Stephen Sondheim RIP

This was one of those days you hoped would never come but knew one day would -- and here it is: the passing of Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricists of such classic musicals as Gypsy, West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, and many others. 

He has died at age 91. 

To say that Sondheim was "one of the best" or "one of the greatest" American musical composers who ever lived is not enough -- he was the best, the greatest, truly without peer, someone whose likes the theater will never ever see again.

His cultural contribution to NYC is unmatched -- he was producing great musicals on Broadway in the 1960s and '70s at a time when the genre and the city were otherwise in trouble, keeping the flame and magic of the theater alive. In fact, "Being Alive" from Company, his iconic NYC musical, perhaps captures the man's work, life, and career better than anything.

Sondheim was a giant, a giant now in the sky, and if you want to understand the power of his music and influence then watch one of the people he influenced, Lin-Manuel Miranda, sing "Giants in the Sky" from Into the Woods. 

And his music and legacy will live, as the song "Sunday" in Sunday in the Park With George says, "forever. 

If you want to read what Mr NYC has written about Stephen Sondheim over the years, go here. 

"Company" @ 50

In 1970 the brilliant musical lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim came out with Company on Broadway. After having made a name for himself with this work on shows like Gypsy, West Side Story, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sondheim was considered the greatest Broadway musical talent of his time. 

He was -- as still is.

Company kicked off a hugely prolific period for him -- among his shows were Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), and Sweeney Todd (1979). None of his musicals in either the 1970s or later were derivative of each other, none of them copied something that had worked before. Each of his shows were totally different from the others, completely unique. And his songs were complex -- fast, with a density of lyrics, with a great deal of plot and character development being revealed. They didn't simply emphasize only one point (like "I love you" or "I'm so excited about something coming up" or "I have to go" or "This is the end") -- each song conveys a mess of feeling or events all at once. In a Sondheim song and musical there's a lot going on, and you never get bored.

Back to Company. This show was about a young man named Bobby living in NYC in 1970 (it's probably the only one of Sondheim's shows to be fully contemporary -- and this was 50 years ago). All of Bobby's friends are married and encouraging him to get married too -- but he can't commit. Underlying all this, although never said explicity, is a belief that Bobby might be gay (like Sondheim himself). Sadly, fifty years ago, this couldn't be said or sung out loud.

Company was due for a revival this Spring, with Bobby being played by a woman this time, but obviously COVID-19 derailed it. The original cast, in 1970, included Elaine Stritch and many other great talents. Unusually, there was actually a documentary made about the recording of the cast album by DA Pennebaker. Enjoy this clip from it and pay tribute to a great NYC musical, now half-a-century old.

More recently the parody documentary show Documentary Now did something called "Co-Op: The Musical" that is a direct and loving parody of this show.

Blair Brown Introduces "Into the Woods" for American Playhouse -- March 15, 1991

Currently on Broadway there is a massively successful revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1980s musical Into the Woods, a brilliant integration and revisionist takes on the Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel fairy tales. It's a very funny, fast-moving show, the songs and music are incredible, and it's one of Sondheim's last great musicals, a master at the top of his game.

In the decades since, Into the Woods has been revived a few times on Broadway and elsewhere, and even become a hit 2014 movie. Apparently this latest revival is the best yet, and a whole new generation is discovering this brilliant work. 

In 1991, a few years after the original Broadway run, a taped version of Into the Woods was show on the now sadly defunct PBS series "American Playhouse." Back then, there was no streaming, no YouTube, you couldn't just search and dial up a recording of a Broadway show. So if you hadn't seen the actual production on Broadway, there was nowhere else to see it -- except if you tuned in for this special presentation on March 15, 1991.

March of 1991 was an interesting time -- in what was one of the first viral videos, motorist Rodney King was recorded getting beaten by the LAPD, the first Gulf War had just ended, and the now classic movie The Silence of the Lambs was burning up the box office.

Blair Brown was a television star at the time, her show The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd was still running (although about to go off the air). In an odd way, she and this show were both quintessential NYC cultural landmarks of the time, so it was appropriate that she would introduce this special airing of it -- which also includes an interview with Sondheim itself. 

