I keep thinking,
Such a fine beginning,
Such a lovely evening we could spend.

Such a fine beginning,
I keep thinking
More about the end.



There are several possible choices using this target phrase — but, if I'm honest, I'm kinda fishing for the most recent instance, just to introduce SJS's youngest offspring into this game.

Playbill:  Inside Orchestrator Jonathan Tunick's Project to Make Sondheim's Scores Sound Bigger
                             A re-orchestrated version of A Little Night Music will premiere at Lincoln Center.  Tunick says Sweeney Todd is next.

The OCR was indeed released on CD and streaming today.
Its Digital Booklet — with liner notes by Ives and Mantello, plot synopsis and full lyrics — can be found here.

This video is dated over a week ago, but I only stumbled across it a minute ago:


In December the show was videotaped for the Lincoln Center Library Theatre Collection, whose curator Douglas Reside has also compiled this career-spanning list of HWA's multitudinous echoes of SJS's previous six-plus decades of work:

Sondheim Easter eggs in Here We Are


Lots of viewers have enjoyed playing this game ever since previews began (and zillions more will undoubtedly now chime in after listening to the OCR) — some in order to justify their feeling that this is decidedly lower-tier Sondheim (a tired old man repeating himself, to un-mince their usually more delicate words); others to hail the new work as a cleverly self-aware, valedictorian summing-up of all that preceded it (and often, not incidentally, to flaunt the observer's own knowledge of the oeuvre).  Both perspectives vaguely annoy me, if only because they tend to ignore the show's merits-on-its-own-terms, which I suspect might come to be regarded as considerable (Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods have nothing to fear from Here We Are in terms of critical respect or popularity, respectively; but I could imagine it settling in pretty comfortably next to Assassins and Passion).  Still, for what is essentially a listicle, Reside's essay is intelligent, well-written and respectful.

The score, and the cast, if anything come off even better in this recording than they did in the theater.  Minus visuals, and with just enough studio polish — and no other audience, just listening by myself, which probably helps — the story's slippery tonal dynamics feel more persuasive than ever.  The music itself sounds gorgeous, and I'd HIGHLY recommend listening with decent headphones the first time, to catch the vocal and orchestral nuances in what might at first seem like The Master's brashest score; while the unmistakable Sondheim-iness does at times sound almost like gleeful self-parody, in some ways I feel like he's outdone himself in terms of sheer verbal and harmonic intricacy.  The characters, despite being cartoons, seem both more horrifying (truly atrocious garbage people) and more recognizably human (which is all the more unnerving) when they're right in your ear rather than on a stage getting evened-out by the common-denominator effect of a full post-pandemic audience whose determination to be entertained is heightened still further by the specific circumstances under which this particular show was produced.  And if the ending still hasn't quite been nailed, I think some future production might yet meet that challenge.  As brilliant as David Zinn's original designs were, I would certainly love to attempt this show myself someday.

Hepburn's birthday (what would be her 117th) was this past Sunday:

NYT:   In a Secret Manhattan Garden, a Birthday Party for Katharine Hepburn
                 Every year, a small band of New Yorkers gathers in a tucked-away Midtown park to celebrate the actress,
                                            a beloved neighbor they remember as an everyday city dweller.

Too many mornings,
Wishing that the room might be filled with you,
Morning to morning,
Turning into days.
All the days
That I thought would never end,
All the nights with another day to spend

Here's a shameful confession, in case it makes you feel any better: in almost twenty years of living in Washington Heights, I haven't learned a single word of Spanish.

Third time's a charm. I finally got my new dishwasher installed today after being told last Saturday that it couldn't be installed until I had an electrician put in a dedicated 110V outlet for a dishwasher. So now I have the proper setup for a new dishwasher, and am out an additional $300-something.

Unfortunately, I don't know if it was installed correctly because there was a language barrier between the installers and me (I don't speak Spanish   ) They did show me that it was working by turning on a setting, but no one actually showed me how to use it. They didn't put any of my stuff from the under-sink cabinet away, either, leaving it up to me with my arm in a sling.  I got the impression they just wanted to be out of there quickly. I feel like I'm Archie Bunker or something, and I hate feeling like this, but we truly could not understand each other. 

I feel terrible. Maybe I'll take a nap before Physical Therapy comes.

So, old friends.
Now it's time to start growing up:
Taking charge, seeing things as they are.
Facing facts, not escaping them.
Still with dreams — just reshaping them.
Growing up...

Charley is a hothead, Charley won't budge.
Charley is a friend...

Charley is a screamer, Charley won't bend!
Charley's in your corner.

Mary is a dreamer.  Mary's a friend...
Mary is a nudge.

Mary is a purist, Charley's a judge.
Charley is a dropout.  Everything's a "copout"!
Why is it old friends don't want old friends to change?

Every road has a turning,
That's the way you keep learning...

I thought this would take a bit longer to find, but I had the libretto sitting out (being too lazy to put it away).

Don't be scared
You won't prevail,
Everybody's
Free to fail,
No one can be put in jail
For his dreams.


[When this lyric is repeated later in the show, it's "for their dreams," which is how I remember the lyric, but the libretto says "his dreams" when Booth originally sings it. (Assassins, Sondheim & Weidman, Theatre Communications Group, 1991, page 12). None of this affects the target word.] 

Further hijinks with our lovable Tony-nominated trio — who, if they don't already have one by now, really need a compound nickname (like Brangelina or Bennifer, but tripartite):  Jandsay?  Dindathan?  Lothaniel?...

Anyway, here they are at the 92nd St Y a few weeks ago:



...And in several more cast-album music videos, featuring mixed footage from rehearsal, performance, and the recording studio: