Pick of the Week
Monday, 8pm SoHo Ever since Stephen Sondheim reached the four-score mark four years ago, the spotlight has shifted from his work to the legend himself.
There have been birthday galas, musical tributes, interviews galore and books in which the master reveals the secrets of his songwriting sorcery.
Now there’s Six by Sondheim, an HBO documentary that’s directed by Sondheim’s frequent collaborator James Lapine, the librettist and director without whom there’d be no Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods or Passion.
The film doesn’t fill in any major gaps in our knowledge of the relationship between Sondheim’s life and art. But it does stylishly retread this fascinating ground with a rising emotional thrum that renders absurd the notion that Sondheim is all neurotic cleverness and no heart.
With so much golden musical material, an organising structure is needed, and Lapine, who conceived and directed the 2010 Broadway salute Sondheim on Sondheim, finds one in six classic songs: Something’s Coming ( West Side Story), Opening Doors ( Merrily We Roll Along), Send in the Clowns ( A Little Night Music), I’m Still Here ( Follies), Being Alive ( Company) and Sunday ( Sunday in the Park With George).
Weaving Sondheim history and personal refection in and around these numbers, Six by Sondheim proceeds as though piecing together a jigsaw puzzle portrait of the man who redefined the American musical in the second half of the 20th century.
By splicing interviews of the eager twentysomething lyricist-composer with the restless (and somewhat prickly) mid-career explorer and the grizzled elder statesman, the film provides a guided tour of Sondheim’s artistic consciousness along with his changing hairstyles and beards.
Few artists are as articulate about their own creative process. But what’s most striking in this retelling is the emotional debt Sondheim acknowledges to Oscar Hammerstein II, his surrogate father. Sondheim considers Hammerstein an ‘‘experimental playwright’’ and vigorously defends him against those who refuse to see just how far he extended the boundaries of the Broadway musical. But it’s the personal relationship that causes Sondheim to well up.
As a young man caught in the crossfire of his parents’ divorce, Sondheim found sanctuary in the Hammerstein household. No-one taught him more about the lifechanging impact of teaching, which he calls ‘‘the sacred profession’’.
Tantalising archival footage of Ethel Merman in Gypsy and Bernadette Peters in Sunday in the Park With George reminds us of just how many superstar careers have fatefully intersected with Sondheim’s. He refers to himself as a Broadway baby, and his theatrical legacy is inseparable from all those performers whose legends were sealed in his shows.
Showstoppers are traced back to the singers who inspired them. I’m Still Here borrowed from the rollercoaster life of Joan Crawford to give Yvonne De Carlo a number worthy of her celebrity. The short line phrases of Send in the Clowns were designed to accommodate Glynis Johns’ breathy vocal style, though a delightful YouTube montage of this unexpected Sondheim hit demonstrates just how flexible this lyrically baffling number can be.
There are contemporary cracks at classics – a Send in the Clowns with Audra McDonald and Will Swenson and an outre version of I’m Still Here with Jarvis Cocker of the rock band Pulp that’s directed by Todd Haynes. But it’s the vintage performances that steal the film.