffs and Madonna fans.

For information about Eva Perón herself, it is necessary to turn to two more academic volumes, the reissued Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón, by Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro (W.W. Norton, $11 paperback; 198 pages), which was originally published in 1980, and Alicia Dujovne Ortiz's Eva Perón: A Biography (St. Martin's Press, $25.95 hardcover; 336 pages plus 16 pages of illustrations), which was a bestseller in Argentina and has been translated into English by Shawn Fields.

Ortiz, a respected French and Argentine journalist, had access to Eva's personal memoirs and to people close to Eva and her family who had many reminiscences. She even obtained the confidences of Eva's personal confessor, Father Hernan Benitez. Fraser and Navarro based their account on hundreds of interviews conducted in the mid-1970s, and augmented their study with new revelations that became available in the 1980s, following the end of Argentina's military dictatorship. All three writers make a careful attempt to distinguish between the myth and reality of Eva Perón's life -- a difficult task, to be sure, as Eva herself spent much her life trying to hide the reality and replace it with self-made myths.

That popular entertainment in music or drama can inspire interest in actual historical figures is beneficial to our culture. The high school student who picks up one of these books simply because she admires Madonna and wants to learn more about the character she portrays may be inspired to delve deeper into Argentine or Southern Cone history. It is through such indirection that today's Madonna fan becomes tomorrow's ambassador to Buenos Aires or professor of Latin American studies.

Aaron Carter: Pop-Star Pot-Smoker?

It hasn't been a good month for the Carter brothers. Backstreet Boy Nick Carter got nicked for driving under the influence and -- talk about "Aaron's Party"!-- younger brother Aaron was featured in a photospread the National Enquirer, allegedly smoking pot.

I think everyone agrees that driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol is dangerous activity that puts non-consenting others at risk for injury or death. So Nick Carter, if the allegations against him prove true, should pay the penalty -- whether a fine, loss of license, community service, or jail time.

But should we be looking at Aaron Carter's pot-smoking photos with more than bemusement? (I should add that some think the photos were doctored; in the digital age, photographs should not be admissible as evidence in criminal proceedings.)

If the general War on Drugs is a war on the constitution, isn't the War on Marijuana nothing more than a war on common sense?

Maclean's, the Canadian newsweekly, recently had a cover story on the issue of marijuana laws north of the 49th Parallel.

On March 3, four RCMP officers (we know them as "Mounties," but they're not the doofuses one would expect if your only exposure to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police comes from reruns of Dudley Do-Right cartoons or the Brendan Fraser movie) were gunned down in rural Alberta by a marijuana farmer. The murders have re-lit a nationwide debate on Canada's marijuana laws: The most common question is, Are they too lax?

Not everyone thinks the answer is "yes". Maclean's reports:

In fact, the marijuana trade has always featured relatively low rates of violence, says Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University. He disagrees with those who would use this tragedy to rally public support around a crackdown.

"It's not surprising when you get a horrific crime such as this and a grow op is front and centre in the portrait -- people will use that to jump into the marijuana decriminalization debate," Boyd says. "It's probably more appropriate to look at this individual and what he represents rather than to focus on any policy that ought to come out of such a horrible tragedy. I'm not at all clear that this case has as much to do with grow ops as it does with a person whose own father describes him as evil."

There is often a tendency, in discussions of public-policy issues, to draw broad but unwarranted conclusions from isolated incidents, leading to legislation by emotion rather than reason. In the United States, as in Canada, debates about drug laws are often colored by irrational reactions, urban legends, and unsupported evidence.

Witness the reaction to the RCMP killings by a Canadian cabinet member, Anne McLellan, reported in an accompanying article in the same issue of Maclean's:

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan strongly suggested some of Canada's judges need to wake up to the fact that big-time marijuana growing is a dangerous crime that calls for serious prison time. Speaking out after the slaying of four Mounties in her home province of Alberta, McLellan pointed to the stiffer penalties for grow-op convictions allowed under the Liberal government's overhaul of marijuana laws. The new legislation would double to 14 years the maximum prison sentence for being convicted of cultivating more than 50 marijuana plants. She said the bill puts "the onus on the courts, the judiciary, in a sense, to take this crime seriously." And if that didn't make her critical view clear, McLellan added: "The judiciary needs to start to reflect the harsh reality of illegal grow ops and the consequences for our communities and society in the sentences they hand out."

Maclean's offers a good corrective to this harsh, reactionary, exaggerated point-of-view in its balanced coverage of the RCMP murder cases. The main article cited above goes on to explain:

But many experts in the drug trade say there is a serious danger that lawmakers and law enforcers will let anger and grief drive their decisions. By raising penalties and cracking down on supply, police may well drive more production into the hands of well-financed and well-armed organized crime gangs, Boyd says.

For example, the North American trade in heroin and cocaine has attracted a much more violent and aggressive brand of criminal element, Boyd says -- largely because the profits associated with those drugs and the penalties resulting from conviction are so much higher. Police cannot reduce demand, and by raising the stakes in the marijuana trade, they may force out small-time, non-violent producers and turn even more of the market over to hard-core gangsters, inevitably leading to an increase in violence associated with the pot trade.

That fear is echoed by Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa lawyer and long-time critic of Canada's drug policies. Oscapella points out that it is extremely rare for Canadian police officers to die in the course of drug investigations. Rather than increasing efforts to stamp out marijuana, he says, government should be talking more seriously about regulation along the lines of alcohol and tobacco. "The grow ops themselves are a product of prohibition," Oscapella says. "Violence associated with the trade in marijuana stems from the fact that our government in its folly has chosen to deal with this drug through a prohibitory model rather than a regulatory model. There is no violence when you go to the liquor store."

The debate in the United States on marijuana-law reform is not as robust as it ought to be.

Take, for example, a poll on the question of medicinal marijuana from the AARP (the liberal retired persons' lobby group), which was conducted last fall and scheduled for publication in the March/April issue of the organization's magazine. The article was spiked -- although results of the poll appear on the AARP web site -- due to pressure from drug-warriors inside and outside the government. As explained in a news release from the Drug Policy Alliance:

At the beginning of February, AARP posted the findings of a poll they had commissioned on medical marijuana on their website. The poll found that 72% of older Americans (45 and over) support an adult's right to use medical marijuana with a physician's recommendation.

A December 18th Associated Press article discussing the poll mentioned that AARP The Magazine was scheduled to release an article about medical marijuana in its March/April issue. But when the March/April issue reached subscribers in late January, the article was conspicuously absent. The editors had apparently pulled the article in response to malicious attacks by a "media watchdog" organization, Accuracy in Media, and a pressure campaign by fanatical anti-drug groups with a long history of engaging in malicious and dishonest attacks.

"We urge the editors of AARP The Magazine not to cave in to such attacks and to publish the medical marijuana article soon," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Ultimately this issue is not about medical marijuana but whether or not free and open discussion of issues that matter to AARP members will be censored and abandoned in the face of coarse attacks by disreputable forces."

Free and open discussion. That should be our aim -- our intermediate aim. Our ultimate aim should be the end of prohibition.

Only then will Aaron Carter and his friends be able to live undisturbed by prying eyes and intrusive laws.