Stephen Sondheim’s Knotty Vision of Musical Theater
Updated at 11:10 a.m. ET on December 3, 2021
It was Madonna who first introduced me to Stephen Sondheim, which sounds infinitely more chic than what happened in reality: Someone gave a 7-year-old girl a cassette of I’m Breathless, the 1990 album Madonna recorded during her gauzy showgirl period, pegged to her role as Breathless Mahoney in the movie adaptation of Dick Tracy. At the time, Cats had been running on Broadway for eight years. I had recently furthered my own artistic evolution by playing the title role in our class production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Musical theater in London was largely defined by plasticized melodies, Schönberg and Boublil, and soap-opera stars grinning out from West End billboards.
But lurking within —among dubious Carmen Miranda impersonations (“I’m Going Bananas”) and odes to light S&M (“Hanky Panky”)—were three works written by Sondheim. The film’s director and star, Warren Beatty, had asked the composer and lyricist to contribute five original songs, three of which made it onto the album. They vary drastically in style. “More” is a jaunty anthem to avarice that’s also—Sondheim delivered a puzzle disguised as pastiche, an Oscar-winning theme song that complicates the rigid masculinity of an American icon, and a through romantic hope, doubt, and repression that occupies a mere two minutes.
