It's a Hit? Sondheim & The New York Times (Part I)

Exploring every opening-night New York Times review of Sondheim's career (1957-1970)

“During a long professional life,” writes Stephen Sondheim in Look, I Made a Hat, “I have been both a critics’ darling and a critics’ target, sometimes simultaneously.”

The relationship between Sondheim and the critical establishment is a complex one, and worthy of exploration. We know from his essay “Critics And Their Uses” (from which the above quotation is drawn) and elsewhere that he maintained a healthy skepticism (to put it mildly) toward the profession. “One thing that unites theater critics and reviewers,” he writes, “is that most of them have little knowledge of the craft as it is practiced.”

But in that same essay, penned in 2011, Sondheim notes that “now only The [New York] Times covers the theater completely and regularly.” And he concludes the piece by highlighting that particular paper’s influence on Sunday in the Park with George:

Anticipation for the show was far from bubbling; audiences had been walking out, not in droves but in driblets, and mild enthusiasm had been the most positive response at the curtain calls. Then The New York Times review came out and that same night the show got a standing ovation—this in the days when standing ovations were not yet de rigueur.

Since the scope of this subject is dauntingly vast, let’s focus solely on The New York Times. Let’s transport ourselves to the opening night of each of Sondheim’s shows, viewed through the lens of the one newspaper which, in his view, covered theater “completely and regularly” throughout his life. And in so doing, let’s see what we can learn not only about the evolution of Sondheim’s artistry, but also about the shifting landscape of theatrical criticism and public taste.

West Side Story (1957)

Astonishingly, Stephen Sondheim is not mentioned by name in the opening-night review of West Side Story. Brooks Atkinson acknowledges “the scenery by Oliver Smith,” “the costumes by Irene Sharaff,” and “the lighting by Jean Rosenthal”—but never once does he reference a lyricist.

Still, Atkinson is effusive in his praise for this extraordinary show. West Side Story, he writes, is “an incandescent piece of work that finds odd bits of beauty amid the rubbish of the streets.” “Using music and movement,” Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins are said to “have given Mr. Laurents' story passion and depth and some glimpses of unattainable glory.”

So much of what Atkinson writes could apply to Sondheim’s future works as composer-lyricist. And with our knowledge of all that will follow West Side Story, we cannot help but read these early reviews with that in mind. Take this passage, for instance:

Everything in West Side Story is of a piece. Everything contributes to the total impression of wildness, ecstasy and anguish. The astringent score has moments of tranquility and rapture, and occasionally a touch of sardonic humor.

And this one, too:

[…] very little of the hideousness has been left out. But the author, composer and ballet designer are creative artists. Pooling imagination and virtuosity, they have written a profoundly moving show that is as ugly as the city jungles and also pathetic, tender and forgiving.

But it is through Atkinson’s concluding remarks that The Ghost of Sondheim Yet To Come is revealed to us most vividly:

The subject is not beautiful. But what West Side Story draws out of it is beautiful. For it has a searching point of view.

Gypsy (1959)

Two years later, Atkinson mentions Sondheim by name:

Jule Styne has supplied a genuine show-business score, and Stephen Sondheim has set amusing lyrics to it.

Okay. It’s not exactly the most extravagant praise Sondheim will ever receive, but his name is at least in print this time.

Note, by the way, that these two shows were reviewed by the same critic. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Brooks Atkinson began working at the Times in 1922, and his obituary hailed him as “the most influential reviewer of his time.” When we think of these early shows, we tend to conjure up the image of a young Sondheim, opening doors, worlds to change and worlds to win, et cetera, et cetera. (He was 27 years old when West Side Story premiered). We sometimes forget (although it is obvious) that within those first audiences were many significantly older theatregoers—and when we consider how rapidly musical theatre developed as an artform during the first half of the 20th century, that is worth keeping in mind.

Atkinson’s employment at the Times, for instance, predates even the seminal Show Boat (1927). Born in 1894, he was very nearly a contemporary of the real Georges Seurat. So when we read in his opening-night review that Gypsy “is a musical tour of the hotel rooms and backstages of the seamy side of show business thirty years ago when vaudeville was surrendering to the strip tease,” his words carry an authority that we might all too easily overlook.

