Sondheim Surprised us in Delray

 

When the Delray Beach Playhouse, tucked away on Lake Ida, announced it was producing Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along we were somewhat shocked that they could secure the rights.  After all, a new version starring Daniel Radcliffe, among other luminaries was opening on Broadway.  This is a Sondheim play we had never seen, and as it was impractical getting to New York, we immediately booked our front row seats.  The Broadway show which received rave reviews was extended, and consequently the Delray rights were shortened to only 12 performances.  Luckily, yesterday we saw their production.

 

It is truly remarkable that this complicated musical could be so skillfully handled at the community theater level, but Delray Beach Playhouse is entering its 77^th year and there is a reason for that as this production clearly showed.  

 

The leads, Bob Ruggles as Frank Shepard (the composer), Chris Ombres as Charley Kingras (the lyricist) and Devra Seidel (as Mary Flynn, the writer  – a character Sondheim modeled after his lifelong friend and love, Mary Rodgers, the daughter of Richard Rodgers), rose to the occasion, professional in every way.  (Ms. Seidel unfortunately did have a mishap falling down a few steps in a very restricted ball gown, but bounded up at once and though we were convinced she was injured, bravely carried on in the “show must go on” style.)  There were also a few players in the ensemble cast who helped to carry the show, with the remaining more inexperienced performers showing their amateur status but overall the production, under the direction of Andre Lancaster was, for us, a hit in every way, perfectly filling out our Sondheim lacuna.

 

The show was based on Kaufman and Hart's 1934 Broadway play of the same title and this is where the complexity begins, as that play travels backwards in time.  Sondheim was a well known constructor of puzzles and mysteries for his friends.  He was approaching his peak artistic years when he wrote Merrily.  It must have been an incredible rush for him to look at his career then, and to give us clues from his own personal journey from a wide eyed young composer / lyricist of his first show, Saturday Night (rarely performed unfortunately, and not even opening in the 1950s when its producer died) to the point of becoming one of Broadway’s most acknowledged and brilliant composer/lyricists (and on his way to even greater fame after this midpoint show was initially a flop).

 

I thought it interesting that Sondheim dealt with his two incredible gifts as a composer and lyricist in two different characters, Frank and Charley, the former being urged to fame and the latter dedicated to his art.  It is the same conflict that confronted Sondheim, under constant criticism for not writing “memorable” songs (although I defy many to write these three that I love in this show, “Not a Day Goes By,” “Old Friends” and “Good Thing Going”)  - and heck, I could add the bittersweet songs "Opening Doors” and "Our Time" which conclude the show.  Amusingly he deals with that very issue in Merrily.  It is a soul satisfying show, sad in many ways though -- as when it comes down to it, life is a game of Pick-Up-Sticks, the accident of where you are born, when, and to whom, and what you do with the talent and opportunities you have.  Sondheim of course was a genius, and he used his gifts so well.

 

It had a very brief run in its original production on Broadway in the early 1980’s.  Sondheim explains its initial commercial failure best in his Finishing the Hat: What we [Hal Prince and he] envisioned was a cautionary tale in which actors in their late teens and early 20s would begin disguised as middle-aged sophisticates, and gradually become their innocent young souls as the evening progressed. Unfortunately, we got caught in a paradox we should have foreseen: actors that young, no matter how talented rarely have the experience or skills to play anything but themselves, and in this case, even that caused them difficulties….The last twenty minutes of the show when the cast reverted to their true ages was undeniably touching, but the rest of the evening had an amateur feeling – which, ironically, had been what we wanted. If the show had played in an off-Broadway house at off-Broadway prices, it would have stood a better chance of fulfilling our intent; as it was, at Broadway’s Alvin theater, and at Broadway prices, it turned the audiences off.”

 

So it was with some irony that we saw a version which might have satisfied the great master in many ways, an amateurish feeling, off-off-off Broadway production.  But all the elements of a deeply satisfying theater experience were there for us, more so than so many of the “professional” musical revivals Florida theaters are famous for; it’s a Sondheim piece, rarely performed, by a dedicated theater group, and even with a multi-piece live orchestra under the direction of Aidan Quintana, that sounded like a full Broadway orchestra (too little attribution was given to the musicians in the program and even after the show, although Ann saw one exiting as we drove out and rolled down the window to thank him and his group).  The scenic design, costumes, and the staging were professional as well.

 

Bravura to all the performers, and to the Delray Beach Playhouse.

