Sondheim et al.
Sep. 4th, 2004 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mollyringlePosting in a free moment before dashing back to holiday-weekend craziness...
Hm. Yep, as suspected, I really dislike Into the Woods. I find the songs annoying, and mostly unsingable unless you're a professional, but they stick in your head - so it's basically the worst combination of features a set of songs could have. It typifies what I dislike about musicals, when I dislike musicals: time-changes so frequent you feel like you're listening to a conversation set to weird rhythm; cutesy jokes that would be funny approximately once; cliched lyrics or else stretches for dumb rhymes; and recurring themes that are particularly irritating. MAN, I wanted to smack that Red Riding Hood after the first two times she sang "Into the woods to Grand-moth-er's-house!" Aaaaarrrghh.
And this was just on CD. Imagine if I had to sit through it in a theater.
I expected to like it, too. Sondheim, I thought, was consistently great. I love A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - it may in fact be one of my favorite musicals ever. At the same time I bought Into the Woods I also bought A Little Night Music, which similarly I've never seen; but I really like that one. It has actual melodies and genuinely clever lyrics. (From "You Must Meet My Wife": "She'd strike you as unenlightened--" "No, I'd strike her first.")
Yeah, well, everyone's a critic. It's a tough line to walk, for songs in musicals: between being an edgy collection of patter (like most of Woods), versus going too "tuneful" and sounding like soft-rock (see for instance a great deal of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and even moments of the otherwise grand Phantom of the Opera).
Speaking of Scarlet Pimpernel, I considered doing a post comparing its views of the French Revolution with those expressed in Les Miserables. Sure, the Revolution in Les Mis is in the 1830's, not the original 1789 one, but it's the same basic movement if I understand correctly. Les Mis, basically, glorifies the naive revolutionaries who built barricades and worshipped the guillotine-thirsty forerunners of their cause. It's got lines like:
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!
Yes, very glamorous. Then again, if you look at it from the point of view of the innocent people whose heads got cut off, the way The Scarlet Pimpernel looks at it, you get some vivid lines as well:
Sing, swing, savour the sting
As she severs you, Madame Guillotine
Slice! come paradise
Our Delilah will shave you razor clean
God, when did man lose his reason?
Save us, my God, if you're there
God, can you not feel the terror like a fire in the air?
And yet for all that, Les Mis is far and away a better musical (music-wise and character-development-wise) than Pimpernel, dammit. *sigh* I hate it when art and morals don't match up. Which is most of the time.
Hm. Yep, as suspected, I really dislike Into the Woods. I find the songs annoying, and mostly unsingable unless you're a professional, but they stick in your head - so it's basically the worst combination of features a set of songs could have. It typifies what I dislike about musicals, when I dislike musicals: time-changes so frequent you feel like you're listening to a conversation set to weird rhythm; cutesy jokes that would be funny approximately once; cliched lyrics or else stretches for dumb rhymes; and recurring themes that are particularly irritating. MAN, I wanted to smack that Red Riding Hood after the first two times she sang "Into the woods to Grand-moth-er's-house!" Aaaaarrrghh.
And this was just on CD. Imagine if I had to sit through it in a theater.
I expected to like it, too. Sondheim, I thought, was consistently great. I love A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - it may in fact be one of my favorite musicals ever. At the same time I bought Into the Woods I also bought A Little Night Music, which similarly I've never seen; but I really like that one. It has actual melodies and genuinely clever lyrics. (From "You Must Meet My Wife": "She'd strike you as unenlightened--" "No, I'd strike her first.")
Yeah, well, everyone's a critic. It's a tough line to walk, for songs in musicals: between being an edgy collection of patter (like most of Woods), versus going too "tuneful" and sounding like soft-rock (see for instance a great deal of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and even moments of the otherwise grand Phantom of the Opera).
Speaking of Scarlet Pimpernel, I considered doing a post comparing its views of the French Revolution with those expressed in Les Miserables. Sure, the Revolution in Les Mis is in the 1830's, not the original 1789 one, but it's the same basic movement if I understand correctly. Les Mis, basically, glorifies the naive revolutionaries who built barricades and worshipped the guillotine-thirsty forerunners of their cause. It's got lines like:
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!