So here's a look at a special moment in time more than 30 years ago -- for something that has proven to be truly timeless. 

Review: "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

The musicals of Stephen Sondheim are, of course, phenomenal, and probably none of his musicals are as popular as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Set in down-and-out 19th century London, the story is about the aforementioned Mr. Todd, an ex-convict who returns from a penal colony in search of his lost wife and child. Bereft of money and family, he takes up residence above a pie shop run by a Mrs. Lovett who makes the "worst meat pies in London." Thirsting for revenge against a cruel and cold world -- and in serious need of money -- Todd and Lovett come up with a gruesome plan to open up a barber shop above the pie shop, and for Todd to supply Lovett with the bodies of his customers who wind up as the meat in the pies, making them very tasty and making business boom. All the while, Todd and Lovett befriend a hustler named Anthony, who returned to London with Todd, and who is trying to woo an unhappy rich lady away from the domineering and horny man who is her caretaker. Another friend if Tobias, the sidekick of a conman named Pirelli. 

Events ensue where Todd and Lovett's plan works -- until one too many things give them away and inevitable tragedy comes.

Amazingly, given the musical's enduring popularity, there hasn't been a revival of Sweeney Todd since it's original Broadway run back in 1979. So this is a triumphant revival with the amazing voice of Josh Groban as Sweeney and the AMAZING acting and singing talents of Annaleigh Ashford as Lovett. Groban is a fantastic singer and a good, if not great actor, but Ashford is both -- a true talent in the range of Angela Lansbury and Barbara Streisand. Watching them together is a joy.

Also good is Gaten Matarazzo as Tobias -- basically, he's best known as one of the kids from Stranger Things but this guy can sing and is a fantastic stage presence. He nearly steals the show from Groban and Ashford, no mean feat.

The supporting cast is also excellent, especially Jordan Fisher as Anthony and, I must point out, someone named John Rapson plays the gentlemanly Beadle Bamford. Even though Groban and Ashford are the clear stars, their supporting cast is their equal, and makes it a great show.

I'll be honest -- this is not my favorite of Sondheim's musicals (I'm more of a Company, Into the Wood, Sunday in the Park with George kinda guy) but it's an enthralling and disturbing dark opera of the soul, and a classic. 

Remembering "Teddy & Alice"

I recently watched the 1955 movie The Night of the Hunter, a gothic thriller directed by the great actor Charles Laughton, about a psycho preacher terrorizing two kids. At the time of its release it was a critical and commercial failure but, since then, it has come to be regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made -- and highly influential on directors like David Lynch, Spike Lee, and the Coen Brothers.

This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. Produced between his signature hits Company in 1970 and A Little Night Music in 1973, Follies was an odd and unconventional show about old-school entertainers reflecting on their broken lives. It was so unusual that, at the time, the critics hated it and audiences ignored it. But, in the intervening fifty years, Follies it has come to be seen as a classic, a proud entry in the Sondheim canon, with some brilliant songs like "I'm Still Here."

Sometimes something or someone is a failure in its or the person's time but becomes a great success later on. (Hopefully this blog will enjoy that same trajectory!)

This unusual fate has not befallen the Broadway musical Teddy & Alice. Produced in late 1987, it ran for two months before closing, an utter failure. Unlike some shows -- i.e. Chicago -- that failed in its original run but then was restaged to great success decades later, Teddy & Alice has never been revived on Broadway and remains totally forgotten.

So the ever-contrarian Mr NYC is going to remember it.

Recently I was strolling through Times Square and passed by the Minskoff Theater. I strained to remember that I saw a show there once, a long time ago, but couldn't remember it and then ... LIGHT BULB. I remembered the show! Teddy & Alice! It's a silly musical about President Theodore Roosevelt and his wild daughter Alice. The songs were adapted from John Philip Sousa and most of them are, well, forgettable. I don't really remember anything about the show itself but I remember that I saw it for two reasons: 1) A kid in my class was in it, playing one of Teddy's many children. He was telling everyone the show was about to close, and the tickets were super cheap, so my mom got two tickets and we went the night before it cloesd. 2) It was the first time I had ever heard of President Teddy Roosevelt and my impression of him was actually formed by this show. 

