The Adelaide Central Market in South Australia seems to be similar to the Reading Terminal Market that we have here in Philadelphia. People go there to shop for fresh produce and coffee and meats, and they just want to mind their own business. And they weren’t expecting a flash mob to descend on them and … Continue reading Disrupting a Market
Sondheim
Perpetual Anticipation
A very short musical cue that somehow seems oddly appropriate right now. In A Little Night Music, the musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, not the divertimento by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “As the guests are ushered into the dining room and seated at the table, the three women in the Quintet comment, in canonic form.” Here’s … Continue reading Perpetual Anticipation
Barbra’s Still Here
I’m taking a short break from the depressing march of the presidents (don’t worry, there'll be another installment shortly!), so here is Barbra Streisand singing some lyrics that Stephen Sondheim wrote especially for her nose. Uh, I mean especially for her. Well, for her nose, too. Anyway, a custom version of “I’m Still Here”, followed … Continue reading Barbra’s Still Here
Sondheim’s Problem Play
“English has always been the language whose sound I like best. Except for Russian.” — Stephen Sondheim Pacific Overtures was the first Sondheim show that I saw in its original Broadway production. I caught it on the June 26, 1976, matinee, which was the day before it closed after 193 performances. There was a woman of a … Continue reading Sondheim’s Problem Play
The Presidents – No 14 Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce was an awful president. He signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which lost him the support of the North and was another step toward civil war. He did nothing while Kansas was bleeding, nor did he stop Americans from trying to make foreign countries into slave states. Perhaps this was all because he turned to … Continue reading The Presidents – No 14 Franklin Pierce
The Presidents – No 13 Millard Fillmore
In 1852 President Millard Fillmore sent Commodore Matthew Perry on an expedition to force an end to Japan's 220-year-old policy of isolation and to open Japanese ports to American trade, through the use of gunboat diplomacy if necessary. In 1976 John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim’s musical Pacific Overtures, which dramatized those efforts, opened on Broadway. … Continue reading The Presidents – No 13 Millard Fillmore
How to Spoil a Movie
I like horror movies. Meaning I enjoy the experience of being frightened in some sort of controlled environment, and where generally everything turns out all right in the end, even if only temporarily. Gotta leave room for the sequel. So I was eager in 1963 to see The Haunting, which had been directed by Robert Wise … Continue reading How to Spoil a Movie
Going, Going, Gone
This is a continuation of Now You Know from a couple months ago. I started writing it and never quite finished it. (I must have read over this a dozen times, and yet when I re-read it just before publishing it this morning I found a truly blatant eye-burning typo that has probably been … Continue reading Going, Going, Gone
Today’s Bonus Post
Do I have to spell out why?
A Sondheim Medley
Michael Feinstein provides a Sondheim medley on the piano.