Yes, very glamorous. Then again, if you look at it from the point of view of the innocent people whose heads got cut off, the way The Scarlet Pimpernel looks at it, you get some vivid lines as well:
Sing, swing, savour the sting
As she severs you, Madame Guillotine
Slice! come paradise
Our Delilah will shave you razor clean
God, when did man lose his reason?
Save us, my God, if you're there
God, can you not feel the terror like a fire in the air?
And yet for all that, Les Mis is far and away a better musical (music-wise and character-development-wise) than Pimpernel, dammit. *sigh* I hate it when art and morals don't match up. Which is most of the time.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-04 04:10 pm (UTC)Oh, Cole... really now!
no subject
Date: 2004-09-04 10:26 pm (UTC)Oh, that is pretty bad. Ouch.
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Date: 2004-09-05 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-05 06:14 pm (UTC)Give Him The Ooh La La, Too Darn Hot and Do the Dirty for example. Cole Porter's orginal lyrics were often considered "too hot to handle" so he'd make a play on words here and there and steep them in innuendo. Anything Goes - by way of another example- personifies his cheekiness, as well as his take on society, in a simplistic way:
In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
Now heaven knows, anything
goes
Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four letter words writing
prose
Anything goes
Oh the irony. Porter faced the red marker of censors more than once, thus he was poking fun of his own situation. The orginal lyrics to "I Want to Be A Yale Boy" could make one blush for their slashiness.
Porter should be taken all in great fun.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-04 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-04 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-04 10:19 pm (UTC)*dies*
Into the Woods is liek...my favorite. :) My family hates it because I sing the music all the time, though. So I'm used to getting along with haters thereof. ;) Besides, you can't hear me humming...
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Date: 2004-09-04 10:28 pm (UTC)Anyway, I know how you feel, since I'm apparently the ONLY ONE AROUND who genuinely loved Moulin Rouge. Bunch of heartless bastards I'm surrounded by...*mutter mutter*...
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Date: 2004-09-05 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-06 12:14 pm (UTC)Anyway, I've found plenty of people online who agree with me, but in "real life" it's been tough.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-05 09:18 am (UTC)"Can't we just pursue our lives with our children and our wives til that happy day arrives, how can you ignore....
All the witches, all the curses, and the wolves, all the lies, the false hopes, the goodbyes, the reverses...
All the wondering what even worse is still in store...all the witches. All the giants...no more."
*shrug* Highschool drama clubs can even manage it.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-06 12:10 pm (UTC)Anyway, given my feelings on it, I'm not likely to go see it even if a high school drama club does perform it nearby. ;)
As for those lyrics in particular....*twitch* They strike me as Unnecessary Explanation of Symbolism, along with a hefty dose of Trying To Make Lightweight Comedy Mean A Little Too Much In The End. I much prefer the "Where is the moral? There is no moral" of Funny Thing Happened. Sometimes comedy illustrates morals wonderfully. Other times it comes off as, "So, children, what lesson did we learn from all this?"
Guess which way Woods strikes me. ;)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-06 05:20 pm (UTC)Btw, ITW isn't a light comedy that is comparable to Forum. It is a drama with comedic elements. They aren't remotely comparable. Forum exists to support debauchery while ITW exists to take healthy stabs at sentimentality and romanticism of happy endings.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-06 07:58 am (UTC)The thoughts are clear, if understood
I have no peer 'cause I'm so good
The words are the stars, the stars are just wood
I sort of hate to ask it, but what's a rhyme for basket
Into the words
That trip your lip, and fry your brain
And sprain your tongue
Into the words
So complicated grown-ups find it scary ...
no subject
Date: 2004-09-06 08:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-06 12:11 pm (UTC)I have not heard it, but it sounds just my sort of thing.
Love the "what's a rhyme for 'basket'?" especially. :D
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Date: 2004-09-06 04:57 pm (UTC)Upon retrospect, this line makes me a bit uncomfortable. I don't wish to split hairs, but taking the soundtrack as being representative of a show is a bit like reading the cliff's notes of a book and writing an essay about it.