November 2021 – Sally-Jane's Blah, Blah, Blog

I have a profound affinity for Stephen Sondheim. I always thought it was because of his brilliant musicals. However, I watched an interview he did many years ago. He was trying to explain about being neurotic . It was so simple for him.

“I like neurotic people.”

That’s it! He likes me. I love him.

He went further explaining that most people, including himself, were neurotic concerning their problems, professional, personal. When he writes from that sensibility he is going to touch someone. And isn’t that why we go to the theatre; to be transformed, transported, in some way, touched.

Stephen Sondheim may have passed away, November 25^th, but as in the name of the song he wrote for Follies, I’m Still Here… he will always be here.

_{Stephen Sondheim in 1990}
_{Credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times}

His death was and still is a shock to me.

My inner monologue upon hearing about his demise:

INNER ME:

I can’t believe it.

What’d you expect? He was 91.

I’m 88… 91 is only 3 years away… too close… much too close.

This is not about you. I know. I know. I can’t help it. When I consider Sondheim is no longer with us, and some of the jerks who still are, makes me crazy…life really isn’t fair, is it???

DUH!!!”

To make this news totally personal (when have I ever not made everything totally personal), I’d like to share my experience performing Sondheim.

No dates. It was a long time ago.

I played Mama Rose many times in Summer Theatres and local Washington, D.C. theatre productions of Gypsy. Sondheim wrote the lyrics. Julie Styne the music. It is a musically and lyrically brilliant score. In the climax of the second act (or as Broadway Babies are wont to call it, the 11 o’clock spot), Mama Rose has a nervous breakdown. Sondheim broke the sound barrier. It was Broadway’s first operatic aria. The music, but mostly the lyrics are compelling, complex and incisive. It can be said for any performer playing Mama Rose, it’s all in the writing. It’s extra if you have a performer like Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Patti Lupone singing it. However, because it is all in the words, it is actor-proof material. No matter how many times I played that role, and I did play it many times, I don’t think I ever plumbed the depths of what Sondheim wrote.

I had a similar experience when I played Joanne in Company (Elaine Stritch’s signature role). The score for Company was brilliant, but, oh sooooo challenging! I could read music but I would never call myself a musician. Singing a Sondheim score is like singing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Company is a brilliant and musically challenging ensemble theatre piece. No matter what grade of musician you are, performing that score challenged every actor beyond what they thought they were capable of. My song, Here’s To The Ladies Who Lunch was and remained a challenge until I saw Patti Lupone sing it at Lincoln Center’s Stephen Sondheim 80^th Birthday Celebration:

Lupone took that song to where it was meant to go… to the moon. Even if I can’t perform it now, I am so grateful to have watched someone who got to the meat and heart of what Sondheim wrote. Another mystery solved.

My last example of performing Sondheim was a song he wrote for Yvonne De Carlo (remember Yvonne… exotic technicolor movie star of the 50’s?) in Follies, titled I’m Still Here.

I simply had to wait until I felt seasoned enough to fill the shoes of life experiences to give the nuances the lyrics demanded. I did a credible job with it. However, in that same Sondheim 80^th Birthday celebration, Elaine Stritch literally knocks it out of the park:

Finally, I’d like to recommend a documentary produced and directed in 2013 by Sondheim’s friend and collaborator, James Lapine, and friend and former drama critic, Frank Rich, Six by Sondheim.

What makes a creative artist a genius? I don’t know. (laminate that statement…I don’t say it often enough)

I do know one such genius just passed this past Friday. As I watched the above documentary, two important and essential traits of Sondheim’s writing and ultimately who Sondheim is were made eminently clear.

Ambiguity, which for me translates to exhibit the zits and warts without judgement, and love.

If you study his lyrics which you can easily do by reading FINISHING THE HAT… the book he wrote of his collected lyrics with attendant remarks (aka delicious showbiz gossip), it is all there.

In the documentary he says, unequivocally, write from love.

Nobody says it is easy. No one says it is without pain. No one says it is without disappointment or grief. Considering his childhood was profoundly bereft of love, Stephen Sondheim is proof that along the way, as he opened himself to the universe, the universe did provide.

Love ~ Sally-Jane ❤️

P.S. If you want to look, I recommend this stunning making-of film, Company “Original Cast Album” Documentary. It’s an intense look at theatre and the art of Stephen Sondheim.

Among other things, this is the name of a British Television series available on Amazon Prime. If nothing else, just view the first episode because it’s so apropos. It is also the last part of an adage I have recently adapted to a new circumstance in my old life.

Do you think it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks?

All right, already, what in the Sam Hill (this is a euphemism for swearing because I didn’t feel like writing ‘hell’…sue me) is that woman trying to tell us???

It’s always great when you ask the right question.

Recently, two dear friends, submitted samples of my writing (these very Blogs you receive) to the Editor and Publisher of The Berkshire Eagle, suggesting I might write a monthly Column for the Op-ed page of the newspaper. I was grateful and, at the same time, a little unsure about my “style” of writing conforming to a newspaper. Who knows? Maybe it was just my way of preparing myself for rejection. Remember, I spent my life auditioning. Maybe I still am. I think my percentages ran to about 50/50 of getting the part to “You’re very special”, words that always indicated you didn’t get it. “Next…” All to say I wasn’t expecting a call from the publisher.

But he did call and offered me an Op-ed column. I accepted. Immediately, I went to work writing. The subject had been on my mind for about as long the Berkshire County Cottage and Division Street Bridges had been closed, which they were for many years, causing great inconvenience to the community and some economic hardships to affected businesses. I spent the last two years gossiping about it to friends, neighbors and whoever would listen, like the women in Meredith Wilson’s musical Music Man.

Related news: A new iteration of Music Man arrives on Broadway mid-December, starring Hugh Jackmam. Y’All fuggetaboutit! He’s mine!

This opportunity gave me permission to share my thoughts with the community in which I live. It brings a very different color and responsibility to writing. The Blog and the Column are very personal. And that is where the similarity begins and ends.

I began the Blah, Blah, Blog as a very personal and almost intimate look into my absurd take on a long life (soooo grateful). Readers chose to sign up to see what the crazy lady was going to write about next or unsubscribe.

Subscribers or purchasers of a Newspaper have a completely different set of expectations. Yes, the Op-ed page is a page for people’s opinions. Not judgements, which most of you know is my favorite form of opinion. I think newspaper readers (the few that are left) represent a wider variety of thought and opinion than blog readers. As I wrote the op-ed piece, I realized I was very self conscious. I write the Blog from absurd insights inside my brain, and over the years (since 2014) each of you has chosen to subscribe to peek inside that overworked mechanism.

A column goes out to a wider and more diverse audience. That alone creates a different writing environment. It became a challenge. Life threw down a gauntlet. Was I up to it?

Well, what in the Sam Mountain do you think? (higher form of swear words.) As I wrote and researched the subject, I became more and more comfortable and actually enjoyed this new challenge. The gauntlet was in my hand and it fit like a glove. (I can’t believe I wrote that…)

Here is my answer to the original question I posed.

Can you teach an old dog new tricks?