Much of Atkinson’s focus in this review is on the show’s star, Ethel Merman. “Not for the first time in her fabulous career,” he writes, “her personal magnetism electrifies the whole theatre. For she is a performer of incomparable power.” And here is how the review opens:

Since Ethel Merman is the head woman in Gypsy, which opened at the Broadway last evening, nothing can go wrong. She would not permit Gypsy to be anything less than the most satisfying musical of the season.

It’s fascinating to see how the genuine star power of this era translates to the page. Above, Merman is given an almost authorial status.

Atkinson’s final words, deceptive in their simplicity, stand as a testament to his deep and prolonged engagement with this artform and its practitioners:

Gypsy is a good show in the old tradition of musicals. For years Miss Merman has been the queen.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)

Brooks Atkinson retired in 1960, and Howard Taubman became the Times’s chief drama critic. In his review of Forum, we 21st-century readers continue to benefit from the perspective of a critic who has first-hand experience of much earlier theater. The review is an extremely favorable one, and it is clear that Taubman derives pleasure not only from Forum’s ancient setting, but from the more recent theatrical tradition in which it sits. “"Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,"” he writes, “recalls the days when delirious farceurs like the Marx Brothers could devastate a number.” And of the show’s “old comic hokum” and “knockabout routines,” Taubman writes this:

For the rest of us who were young and risible in the days when comedians were hearty and comedy was rough and tumble, and for the new generations who knew not the untamed gusto of this ancient and honorable style of fooling, it will be thumbs up for this uninhibited romp.

Sondheim is mentioned twice in this review, but fairly fleetingly. The first time his name appears, it is to supplement praise for the show’s director:

George Abbott, who has been around a long time but surely staged nothing for the forum mob, has forgotten nothing and remembered everything. He has engineered a gay funeral sequence to a relentlessly snappy march by Stephen Sondheim. He has used mixed identities, swinging doors, kicks in the posterior, double takes and all the rest of the familiar paraphernalia with the merciless disingenuousness of a man who knows you will be defenseless.

Taubman clearly had a very good time watching Forum. It is, in his words, “noisy, coarse, blue and obvious like the putty nose on a burlesque comedian.” “But somehow,” he adds, “you keep laughing as if the old sight and sound gags were as good as new.” And “Mr. Sondheim's songs,” he writes, “are accessories to the pre-meditated offense.”

Anyone Can Whistle (1964)

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum closed on August 29, 1964, after 964 performances. By that date, Anyone Can Whistle had already been and gone: it ran for just 12 previews and nine performances. Howard Taubman’s opening-night review may help to explain way. It is scathing from the very start:

There is no law against saying something in a musical, but it's unconstitutional to omit imagination and wit. In an attempt to be meaningful, Anyone Can Whistle forgets to offer much entertainment.

Arthur Laurents takes the lion’s share of condemnation in this review. “Mr. Laurents's book lacks the fantasy that would make the idea work,” writes Taubman, “and his staging has not improved matters.” Speaking of the show’s various ingredients, he writes that Laurents “has slapped them together with a heavy hand.” And in perhaps the most devastating line of this review, Taubman writes that Laurents “seems to be preoccupied with psychiatry, and what should be fresh turns out to be sick.”

There is criticism of Sondheim here too, but it is (for the most part) a little less damning. Taubman writes that “Mr. Sondheim has written several pleasing songs but not enough of them to give the musical wings.” “With So Little To Be Sure Of,” though, is described as “pleasant.” And it is worth noting that both Laurents and Sondheim are commended for having “aimed for originality.” “For that,” writes Taubman, “one respects them. Their trouble is that they have taken an idea with possibilities and have pounded it into a pulp.”

But this review is more than an out-and-out pan. Taubman finds much to enjoy in the choreography, and in the lead performances. He praises choreographer Herbert Ross’s “amusing and dazzling patterns,” and says that “the dancing is the cream of Anyone Can Whistle.” Lee Remick, as Nurse Fay Apple, receives particular praise for reciting “a nonstop credo of rationalism with breathless virtuosity, and she sings and dances with spirit, especially the title song.”

Taubman ends his review in a wonderfully left-field way, praising the set design and posing a question that is truly worth savoring:

There is more fun in the sets by William and Jean Eckart, which send beds, balconies and rocks moving and pirouetting across the stage. Since this is the age of magic by machines, why not entrust them with the delicate responsibility for fantasy?

