Haunted by Sondheim

This seems to be a week about Broadway and hauntings. Seriously, this is the second post in two days about Broadway taking over my mind. Watch this video below to see why:

What do you know... it's John Barrowman again. What are the odds of that, right? barrowmanilove on Tumblr posted this the other morning and I watched this and nearly fell out of my chair. Because I love Sondheim. And I love John Barrowman. And George Hearn is pretty freaking amazing. So this is a total win. It's also from Sweeny Todd, which just happened to be my favorite musical/ movie in my junior year of high school (it was the first R rated movie I saw in theaters... ah, fond memories). And I love this song. Though in the context of the show, it's a totally whack - Todd, which is the part Barrowman is singing, is about to kill Judge Turpin, the part Hearn is singing, because Turpin seduced his wife, kidnapped his daughter, and totally ruined Todd's life in general. So yeah. Though I have to admit, seeing Barrowman and Hearn play those parts would be pretty wild, though I do like the much more amicable version of this. :)

And while listening to "Pretty Women," I stumbled across this video:

Melt... just... melt. This song is SOOOO beautiful. But I felt like there had to be a catch (especially as people kept commenting that the song was so lovely out of context). Then I saw that it was from Assassins. And I knew we were in trouble.

This will be another example of how everything in my life comes full circle. Assassins was mentioned in a class I took last semester, taught by [tedesco]. In fact, on the first day of class, two students acted out part of the play the musical is based on as a mind-blowing way of starting the class. And then when watched a clip from The Producers (the bit with John Barrowman singing "Springtime For Hitler," but I didn't know that was him yet :P). Because the class was a study of how history is made, we spent a lot of time talking about history being made in not-so pretty ways, like assassinating and killing people. Which is exactly what Assassins is about.

Here's a short description about it, via Wikipedia:

It uses the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted (successfully or otherwise) to assassinate Presidents of the United States. The music varies to reflect the popular music of the eras depicted.

And...

By developing the characters of historic assassins out of the slim biographical information found in the daily news, Assassins prompts us to consider their motivation. "(Sondheim) confronts pain in order to cauterize the decay and heal the sicknesses which lurk at the core of our society". Departing from the humanism of his previous musical Into the Woods, Sondheim suggests that political murderers are a product of the American political culture (Joanne Gordon).^[18]

At this point in the musical when "Unworthy of Your Love" appears, John Hinckley, the man who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, is visited by Lynette Fromme, a woman who tried to kill Gerald Ford. Here's how Wiki describes it:

John Hinckley sits in his rumpus room, aimlessly playing a guitar. Lynette Fromme enters and tries to convince him to play her a song (asking for "Helter Skelter"), but he refuses. Fromme notices a picture of Jodie Foster, who Hinckley claims is his girlfriend. When Fromme realizes the picture is a publicity photo from a film, she pulls out of a picture of Charles Manson and mocks Hinckley for being in love with a woman he's never met, which makes him throw her out in a fit of rage. Alone, he swears that he will win Foster's love "with one brave, historic act" and sings a love song to her while Fromme individually does the same to Manson ("Unworthy Of Your Love").

Totally changes your feelings about the song, right? I felt... kind of disturbed, to say the least. Which is the point. It's how I feel every time I listen to "A Little Priest" and am like, "hey this song is great. Hold on, it's about CANNIBALISM." And then I get this wonderful, terrible sense of cognitive dissonance. Sondheim is very, very good at making me do this. Not that all of his music is dark; it's not. He's just really good about making things dark and disturbing - and yet sympathetic.

So, I can't help liking the song as a traditional love song (if a very intense, emotional one). But it's kind of weird and unsettling to know how it's performed in the musical. That's the vibe I get with a lot of Sondheim's music - it could fit into a lot of scenarios, but the one's they actually apply to are sometimes totally unexpected. Which makes them all the more powerful and beautiful and disturbing. And haunting.

And thus I've had "Unworthy of Your Love" stuck in my head for the last two days. And it kind of freaks me out. But, you know, I always feel a bit freaked out when I get a song as powerful as this one stuck in my head. Because there's no getting it out. I'm just stuck with it for now, so I might as well revel in its power. Sondheim, you win again :)