While the show itself was forgettable, the star of it was not -- Teddy was played by Len Cariou, a veteran stage and TV actor who was in the original run of Sweeney Todd. These days he's best known for being on the show Blue Bloods that's been running for about a decade. He was amazing as Teddy, he carried the show brilliantly, and it's too bad that he never got the recognition for it that he deserved. 

I doubt that Teddy & Alice will ever be revived -- it's one of those shows that came and went so quickly, that failed so quietly, that was not a "notorious" or controversial failure (like the musical version of Carrie that closed after one night), that it's just slipped out of the collective Broadway memory. So, in a way, having seen the show, puts me in a small and select circle of people who had an experience that was unique, a brief moment in time, and that will never be repeated. 

Interview: Lynn Paula Russell, Legendary Artist and Performer - An Englishwoman in NYC

New York City in the 1970s and ’80s has become almost mythical -- like Paris in the 1920s or London in the 1960s. It was an era of great danger and temptation as well as a period of artistic revolution.

Andy Warhol, Jean Michel-Basquiat, Julian Schnable, and others ruled the art world; Saturday Night Live and David Letterman were changing television comedy from the NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center; on Broadway, shows like Pippin, Evita, A Chorus Line, Cats, Lez Miz and the musicals of Stephen Sondheim were reinventing the American musical; Woody Allen was making classic films like Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah & Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors; Studio 54 and disco culture captured the popular imagination; sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat and Hellfire were turning respectable middle-class couples into sexual adventurers; and the adult film scene in NYC still existed.

Lynn Paula Russell was part of it. 

Here Lynn tells us about her adventures with the Broadway theater and sexual underworld of NYC, and how her experiences in in the city changed her life.

You're an Englishwoman and, I assume, lived and worked in the UK most of your life. But you worked in NYC several times in the 1970s and 1980s. Tell us about your time as a children's theater actress in NYC in 1970 and as a painter of Broadway theater performers in 1979. What was it like, as an Englishwoman, to come to this big wild American city at such a crazy time in history? What do you remember most about the city back then?

Yes, let’s talk about NYC! My first visit in 1970 was really only a flying visit. As I mentioned earlier, I was part of a small troupe of actors who had been touring around England visiting schools and youth clubs. This group was part of a children’s theatre company that consisted of several groups so it was extremely exciting that ours was chosen for the first tour of the USA. And to add to this, it had been decided that the most economical way of transporting us, with all our props and costumes, was on the magnificent, newly built QE 2 liner. The fact that we travelled this way meant that I had one of the most memorable experiences of my young life, which has remained with me to this day. Sailing in to NYC past the famous Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty, I felt as if I were in a movie.

On that day in October 1970, the sky was unbelievably clear as the ship majestically made its way up the Hudson, sailing close to the West side of Manhattan. I had never seen such buildings before, and at that time the Twin Towers of World Trade Centre were just nearing completion. I couldn’t believe it! The height of it terrified me. It seemed to belong to another planet. We could even see the little figures walking around on scaffolding at the top. I felt dizzy just looking. That human beings could not only dream of creating such a building, but actually have the courage and skill to accomplish it, struck me as the big difference between my culture and the American way. Back home, everything was so much smaller and more tentative at that time. Whenever an ambitious idea was suggested, there would always be a hundred reasons why it couldn’t be done, whereas here in America, people would always find a way!

In 1979, I came with my partner to spend 2 months exploring and doing some painting. I had originally been encouraged to come by Martin Charnin, the director of Annie and through my connections with the production I was able to go backstage at the Alvin Theatre [now the Neil Simon Theater] where it was still playing. You asked about my observations of the city – well, here I have to say that there was a disappointment regarding the ‘Great White Way’ as portrayed in Hollywood movies. When we finally got to see it, it wasn’t very white at all! And when I was shown the slightly antiquated backstage equipment at the Alvin, I was amazed – compared to the lighting board I had operated for Annie, the American version looked utterly primitive!

