If “You Gotta Have a Gimmick,” as the Stephen Sondheim song goes, Riverside Theatre had one for “Side by Side by Sondheim,” the current show in the black box theater, directed by DJ Salisbury, who also directed another Sondheim work, “West Side Story,” playing next door on the Main Stage.
This show was good enough not to need a gimmick, but it worked: An actor leaving the dance-in-the-gym scene in “West Side Story” to scurry next door to join the revue.
As the narrator, played by David Schmittou, told us in some custom-scripted lines, Riverside’s intimate black-box stage gave us a whole other side of Sondheim. The revue spans the first half of a long career, beginning with the late 1950s “West Side Story,” and concentrating on his more modern-feeling musicals of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Sondheim is now 84 and still writing: He just wrote a song for Meryl Streep’s role as a witch in the movie version of “Into the Woods.” It was cut – but then again, so were some of the best songs in “Side by Side by Sondheim.”
One rejected song was “Can That Boy Foxtrot,” with the double-entendre in its stuttered “foxtrot” leaving the Riverside audience f-fractured. (Sondheim himself once sang it on the David Frost Show.)
“Side by Side by Sondheim” is one of a half-dozen revues or anthologies of the songwriter’s body of work. The piece was conceived as a benefit for a theater owned by Cleo Laine and her husband John Dankworth. That benefit, directed by Ned Sherrin, who played the narrator, was seen by Cameron Macintosh, who decided to produce it in London in 1976. A year later, Hal Prince produced the show on Broadway with the same cast – all of whom were nominated for Tony awards.
While the songs in the revue are of an entirely different ilk from “West Side Story,” some were poignant nonetheless. Even the titles hinted at Sondheim’s ironic take on relationships: “Marry Me a Little,” dropped from “Company”; “If Momma Was Married,” from “Gypsy”; and “Send in the Clowns,” from “A Little Night Music.”
While “Gypsy” came soon after “West Side Story,” and had a similar feel, the tide began to turn with “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” in 1962 (“Side by Side” starts with “Comedy Tonight” from “Forum,” and “Love is in the Air,” dropped from the show.)
Two songs from 1964’s “Anyone Can Whistle” start the lively second act, in which the antics continue but with more emotional depth.
Most of the songs come from the ‘70s musicals, “Follies” and the modern-form musical “Company.” Both musicals were representative of Sondheim’s dim view of mid-century American marriage, the duplicities, hypocrisies, frustrations and outright terror of the concept, as in the case of one memorable song in “Company,” as a bride freaks out on her wedding day.
Along with narrator Schmittou and the two musicians on stage, there was a main cast of three: An interesting mix, they included the elegantly comedic Becca Ayers, tall, blonde and deep-voiced whose regal bearing dissolves hilariously into the slinky physical comedy of “I Never Do Anything Twice”; she offset the dark-haired petite and perky Kelly McCormick from whose jaunty girl-next-door demeanor swelled a rich soprano that verged righteously operatic in a terrifically funny way.
Negotiating between these two was Will Ray, familiar to Riverside audiences for his portrayal of Chris in last season’s “Miss Saigon.” In the intimacy of the Black Box stage, Ray’s air of crisp refinement anchored the zanier moments of the other two, and offered still more humor when his halo slipped.
Against a backdrop, designed by Riverside’s Allen Cornell, of a huge black-and-white crossword puzzle, the actors’ conformist grey business attire lent an air of corporate anonymity – they looked like they’d just been zipped out of a garment bag at the Hyatt. Along with being flexible for the many characters each had to portray, the look nicely set up that mid-century, fill-in-the-blank social revolution dilemma: Do I keep to the dress code or do I loosen my tie?
A look at the shows presented in the revue: “Company” is a series of vignettes of couples in the social circle of one man, turning 35; “Follies” is about a reunion of aging Ziegfeld-style follies stars; “A Little Night Music” is another look at couples, but this time, inspired by an Ingmar Bergman film; “Pacific Overtures,” reviewed as artistically sophisticated but a short-lived effort concerning Western exploitation of 19th century Japan; and “Sweeney Todd,” about a serial killer in Victorian England, not originally in the revue but added in this production to great effect.
All were produced back-to-back in the ‘70s. Of those five, three lost money, and more flops followed. As Frank Rich, Sondheim’s friend and decades-long interviewer, points out in a 2013 New York magazine story, that though he would very much lighten up later in life, in that era Sondheim came off as “sour, grumpy and defensive.” Critics wrote about his “bitchy irony” and “lack of heart,” accusing him of the death of the happy musical.
Critics weren’t the first awful thing to happen to Sondheim. Raised in affluence but largely “institutionalized,” as he put it, in private schools, his psychologically abusive mother famously sent him a hand-delivered letter as a grown man saying that having him as a son was her “only regret in life.”
Rich also writes tenderly about Sondheim’s boundless curiosity and journalist’s objectivity – Sondheim insisted on going to the restaurant no one had been to and sought out the most obscure movies. And his “musical hero,” Rich writes, is Maurice Ravel, the French impressionist composer. Which may explain the wonderful – if unhummable, as critics whined – tunes that fill “Side by Side.”
Unhummable? Maybe. But memorable. I remember “Barcelona” – ok, I do remember Barcelona, I hitchhiked there from France when I was 19; yes, those were the ‘70s – but I also remember the song “Barcelona” when four years earlier, I saw “Company” on Broadway with my mom.
She is surprised that I remember my impressions: it was smart, sardonic and a little hard to follow, and It had to do with the personal problems of upper middle class grown-ups – drinking, dieting, who not to sleep with.
I particularly remember the raciness of “Barcelona,” about the morning after the lead character Robert has a fling with a flight – I mean, stewardess. The song is adorable in Riverside’s show; when I was 15, it was eye-opening. Hey, 1970: Just four years before, we were watching Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore climb into twin beds.
What fodder the era must have been for someone like Sondheim. “Company” featured the song “Side by Side By Side,” about a single man coping with all his coupled-up friends. As Robert sings the show-tune like song, one of men has this line: “You know, a person like Bob doesn’t have the good things, and he doesn’t have the bad things, but he doesn’t have of the good things either.” What a realistic line of boozy conversation, that one.
And how did the critics treat “Company”? They weren’t much better prepared than I was. No one had ever seen a Broadway musical that took such a hard look at the institution of marriage; Variety magazine claimed it would appeal only to “ladies’ matinees, homos and misogynists.” Hey, 1970. Thank God that’s over.
I was much impressed – with my mother’s guidance — at seeing Elaine Stritch. I wasn’t the only one. The late actress who died last year was renowned for her role of Joanne, the classic New York hard-drinking cynic who sings “Ladies Who Lunch.” But Sondheim is working on a new version that has an out gay man replacing Stritch’s role. Wonder how Variety will handle that.
“Side by Side by Sondheim” plays through March 22.