 

For Sondheim core devotees, such as us, the Director Richard Linklater is shooting a very ambitious film version of Merrily We Roll Along.  It stars Paul Mescal (as Frank), Beanie Feldstein (as Mary) and Ben Platt (as Charley).  It’s ambitious as it’s being filmed over a twenty year period so the actors can naturally age, and through the magic of movie cutting, we will have one for the screen in the early   2040s as Ann and I approach 100.  We can’t wait although by then we might be on one of the early flights to Mars.   

‘From now on, all my friends are gonna be strangers’

 

Many of mine are already strangers, be it due to modern-day nomadism, rising political contrariety, or the inexorable consequences of time.

 

Larry McMurtry wrote All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers (1972) when he was about 35, only a few years older than I was at the time. I haven’t read much Western Literature, although I’ve enjoyed the works of writers such as Wallace Stegner, Phillip Meyer, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, who have set some of their stories there.  But when one thinks of old west fiction, writers such as Louis L'Amour, Larry McMurtry, and Zane Grey spring to mind.  Being a northeast kind of guy, my taste in literature does not go there.  My loss I suppose, but the alternative use of time justifies (in my mind) an excusable indifference.

 

Nonetheless when somewhere or someone – don’t remember who or where – recommended this McMurtry novel as a work to get to know him as a writer, not necessarily as a western writer, I put it on my list and when it arrived thought it would be the perfect book to take on our recent cruise.

 

I fondly remember Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show for which McMurtry wrote the screenplay based on his novel, it being filmed in his old home town. Between that and the title of the book itself, probably based on Merle Haggard’s - "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers” I was prepared to enjoy this book. After all, friends, old lovers, peel away as one ages, and at a certain point one is flying solo. 

 

All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers displays McMurtry’s gift of dialogue and self-deprecation (or at least resignation to circumstance), comically capturing what makes people uniquely weird and wonderful, full of fathomless eccentricities.  All of this is seen through the eyes of Danny Deck, a writer in his early twenties whose peripatetic life makes up a solid Bildungsroman of a young writer’s journey and how life gets in the way of art.  I jealously admired Danny’s ability to take advantage of youth without caring about consequences. It is about the ride, not the destination. 

 

Danny goes through a marriage, other women, friends, enemies, beatings but along the way has his first novel published (although he doesn’t think much of it), and he gets enough money for a film based on it to live on.  He’s flown to Hollywood to write the screenplay (naturally, he doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do, how to do it, carried along by fate).  He seems to be on a ramp to oblivion and we leave him with his second novel in manuscript form, drowning it (and maybe himself?) in the Rio Grande River.  Perhaps, it’s just one of the many rivers in Jim Harrison’s The River Swimmer

 

His writing is reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s ironic, dark sense of humor.  Here Danny meets Leon, the Hollywood producer of the film to be made based on his novel in the backseat of Leon’s Bentley with Juney, Leon’s assistant/companion/enabler:

 

“Danny, I want you to know I think your novel’s great.” Leon said when we were shaking hands. He avoided my eye when he said it, and I avoided his. We almost looked at each other accidentally while we were avoiding each other’s eyes. I felt very embarrassed. I hadn’t gotten used to the fact that strangers out in the world had read my novel.

 

“I’m out here wasting my education,” Leon said a little later as we were purring out the Hollywood Freeway in the Bentley.

 

“I was brought up to believe that a gentleman does as little as possible with his education,” he said. “I think I’ve achieved pretty near the minimum. No one could expect me to do less than I’ve done.”

 

Juney looked at him tenderly and patted his hand. She was a motherly blonde. “Tough it out baby,” she said. Leon did not respond.

 

“Leon went to Harvard,” she said turning to me. “He operates from a very high level of taste. He really hates ostentation and affectation, but let’s face it in this industry you can’t escape it. You have to be ostentatious, you have to have affectations.  Leon actually has to affect affectations. It’s a sad thing. This Bentley is one of the affectations he’s affecting.  He doesn’t really want to drive a Bentley.”

 

Another of Leon’s affections is his pet twenty-two pound rat which he one bought for a science fiction movie he produced when it weighed five pounds less.

 

So I second the motion.  To get to know Larry McMurtry, the writer, this is the book.  You are sure to hear Merle Haggard singing…

 

From now on, all my friends are gonna be strangers

I'm all through ever trusting anyone

The only thing I can count on now is my fingers

I was a fool believing in you and now you are gone

Family Time – A Precious Gift

 

Dawn at Sea

We recently returned from a Caribbean cruise, one of many we’ve taken over the years, this one on the Celebrity Apex.  For seven months we anticipated this and poof, in seven days it was over.  The ship went to ports we’ve been to before, and it is a newer ship, larger than most we’ve been on, with all the glitz we try to avoid.   As a one week Caribbean cruise at this time of the year, it was filled with people who were there simply to have fun and eat and drink a lot.  The cruise catered to that crowd in their choice of entertainment, massive buffets, booming music in the pool area, and the constant encroachment of announcements.

