Happy Birthday to You

I am blogging at four in the morning today because the Predisone I am taking for my annual Fall Sinus Event wakes me up raring to go about three hours before my usual rising time.

Last night I caught some of the 80th Birthday tribute to Stephen Sondheim. He is surely one of the great Broadway composers of our lifetime. We are also the same age, so even though I don't know him, I feel that we have something in common. Our Golden Years, and we're still here!

I missed the first part of the show and came in on the scene from Sweeney Todd when Patti Lupone, as Mrs. Lovatt, was croaking her way through 'It's Priest', with George Hearn and Michael Cervaris as sort of cloned Sweeneys. ('Send in the Clones?).The men were tolerable but Patti needs vocal help! Give me a call!

Then, a dark-haired young woman, whose name I don't know, sang a song I really didn't know. I think it was from Sondheim's first show. She sang it in the manner that Sondheim apparently likes, spitting out bits of the song in a disjointed manner, rather then using the motto that will be on my tombstone, Just Sing the Damned Song!! This  kept happening over and over as several of the others sang or rather, croaked, in disjointed phrases. 

Patti then had the cojones to sing 'The ladies who lunch' with Elaine Stritch sitting there stony-faced, often in camera view. I don't blame you, Elaine. Having just seen you in A Little Night Music on Broadway a week ago, and blogged about your performance, there should be a law that prohibits anyone but you from singing this song. Patti hollers, grimaces and fights her way vocally through the piece.

Marin Mazzi, one of the women who actually sang, rather than choked out the song, gave us her version of 'Losing my mind', which was excellent.

Audra McDonald beautifully sang 'The Glamorous Life'. This lady knows how to sing. I just wish she would take deeper breaths. It's a very fine instrument.

Donna Murphy was equally good singing 'Could I Leave You?' She built the dramatic tension just right and gave it the dramatic finish it needs to come across.

Bernadette Peters sang 'Not a Day Goes By' in the Sondheim approved style of belching out chunks of phrases while looking sad. I already have commented on Bernadette's one dimensional singing and acting in my blog on the current Broadway production of A Little Night Music.  Where is Glynis Johns when we need her? This style of singing (croaking?) may be fine for you, Mr. Sondheim, but to my taste I would rather hear songs actually sung!

Then, the icing on Stephen's birthday cake, Elaine Stritch, all 84 years of her, strode to center stage and simply showed the others how to do it by performing 'I'm Still Here'.  And is she ever! I think I have fallen in love with this woman, even though she is a bit older than I; apparently, she can do no wrong. She is what Broadway used to be all about- truth, in acting, and truth in singing or sing-talking. I think I first heard her in the 50's singing 'Zip' in a revival of Pal Joey. She stopped the show then and, a half century later, did it again last night!

When I first began seeing Broadway musicals actually on Broadway, instead of with touring companies that came to the Bijou Theatre in Battle Creek, no singers were amplified. Amazingly, you actually had to be able to stand up there and sing and be heard in the last row of the balcony all your own, to be cast in a show. All the singers of that era had legitimate voices that carried to the last row of the balcony in any theatre. I can't exactly remember the date when everyone began wearing body mikes in their hair, their bosom, or wherever else they could be tucked. It was at that point in the history of musical theatre that glamorous movie stars, many of whom couldn't sing at all, became the norm on the Broadway musical stage. Star name recognition sells tickets. It also meant that you had to look closely to see whose lips were moving at any given moment to identify which actor was singing. All of the sound came from one source.

If they had ever put one of these mikes on Ethel Merman, she would have blown out the back wall of the theatre! She actually did that several times, I am sure!

So, 'Here's to the Ladies who Sing'. And to the ladies who can't. Keep showing them how to do it, Elaine!