The songs of Stephen Sondheim are literally the foundation of freeFall’s production of Sondheim on Sondheim; his music and lyrics are inscribed atop the variously sized pedestals on which the cast members perform, and among which the musicians are seated. A combination musical revue and multimedia documentary, SoS traces the creative process of a composer who has himself been placed on a pedestal over the years, to the extent that New York magazine once ran a cover story asking the not-entirely-ironic question, “Is Stephen Sondheim God?”
Thankfully, SoS doesn’t take its subject that seriously, nor does Sondheim himself, judging by the film clips that are interspersed among the 40-plus songs in the revue. He even wrote a new number specifically for SoS called “God,” a send-up of his own Exaltedness during which an actor exasperatedly switches off Sondheim’s on-screen interview with a remote (but not before we hear him say he’s donating his fingernail clippings to the Smithsonian).
Sondheim on Sondheim
freeFall Theatre, 6099 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. Through April 10. 727-498-5205. freefalltheatre.com
Still, I wonder if the appeal of the show requires a certain amount of buy-in to the notion of Sondheim-as-God. I’m fully on board myself, but even I — a diehard fan, if not a completist — got a bit weary of the video interruptions during the two-hour-and-30-minutes-plus show. It’s not so much that these clips aren’t interesting — SoS is particularly informative on the subject of how a song evolves, showing us, for instance, the series of false starts that led to the creation of “Being Alive,” the wrenching solo from Company, performed here with affecting vulnerability by the impeccable Larry Alexander. But did the bit about an inter-artist feud illuminate Alexander’s lovely rendition of “Good Thing Going?” Not really — in fact, it kind of diluted the universality of the lyric.
But TMI aside, what this production does do is remind you of just how timeless these songs are. “Children Will Listen” is a case in point. It dates back to the late ’80s, when Into the Woods premiered on Broadway, but if you don’t think of GOP debates and Trump rallies when you hear it now, then you haven’t been, um, listening. Assassins, which Sondheim has deemed his only “perfect” musical, opened more than 20 years ago, but “The Gun Song” remains trenchant, as three presidential assassins and one wannabe gather to extol the awful power of a single gun: “And all you have to do is squeeze your little finger… You can change the world.”
Judging by this show, freeFall has the makings of several good Sondheim casts, starting with its own artistic director. Eric Davis is volcanic in the harrowing “Epiphany” solo from Sweeney Todd, and Ann Morrison would make a dandy Mrs. Lovett. He’s equally effective as the artist Georges Seurat in the quieter but just as heartfelt “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George, connecting deeply with Seurat’s account of the sacrifices made on the way to the sweet, small triumph of completing a work of art: “Look, I made a hat/Where there never was a hat.”
Follies could work, too. SoS director/choreographer Chris Crawford artfully manages the tricky playing space Davis designed (all those pedestals! All those actresses in heels!), and does a particularly good job maneuvering the intersections between past and present selves that occur during the nostalgic roundelay of “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs,” a nice opportunity for the younger members of the company — Kelly Pekar, Amy Marie Stewart, and the Nicks Fitzer and Lerew — to shine.
But then, everyone has a moment to shine. Lerew brilliantly handles the physical and vocal challenges (telephone brrring!s and all) of “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” from Merrily We Roll Along, with Fitzer delivering a barbed young-Sondheim-esque charm to this and several other numbers. Stewart hits the soprano heights of “Do I Hear a Waltz?,” while amusingly trying to ignore Sondheim’s describing the musical of the same name as “unnecessary”; Pekar is sweet but not saccharine in “Take Me to the World” from Evening Primrose. Morrison brings the groundedness of a musical veteran to the tender “In Buddy’s Eyes” and the hard-nosed realism of “Now You Know,” and Kissy Simmons, of regal bearing and smoky voice, brings gravity to the role of the obsessive Fosca from Passion, though she was less successful in finding the anguish in “Losing My Mind” and the sass in “Ah, But Underneath.” Musical Director Michael Raabe leads the ensemble and a seven-piece orchestra with his characteristic elan — and even if some of the unison numbers, like the rousing “Sunday,” feel a bit thin and jangly if one is used to the huge sound of the original, his light touch generally serves the material well.
The revue concludes with one of Sondheim’s most bittersweet anthems, “Anyone Can Whistle,” the plaintive appeal of one who’s great at the hard stuff — “I can dance a tango, I can read Greek” — but can’t get the hang of what’s simple, like falling in love. There’s irony here; the slam against Sondheim has always been that he doesn’t write “hummable” tunes — songs that leave you whistling on the way out of the theater — but SoS proves otherwise. And while the song was written by a man who admits he didn’t fall in love till he was 60, the creation of musical theater has been his own gesture of love — his way of illuminating the messy, beautiful struggle of being alive.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2016.