 

My description cannot even approach the definitive work on such a cruise which was deliciously captured by David Foster Wallace’s experiences on a 7 day Celebrity Caribbean cruise in 1996’s Harpers Magazine, “Shipping Out; On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise.”

 

Although written almost thirty years earlier, its satirical truths and hilarious observations have stood up to the test of time and ought to be required reading, all 24 pages. Here are just a few of the breakouts from the article as teasers:

I have seen naked a lot of people I’d prefer not to have seen nearly naked.

On a cruise your capacities for choice, error, regret, and despair will be removed.

You don’t ever hear the ship’s big engines, but you can feel an oddly soothing spinal throb.

The atmosphere onboard the ship is sybaritic and nearly insanity-producing.

Not until Lobster Night did I understand the Roman phenomenon of vomitorium.

The vacuum toilet seems to hurl your waste into some kind of septic exile.

 

So why go?  It was the one week our “kids” could accompany us for a family vacation, Jonathan and his wife Tracie, and Chris and his partner, Megan.  We booked a table in one of the ship’s restaurants where leisurely dinners were permitted if not encouraged.  We also sometimes met up in the morning or for lunch. 

 

My usual routine was to get on the track at sunrise, get in a few laps of power walking (I still call it that although I’ve slowed as I’ve aged), frequently meeting Chris there, and then quietly having some coffee, bringing some to Ann as she got dressed for breakfast.

 

They did some port sightseeing, while we usually stayed on the ship, appreciating the quiet time, especially in the spa solarium.  There we enjoyed soft spa music, a dip in the Jacuzzi for 15-20 minutes and then spent the rest of the morning lounging in comfy deck chairs reading our books.  I finished one novel, more on that in a later entry.  No direct sun in the solarium, so no need to lather up with sun screen.  We either had the no calorie spa lunch that is served in small bite sized portions or splurged one day on a hamburger and fries.  Those days were brief respites of blissful peacefulness.

 

None of us went to the so called entertainment in the evenings, opting instead to extend our dinners for as long as we wanted.  The point was to be together and not to sit in a theatre watching their brand of shows.  The piped in music onboard was excruciating, catering to a much younger crowd.  But it was a week where we could really relax, be lazy and enjoy being with both sons and their spouses. 

 

All those years raising our “boys,” Chris and Jonathan, now a distant memory but watching them interact with each other as if they were still kids.  I tried to get a candid shot of them as they fooled around, and here I post one as well as one of when they were really kids watching TV on our bed.  Can it be, all those years?  But we’re happy they have a relationship as there is an eleven year age difference and different mothers as well, although Ann is “Mom” to Chris.  We raised him during the angst of his teenage years.

 

A bit of serendipity led us to get off the ship in the Cayman Islands.  Over the years this blog with its (now) massive amount of information and family history, has attracted many people who have been touched by connections closer to us than six degrees of separation.  I get emails from them and follow up.

 

Two months ago I received one from Melanie, a woman who had been researching some family history online and found an entry in my blog and believed we shared some common ancestry.  We do indeed.  Her grandmother was the daughter of my grandfather’s sister.  And I was at her grandmother’s wedding when I was ten years old, hardly remembering any of it, but I had photographs of the wedding which my father left in his files; I eventually scanned those and I was able to email some to her.  You can imagine her shock and delight.

 

Tendering to the Caymans

But the story doesn’t end there.  I soon learned that she lived in, of all places, the Cayman Islands, with her husband and son.  The light bulb went off; that was one of the ports the ship was going to so I suggested we get together and she was delighted.  We had to tender to the port and it’s a busy place but we finally were able to connect and have lunch overlooking the Georgetown harbor.  Thanks to AI I was able to pin down our exact relationship: Melanie is my 2^nd Cousin, once removed. 

 

There is more serendipity.  Our ship arrived there on March 7 which was her 49^th birthday.  As Melanie said, “how cool is that?”  Now about our meeting, I’ll turn this over to Ann who had emailed a friend the following (Ann is a very spontaneous, emotive and sometimes funny writer): “You know when you’re going to meet someone brand new, you know nothing about, you never know what to expect.  They could be dull as dishwater and you’re rolling your eyes in 10 minutes praying for an early escape.  Or as in today, you are met by someone totally precious and in fact, so utterly delightful that I wish we had known her years ago.  It was her birthday and I brought her a gift Bob made for her especially, a photo of her grandmother’s wedding.  Framed, wrapped and with a card delivered to her in a beautiful bag, useful for a million things.”  I could not have said it better and more entertainingly than that.

