Film Club Celebrates Sondheim
This month’s Film Club Pick is going to celebrate a composer and lyricist who has been a celebrated figure in musical theatre for decades. That’s right. The master, Stephen Sondheim turns 90 years old this March! We, here at The Film Rewind, love Sondheim, and can’t think of a better way to celebrate his contributions to theatre and film than with a Film Club review of one of his most beloved musicals.
Born on March 22, 1930, Sondheim began his career with a bang: as the lyricist for a little 1957 musical you may have heard of, called West Side Story (a new film adaptation of which is coming to theaters later this year), with music by Leonard Bernstein. Following a second successful turn as a lyricist for the 1957 musical, Gypsy, starring Ethel Merman with music by Jule Styne, Sondheim finally made the step in his career that he had desired from the beginning: resolving to become as successful as a composer/lyricist as he was as a mere lyricist. In 1966, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum became the first musical for which Sondheim wrote both the music and the lyrics. Throughout the rest of his career, Sondheim would combine his genius for the English language, unique musical style, and personal philosophical quandaries to create some of the greatest and most complex pieces of theatre to hit the American stage, including Company (1970), Sweeney Todd (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and, our focus for this month, Into the Woods (1987).
Into the Woods is a fairy tale of community versus personal desire, and what really happens after ‘happily ever after.’ The musical features well-known fairy tale characters such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood, in a shared universe where their personal journeys collide in a string of chance encounters. The production featuring the original Broadway cast was, thankfully, recorded and broadcast on American Playhouse in 1991, preserving for all eternity Bernadette Peters’ original portrayal of The Witch. We will be comparing this original stage version to the 2014 Disney film adaptation, directed by Rob Marshall, and starring Meryl Streep as The Witch. Be prepared for no holds barred, head-to-head, witch-on-witch violence! Who will come out on top? No one knows, except maybe the narrator, but we’ll deal with him later...
What are you waiting for? Catch up with both versions of this Sondheim musical, and tune in on the last Friday of the month as we reveal our deepest and darkest thoughts about Peters, Streep, and I guess, also Johnny Depp... “We must be gone!”
Copyright © 2020 Bailey Lizotte
