Stephen Sandheim
Todd the Barber
◎ Qiu Ye
Stephen Sandheim was gone. Whenever he is mentioned, the media at home and abroad often use the words "giant", "master", "legend", "genius" and "shock the world", but for most Chinese audiences, especially new musical theater fans, these statements are still very abstract, and they cannot understand what kind of role he really is.
Born in 1930, Sandheim is a well-known American musical theater creator who has composed, written and written many classic musical theatre works. His unique material selection and creative ideas have earned him many awards in the field of musical theatre, including several Olivier Awards and Tony Awards (Sandheim is the most numerous composer to date), and there are theatres named after him in the West End and Broadway in New York, although most of the 25 works he has created in his lifetime have not often appeared on the stage of the West End and Broadway.
Not only in the United States, but also in a large number of musical theater celebrities around the world, they are proud to be able to appear in his works; many young people who have just entered the musical theater industry, such as The creator of "Hamilton", Lin-Manuel Miranda, are following his example; many well-known Art majors in the United States have hired him as a teacher; his works such as "It's Not Difficult to Whistle", "Partners", "Assassins", "Sunday and George in the Park", "Barber Todd" and so on are also mandatory teaching and practice materials for art education colleges and institutions.
Most interestingly, he has long been hailed as the founder and head of a "concept musical," even if he doesn't quite endorse the concept himself.
On Sandheim's 90th birthday in 2020, although the epidemic was obstructed, actors, directors and producers from many English-speaking countries gathered online and held a grand birthday party for him to broadcast live online.
Pretty interesting, right?
Also, there's always been a saying in musical theater circles that if you want to identify whether someone really understands musical theater, ask them what they think of Sandheim's work, it's clear. It can be seen that Sandheim's position in the musical theater industry has almost been enshrined.
Myself, my favorite musical composer is Andrew Loyd Webb, who wrote The Phantom of the Theatre, Mrs. Perón, and Cats. But when I first came into contact with Sandheim's work, I was deeply impressed.
It was the end of 2014, and a Production Agency in Shanghai was planning to rearrange the Chinese edition of Sandheim's "Todd the Barber" and asked me to redisplay it. At that time, I had the impression that most of Sandheim's works sounded eerie at first, the melody was abrupt and stiff, and it was not the kind of elegant and smooth tunes and euphemistic styles in common musicals. So I didn't know how to start at first, so I could only play a few tracks repeatedly against the score, listen and listen, and slowly chew out the taste.
In good conscience, Sandheim's work is not completely unlikable. In "Todd the Barber", which was bleeding on the stage, one or two melodies could still be found. It's just that unlike Weber, he can actually use these cheerful and relaxed melodies to depict the mood of hatred for everything and intention to kill people for revenge!
For example, the song "Church Priest", after starting with a short prologue, slowly sounds the kind of waltz dance music that even people who are not agile in their arms and legs will be foolish and make people feel light and comfortable. However, let's take a look at the lyrics here:
It's like a bunch of rats are feeding,
This is the world of a man who eats people,
And who can pretend to turn a blind eye!
As the waltz melody repeats and develops, the hero goes on to sing the following lyrics: "I want to taste the flesh of the poet." The heroine responded: "You also know that their health is always doubtful, I can't afford to lose, I'm sorry!" But she proposed instead: "If you are patriotic and loyal, order a royal sailor, health is no problem, eat to the mouth has a marine breath." Then he recommended other "tastes", such as lawyers, landlords, greengrocers, bank cashiers... Up to politicians and judges.
In this scene, the hero and heroine actually look at all kinds of passers-by on the street and discuss how to kill people and get meat to make pies to sell this outrageous "business economy". In the end, they fall into madness in the imagination of revenge society, and the whole song ends gorgeously in the climax of the increasingly emotional three-beat dance! Later in the plot, the hero and heroine did murder people to make human meat pie, and the whole drama also ended with almost all the main characters dying tragically.
Sandheim is usually a songwriter, which can be said to be as accurate as "more fat, less stroke thin". To be able to create such a mysterious combination of music and lyrics is not only possible by learning music theory and rhyme, mastering chords and words, and familiarizing yourself with technical theories such as instrumentation. This requires the creator to have enough experience and understanding of human nature, and even the darkness in it, in order to use dramatic words and expressions to bring about a direct impact on the soul with the appropriate contrast. Why is there such a collision? Because of this darkness, due to educational indoctrination and moral guidance, it is possible to suddenly break through the constraints.
But don't think that Sandheim is as cynical and unbridled as the "avant-garde". The enlightener and leader of Sandheim was Oscar Hammerstein II, the famous lyricist of the Golden Age of American musical theater. The epoch-making classics "Showboat", "Heaven on Earth", and "Oklahoma" are now regarded as the standards. "The King and Me" and "The Sound of Music" are all masterpieces of this Hammerstein II — remember the simple but heart-warming "Edelweiss"?
Sandheim, who received high guidance, was recommended as an lyricist for "West End Story" at the age of 27, and began a brilliant career of more than 60 years. The play became a hit on Broadway and later became an epoch-making classic musical. In this play I found another Sandheim, one who could write tender and surging verses: "Shout out to heavenly chants, murmur to my piety." "A song "Maria", two young hearts collided for the first time, bursting out dazzling and colorful sparks of love, lighting up the confused night sky of life, filled with a refreshing fragrance, just a few words, jumping on the paper, how many can not be moved?
The musical world of Sandheim is rich and multi-faceted, and with the passage of time, the vicissitudes of human feelings and the entanglement of desires have become more and more pure in his pen.
The "Clown Comes to The Rescue" in the musical "Serenade" sings about the heroine recalling the past and crossing the love scene, but in the end she finds that she has rubbed shoulders with the intended person who really should hold hands, and laments that the object is a kind of resentment:
"Now I want to say goodbye to drifting, and finally I plan to anchor in your harbor. Recounting old feelings, saying the opening remarks of the past, a feeling, but no one paid attention. Maybe, next year will be better. ”
Here, Sandheim, the corners of the mouth do not have the cunning flick, but also put away the star-studded lover's eyes, but with a kind of quiet power of "a thousand sails on the side of the sinking boat", peeling off the layers of wrapped onion skins in people's hearts. But even while silently weeping, you will still feel a hand with a weak but real temperature, gently resting on your shoulder, telling you that even though life is like this, there is still hope for everything.
I don't know if Sandheim has been explained clearly, after all, it is futile to fully describe a musical theater master who has already understood the human condition in a limited number of words. Fortunately, his plays are still able to appreciate and experience the works he left behind to outline the Sandheim in our minds.
It's going to be a lot of fun, I promise.