But apart from this, we loved the city, it’s good humor, and the fact that everyone working in the service industry treated you to a broad smile and a sardonic quip. They were all entertainers! We had heard so many stories about NY being dangerous. There were dire warnings about going into Central Park after a certain hour, but nothing ever happened to us and we ignored the doom mongers.

How had the city changed, in your experience, between the 1970s and 1980s?

Not easy for me to compare experiences of the city because in the 80s I was seeing a completely different side of it. In the earlier visit, we explored 42nd Street and marveled at its lights and adult movie houses, but in the 80s I remember actually going into one of them to meet Henri Pachard, who had his office in the backstage area. It was a curious experience. Back then 42nd Street was still alive with those same cinemas, but had I visited in the next decade, most of them would have vanished.

Interesting that London’s so called ‘Red Light’ district, Soho, began to be ‘cleaned up’ at about the same time. If you go to Soho now you won’t see a single strip joint, sex shop or prostitute. All consigned to the past. But back in 80s NYC, it was all still very much alive on the legendary 42nd Street. Also alive and flourishing, in another part of the city, were the offices of Screw magazine, which I visited on several occasions and met the editorial team. During the last of my visits I did a couple of illustrations for High Society and was able to glimpse the inside of a plush office on 5th Avenue. This was a much more up-market publication.

Now I am remembering visiting Plato’s Retreat – a large night club, designed especially for swingers. We had nowhere like this in London. I remember being invited to be part of a little cabaret there, but have to say that during the day, when we were rehearsing, and the interior was not seen in sexy subdued artificial light, it looked decidedly run down. The man who had started it, Larry Levinson, had just come out of prison so probably in his absence, the vitality had begun to drain out of the place.

Does anyone remember Plato’s Retreat now?

Oh, people remember it -- and miss it! 

Before I leave this subject, I must also mention The Hellfire Club. In this case, being run down was quite deliberate. This place specialized in being dark, grubby and un-salubrious. I was invited to go there by a couple who were fascinated by the S/M scene and knew that I had an interest at the time too. They collected me from my hotel in a huge stretch limo, in which champagne was served as we made our stately way to the Club. When the chauffeur drew up at a shabby address in the Meatpacking District, I was utterly horrified, and even more horrified by the club itself. But I was there to experience it, so experienced it I did – having got myself decked out in a skimpy leather outfit specially for the occasion. I was led around the dark dungeons on a lead, and we were able to watch all the other slaves with their masters and mistresses.

Apart from these outings, most of the time we were filming and I saw plenty of interiors of huge loft apartments in the city or beautiful houses with swimming pools out on Long Island. However, to sum up, I have to say that being in NYC filled me with such a special sort of energy. I cannot begin to express the difference it made to my personality. I became more confident and more extrovert as a person.

In the final part of our interview, Lynn tells about her time in the NYC adult film world at the end of its Golden Age and what she learned from it.

You can visit Lynn Paul Russell’s website and an exhibition of her work at:

www.lynnpaularussell.org
https://www.talismanfineart.com/product/cat/current-feature-4 

Gotta Love New Yorkers

You can't love a city unless you love its people -- the people who created it, the people who maintain it, the people who give it its vitality, from the folks who pick up the city's trash, teach in its schools, drive its buses and cabs and trains, police its streets, build its economy, help it to grown, preserve and improve its architecture and greenery, to the people who give it cultural vitality -- the characters who help to define the city's character. 

To say that New York City has produced some interesting characters over the centuries would be an epic understatement. But reading about some NYC characters, a couple of whom recently passed, a couple who are still with us but in their winter years. I blogged in the past about some of the NYC greats, the characters who contributed to its cultural and intellectual life, and it's a tradition I like to uphold. So here are a few more great NYC characters, NYC greats, both past and present, that we should appreciate:

- There's the actor Charles Kimbrough who recently died at the age of 86. Most people will remember him for the decade he spent playing the pompous anchor Murphy Brown. But he was really a man of the stage and he originated roles on Broadway in two of Stephen Sondheim's best musicals -- Company in 1970 and Sunday in the Park with George in 1985. What an incredible acting legacy!