 

I had an ulterior motive visiting the Caymans though.  I had heard it is a decent place to live and here was a full time resident (her husband’s job led them there and coincidentally she works now in publishing which was my working moniker as well) and the opportunity to hear her story and who knows if the unthinkable happens this coming November, perhaps a place for us to consider.  As I suspected, this is easier to ask than to do; it works for them as they are young (with an 11 year old son), employed, and don’t have the health challenges that we octogenarians have.  

 

The Cayman Islands is a self-governing British Overseas Territory and as such enjoys some of the benefits.  I was especially impressed by the low crime rate, the relative safety of living there, and the fact that firearms are forbidden. People there don’t have to worry about mass shootings in the shopping centers, the schools, in the houses of worship.  Imagine that?  Must the last bastions of civilization be on remote islands?

 

In any case, our fantasy of moving to escape the insanity of our self-destructive polarized politics had to be put to rest, but it is reassuring we know someone as lovely as Melanie is and who is part of our extended family.

 

After seeing her, we only had two nights left on the cruise and Ann and I had booked our only tour and that was of the ship itself the next day.  Since 9/11 the bridge and the engineering parts of ship tours were mostly off limits but with a small group, a security check and an armed guard, the tour included the heartbeat and the brains of the ship.  That is what I wanted to see.

 

First we toured other parts of the ship, the galley, provision lockers, laundry, waste management, and what they amusingly refer to as I95 which is a corridor, strictly for the crew, with their staterooms, restaurant,
rest areas which runs the complete length of the ship on deck 2.  Unfortunately, photographs were strictly prohibited (particularly in the engineering room and bridge), but I managed to sneak one of the liquor storage room, nearly depleted towards the end of the cruise, as were the food provisions.  The quartermaster logistics for these functions must be mind boggling. 

 

 

By the time we arrived at the engineering control room we had walked miles, including stairs, and then standing around, but that destination and the bridge were worth the fatigue.  The engineering officer gave a presentation including flow charts of how the five engines are coordinated (usually the ship cruises with only two), and how redundancies are built into the propulsion system, including two additional engines on deck 15 in case the engine room is flooded. 

 

Crew are in the engineering room watching television monitors of all the engines and gauges for the equipment, the seawater reverse osmosis water maker systems (which makes delicious water in my opinion), the bow and stern thrusters, and the highly effective stabilizers.  In fact, for my taste, they were too effective as most of the time one hardly knew of any movement underway. 

 

This is in stark contrast to the first ocean crossing we made in 1977 on the QE2.  Ships in those days were built for speed with 29 knots a typical cruising speed, with a top cruising speed of 32.5 knots.  The trade off was a less beamy ship without stabilizers and the ship rocked and rolled, sometimes quite violently in a storm.  These new ships can hardly do two thirds the speed but you wouldn’t know you are moving.

 

The high point for me was a visit to the bridge which runs the full beam of the Apex with two helm chairs one might imagine Capt. Kirk and Spock sitting in, facing controls at the centerline.  Operationally, there are three different navigation stations, everything completely redundant so the ship can be controlled from the main station or stations on the port and starboard sides. 

 

What impressed me was the clean minimalism with features such as its integrated radar/GPS so powerful it can detect anything in a wide swath and its computer system able to indicate bearing, speed of any other ship and if documented its name, port, tonnage, etc., by simply putting the trackball pointer on it.  Collision avoidance features are built in. 

 

Everything one needs to run the ship are at these three compact stations.  Parts of the floor deck at the port and starboard sides are windows so one can visually watch docking while cameras show stern and the full length of port and starboard sides for tender activities, boarding pilot boat captains, etc.  But given the full expanse of the beam of the ship, there is the sense of being able to easily control the essential ship functions.  Joysticks now prevail over a ship’s wheel.

 

Although one would hardly know it, the seven day cruise covered 2,000 nautical miles.  Rarely did the ship’s speed exceed 18 knots.  Its top speed is only about 22 knots with all engines engaged.  These ships are indeed floating hotels and are not built for fast ocean crossings.

 

So we shared one last night with our kids and we disembarked for our separate destinations.  Bittersweet.   It is rare we can all be together like that for an extended time and it is a reminder that living in the moment and sharing family stories and laughter are life’s most precious gifts.