Do I Hear A Waltz? (1967)

Sondheim’s fabled collaboration with both Arthur Laurents and Richard Rodgers was also reviewed by Howard Taubman, and it is interesting to consider the two reviews side by side. For Anyone Can Whistle, Sondheim and Laurents were praised for having aimed for originality—perhaps a little too forthrightly, in Taubman’s view. Here, he writes of Sondheim, Laurents, and Rodgers that “one cannot suppress a regret that they failed to be bolder.” He goes on:

For there are times, particularly in the early stages, when the songs are merely a decoration. They give the impression that they are there because a musical requires music. They do not translate the story into the fresh and marvelous language that the rich resources of the musical stage make possible.

And we know, from Finishing the Hat and elsewhere, that Sondheim was far from satisfied with this particular collaboration. Still, Taubman praises this creative team for their “tact and grace” in adapting Laurents’s play, The Time of the Cuckoo, noting that “they have not cheapened or falsified” it. Rodgers and Sondheim, he writes, “make a new song-writing team that sustains the desired mood -- at least most of the time.”

Individual numbers are thoughtfully assessed, and the overarching sense one gets is of a critic who has had a pleasant, though not exceptional, night at the theater. Taubman’s closing remarks are even-handed, distilling his overall impression with enviable clarity:

Do I Hear a Waltz? is not a great musical. It does not make Venice materialize in spirit as it might. But it has the courage to abjure garishness and stridency. It speaks and sings in a low key. It is faithful to the sentimental tale that is its source.

Company (1970)

Clive Barnes, in his opening-night review of Company, describes the show as being “about the joys and pains of married love in New York City.” “Particularly the pains,” he adds. And the city itself features heavily in this review. This is how it opens:

With the always possible exception of Vladivostok, Manhattan must surely be the most masochistic village in the world. We expect visitors to our grubby canyons to come to us, exhausted by our pollution, soused by our martinis, maimed by our muggers, and to say: "This is hell on earth. How do you stand it?"

This review offers the most sustained and thoughtful consideration of Sondheim’s particular contribution to a show of any write-up we’ve looked at thus far. Barnes does a masterful job here of balancing sincere praise with personal reservations:

Creatively, Mr. Sondheim's lyrics are way above the rest of the show; they have a lyric suppleness, sparse, elegant wit, and range from the virtuosity of a patter song to a kind of sweetly laconic cynicism in a modern love song. The music is academically very interesting. Mr. Sondheim must be one of the most sophisticated composers ever to write Broadway musicals, yet the result is slick, clever and eclectic rather than exciting. It is the kind of music that makes me say: "Oh, yeah?" rather than "Gee whiz!" but I readily concede that many people will consider its sheer musical literacy as offsetting all other considerations.

Barnes seems to take a dimmer view of some of Sondheim’s collaborators, though his criticism is not without qualification or caveat. George Furth’s dialogue is described as “starched with a brittle facetiousness that with luck might be confused with a barbed or savage humor.” Crucially, though, he adds: “Still, it never talks down to us; indeed, it rises to talk up.”

There are, in Barnes’ view, two primary faults with Company. One is its structure, which he characterizes as “a series of linked scenes, all basically similar to one another.” Hal Prince, he asserts, has failed to find “a variety of pace and character, and to impose a satisfactory unity on the show.” But, ever fair-minded, Barnes adds: “It may not be his fault. The odds were against him.”

The second flaw Barnes identifies is simply that he finds no character to be remotely likeable. “They are, virtually without exception, […] trivial, shallow, worthless and horrid.” In a particularly delicious passage, Barnes expands on this critique:

Go to a cocktail party before the show, and when you get to the theater you can have masochistic fun in meeting all the lovely, beautiful people you had spent the previous two hours avoiding. You might enjoy it. At least this lot goes away with the curtain, and doesn't know your telephone number.

Barnes does write, though, that Company “deserves to be a hit in a lean season.” He finds Dean Jones to be lacking in charisma, but otherwise labels the cast “excellent.” Elaine Stritch, he says, “gives bland lines a bite, and sharp lines the kind of blinding accuracy line-writers dream of.” Barnes also praises Michael Bennett’s choreography for its “genuine vitality,” lauding him as “one of those artists who carry the past into the future, and stylizes his view of it into a signature.”

And the final paragraph of this review is honest, generous, and self-deprecating. It is (in my view) a thing of beauty:

I was antagonized by the slickness, the obviousness of Company. But I stress that I really believe a lot of people are going to love it. Don't let me put you off. Between ourselves, I had reservations about West Side Story.