- There was the movie producer Ed Pressman who recently died at the age of 79. A native New Yorker he produced classics like Badlands, Wall Street, Bad Lieutenant, Reversal of Fortune, and American Psycho. He was one of the last big-shot, svengali producers that don't really exist anymore, and he made great movies about people instead of superheroes. A great cinematic legacy.

- Then there's Sonja Wagner. Who's she? She's a classic NYC story -- a bored housewife from Kansas who escaped to our fair city in the last 1970s and built a successful if under-the-radar career as an artist. She worked for adult mags while also creating her own art, and she found a loft that became an epicenter for struggling and successful artists to meet, party, network, and get into chicanery. Sonja is 85 now and terminally ill -- but she's kind of New Yorker who made this city her own and contributed to its culture in great ways.

- And there's always Fran Lebowitz. Look, what more can I say about this fount of NYC wisdom that hasn't already been said more often and better by others -- especially Fran herself? Fran is an NYC treasure, an institution unto herself. If I had to say what it is I love about Fran is that, even though she's a public intellectual, if that she's focuses on reality and not pretentiousness. She focuses on the real issues, not the nonsense. Perfect example, as she says in her latest interview, is that we should stop worrying or caring about the dopey-ness of people like the Kardashians and more about the threat that someone like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy poses. Smart lady, a great New Yorker. 

Society Blues

In the Stephen Sondheim musical Company, perhaps the most emotional song is "Here's to the Ladies that Lunch!" -- a sad lament about the withering of Old Money New York Society. The musical came out in 1970 and the song was, perhaps, a bit premature. After all, the doyenne of NYC society, Brooke Astor, lived for another thirty-plus years, and the old money clubs still boast a strong membership. Society did not, and has not, gone away. Rich people love, and always will love, being rich. People are always saying that old guard institutions or traditions and in some cases it's true -- but rumors of Society's demise have been greatly exaggerated. 

But like everything else in NYC, Society has evolved.

The term "socialite" -- thanks to the ilk of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian -- has became en epithet. Being a socialite isn't exactly what those in polite society aspire to (if making a sex tape is what you have to do to become a socialite, then most will pass). But those who come from or aspire to be part of Society want to be seen as classy but not lazy. 

Basically, it is no longer fashionable to be a part of Society and do nothing.

That's who Ladies who Lunched basically were -- people who did nothing. They were married to rich men and had hours to spend during the week going to lunch at fancy restaurants and gossipping. Today, even in the conservative world of Society and old money -- where feminism has not necessarily penetrated -- women who don't work and just spend their days shopping and spending their husband's money are frowned upon. Same goes for men. The Bertie Wooster types, cads who just flinted around, getting into scrapes and living off their inheritances, are basically about as popular as leprosy in polite society. 

Not being able to answer the question "What do you do?" does fly in today' Society. It's a different world.

Ah, but we still have memories! Specifically, Vanity Fair -- that catalogue of classiness -- has a big new article on the Ladies Who Used to Lunch. This is Old New York Society from the inside, first person stories of the Old Guard. It's fascinating to read and makes you a little sad -- lazy as they were, these ladies provided a classiness to a time gone by.

Ladies Who Lunch - Elaine Stritch

Elaine Stritch has been singing and acting in movies, TV and on the stage for decades. And at age 85 she's at the top of her game -- winning Emmy's for her turn as Alec Baldwin's crazy mother on "30 Rock" and selling out her performances at the Cafe Carlyle (I tried getting tickets -- really, really expensive tickets -- and they're all sold out). Anyway, here's Elaine Stritch singing one of her signature tunes, "Ladies Who Lunch", from the Stephen Sondheim musical Company (the original production of which she appeared in 1970).

