April 29, 2020
Posted by Jay Livingston
As many people have noted (including me here), one of the things that Stephen Sondheim brought to Broadways was ambivalence. It pervaded several of the songs in Sondheim 90th birthday tribute Monday night. Some songs declare their ambivalence right off the bat (“I’ve got those God-why-don't-you-love-me-oh-you-do-I'll-see-you-later Blues.”) or in their titles (“Marry Me a Little”). But ambivalence is a subtext in “Send in the Clowns” and “Anyone Can Whistle.”
Baritone Brian Stokes Mitchell*, for his part in the tribute, chose “Flag Song.” It's a patriotic song, written for a parade. It was going to be the opening for “Assassins” (“An imaginary parade with a crowd of bystanders watching, some of whom turn out to be assassins we get to know later,” says Sondheim) but it was cut from the show.
Even in a song of patriotism, Sondheim gives us ambivalence.
Posted by Jay Livingston
As many people have noted (including me here), one of the things that Stephen Sondheim brought to Broadways was ambivalence. It pervaded several of the songs in Sondheim 90th birthday tribute Monday night. Some songs declare their ambivalence right off the bat (“I’ve got those God-why-don't-you-love-me-oh-you-do-I'll-see-you-later Blues.”) or in their titles (“Marry Me a Little”). But ambivalence is a subtext in “Send in the Clowns” and “Anyone Can Whistle.”
Baritone Brian Stokes Mitchell*, for his part in the tribute, chose “Flag Song.” It's a patriotic song, written for a parade. It was going to be the opening for “Assassins” (“An imaginary parade with a crowd of bystanders watching, some of whom turn out to be assassins we get to know later,” says Sondheim) but it was cut from the show.
Even in a song of patriotism, Sondheim gives us ambivalence.
You can gripe
All you like,
You can sneer,
“Where are the heroes?”
You can shout about
How everything’s a lie.
Then that flag goes by…
You can snipe
At the greed
At the need
To be a winner
At the hype
You keep hearing
From on high.
|
For a minute you’re aware
Of being proud.
And then suddenly you’re staring
At the crowd
And you’re thinking.
“They’re as different from me
As they possibly could be— “
Then that flag goes by,
And no matter how you sigh,
“It’s the bright blue sky.
It’s just Mom and apple pie.”
There’s this thing you can’t deny.
This idea.
|
George M. Cohan it ain’t.
To hear it, go here** and push the slider to about 1:20. Mitchell introduces the song this way.
| If somebody asked Steve Sondheim to write a patriotic song for our country right now with everything that is going on, I think this is the song that he would write. It’s pretty amazing that he already wrote it. Thirty years ago. |
Here he his performing it at the Kennedy Center a year pre-Covid-19.
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* Mitchell fell ill with Covid-19, recovered, and now regularly leans out his fifith-floor window — still on Broadway, but two miles north of the theater district — and, as people on the sidewalk below listen, booms out “The Impossible Dream.” (A video is here.)
** After you hear “Flag Song,” push the slider to 1:58 to see “Ladies Who Lunch.” You’ve probably heard about this performance already if you’re at all interested in musical theater, but if not, don’t miss it.
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