In an era where old New York is vanishing, Elaine Stritch is a class act whose act will never get old and will never fall out of fashion.

What's the Best Broadway Song of the Last 40 Years?

I'm not a big fan of "best" lists -- you know, those intentionally provocative lists that attempt to compile, in some determinate order, what is the best of this and that when any such "best" conclusions are purely subjective. So I read this "30 Best Broadway Songs of the Past 40 Years" with a bit of skepticism -- and it justifies my skepticism. Some of the songs on the list are spot on - "Memory" from Cats, "Don't Cry for Me "Argentina" from Evita, "Sunday" and "Our Time" from Sondheim musicals. But "Beauty and the Beast?" Which is originally from a movie? "One Day More" from Les Miz but not "I Dreamed a Dreamed?" Come on! And no "Tomorrow" from Annie? As my five-year old daughter would say, "Are you kidding me?"

My favorite musical from the last few years, The Book of Mormon, shows up on this list with "I Believe" but that's not really the best song from that musical -- there several, like "You and Me (But Mostly Me)", "All-American Prophet" and several others that are quite better. My favorite is "Hassa Diga Eibowai" which is the funniest song I've ever heard. As this list and my observations prove, there's no "best" of anything -- just the continuing effort to make great work. That's what we should be celebrating.

Review: "Sunday in the Park with George"

There's nothing to raise one's spirits like going to see a glorious Broadway musical. And "Sunday in the Park with George" at Studio 54 is just such a show. This is a revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning musical that made Mandy Patinkin a star and it's wonderfully done. It's a very unconventional show. Of all the audacious things, it's a musical about a painting (not painting, a painting).

The first act revolves around French artist George Seurat while he worked on his masterpiece "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette" in 1884 (pictured above, it's currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago and was famously seen in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Seurat and this painting made famous the style called pointillism, which consists entirely of little dots of varying color; a dictionary definition of pointillism: "a style of painting that used points of color and relied on the eye and brain to blend them into a meaningful picture." Seurat was a difficult, aloof guy, the classic mad artist, and he drove his friends and mistress Dot to despair. Seurat died at the age of 31, a most controversial artist.

The second act takes place in 1984 where Seurat's great-grandson (also named George) is some kind of flailing video artist, living in the painting and his family's shadow. George seeks to learn more about great-grandfather, the painting, and art, and he comes to realize that art should be about one's expression, about what kind of legacy one wants to leave, and not about what critics and historians might or might not say.

This production uses special effects in an absolutely brilliant. The screens behind the actors literally come alive with color but does so in such a way as to enhance the performances and story, and not obliterate it. Many of the characters in the show are actually figures from "La Grande Jette" and in one brilliant scene, as the actors recreate the painting, they sing about how it feels to be stuck in a painting for over a century with lots of people starting at them.

The performance are uniformly excellent. Daniel Evans make Seurat into a likable if somewhat childlike person, someone you know is a good guy at heart but who can also be enormously self-centered and unthoughtful. You can't help falling in love with Jenna Russell as Dot/Marie (the mistress and, later on, Seurat's elderly daughter). She makes both characters wonderfully dimensional, sympathetic but nowhere near perfect. Needless to say, both actors and the supporting cast sing wonderfully and the music, while very spare and rather monotone compared to most Broadway musicals (in order to reflect the exacting style of pointillism) is beautiful.

If you have a chance to see it, I highly recommend going to see "Sunday in the Park with George." It's what great theater in NYC is all about. It runs until June 29.

The Divine Ms. P

The first movie I ever saw in a theater was Annie, back in 1982. I didn't remember much about it except that I really liked the woman who played the bad guy's girlfriend. Sure, she was pretty, but there was something else about her, something more, a mysterious allure, that captivated me. You got the feeling in her performance that there was a depth to her character that we were only seeing the surface of, that there was more, a lot more, than met the eye. Oh, and she could sing. Boy could she sing!

I found out later that this actress was Bernadette Peters and I'm a lifelong fan.

Ironically, the first time I saw her was in a movie but she hasn't done a lot of movies in her career (although before Annie she was in the Steve Martin break out The Jerk) -- she's mostly done Broadway and is one of the last, truly great musical theater stars (check out my review of her performance in A Little Night Music from 2010). She's originated roles in Sondheim's A Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, she's played Annie Oakley and Mama Rose, and very soon she'll be taking over from Bette Middler (the Divine Ms. M) in Hello Dolly. Ms. Peters is one of the great entertainers of our time, up there with Ethel Merman and Chita Rivera, and she'll be remembered long after she retires.

So, if you're a big fan like me, you should read this big interview with The Divine Ms. P from New York magazine. What's surprising about it is how modest, how normal she sounds -- considering that she's a Broadway and NYC legend, she sounds downright humble. Amazing.

If want to see The Divine Ms. P in something, you should watch her in two very different roles, from two very different eras, from her long career: the 1989 movie Slaves of New York and the current Amazon show Mozart in the Jungle. She's great in both, playing very different characters, but her talents, as always, shines through.

The fact that her career has lasted so long, in so many forms, speaks to her huge talent. 

P.S. A couple of years ago I saw Bernadette Peters being interviewed by some airhead on a red carpet and this interviewer was talking to the Divine Ms. P like she was a Kardashian or some such cultural bottom feeder (lots of "girlfriend!" etc.). I was offended that a massive talent like her was being talked to like a dummy by a dummy but classy way she acted the just made her all the more divine.    

Greatest NYC

New York magazine has an interesting cover feature this week called The Greatest New York Ever. It is trying to determine what were the greatest times, and what were the greatest cultural artifacts to come out of this city, in the last 100+ years? Plus, who was the greatest mayor? There are articles, transcripts of round table discussions, and even charts are graphs all trying to determine what was "great" about NYC in the last century.

This seems like a daunting, impossible task but its worth checking out. 

Basically they break things down into various categories (greatest movie, book, TV show, mayor, building, athlete, etc.) and consider various cases for who and what should be considered New York's "greatest." The criteria used to determine this is slippery and totally subjective so, naturally, no one or nothing should be conclusively called "the greatest." But since this is fun, I will take a slab at considering who and what I consider NYC's greatest. Some of my choices might seem boringly obvious but, at the same time, my reasoning it hard to argue with:

Greatest Mayor: LaGuardia. The pint-sized politician guided this city through America's darkest days -- the Great Depression and World War II -- and NYC came out of it on the other end as the world's greatest city. This was no easy task and, considering the obstacles he faced, his achievement was amazing. No one has topped him since.

Greatest Musical: West Side Story. Besides being a collaboration of 20th century musical theater's greatest talents (Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein), this 1950s update of Romeo and Juliet set in the gritty streets of our city still has resonance today. 

Greatest TV: All in the Family and Law and Order. All in the Family (no, not Seinfeld) is the most realistic sitcom about New Yorkers in any borough and no show set in this city made you feel it in your bones more than Law and Order.     

Greatest Athlete: Babe Ruth. 'Nuff said. 

Greatest Building: The Empire State Building. Iconic to its core. built in the 1930s during the Depression, a sign of enduring stregnth at a moment of despair, this great structure encapsulates the romance and grandeur of NYC like no other. 

Greatest Novel: The Great Gatsby. The greatest American novel of the last 100 years perfectly captures the restless spirit and sometimes tragic reality of the American dream -- and New York is a vital, almost starring character in the plot.

Greatest Film: Manhattan. No it's not the greatest movie ever (but it's up there) but no other movie makes such unabashed love to the city -- and no other movie captures the New York personality more perfectly.  

Greatest Song: "New York State of Mind" by Billy Joel. Combining rhythm and blues and soul, this soaring song about leaving and coming back to NYC puts the city in your soul like no other. 

Greatest Artwork: Anything by Andy Warhol. He defined what it meant to be an artist in this city and his work (like the Campbell Soup cans) still resonates and influences to this day. 

Greatest Year: 2011. The present is always the best time to be in NYC.

NYC Celebrates Sondheim