MARRIAGE TYPE LOVE – AND HATE By Peter Filichia
For the past weeks, I’ve been hypothesizing that Stephen Sondheim consciously or unconsciously reworked the musicals that his mentor Oscar Hammerstein wrote with Richard Rodgers.
Some changes were due to changing mores. More, however, had to do with Sondheim’s differing worldview. Note how both wrote about marriage.
Granted, their own personal experiences must have influenced their opinions. Hammerstein’s second marriage lasted 40 years; not until death did he and Dorothy part.
And while Sondheim was required to wait until our country caught up to marriage equality, he reportedly didn’t have that many long-term relationships before tying the knot in 2017 with Jeff Romley.
(Romley, incidentally, gave his late husband a wonderful tribute by becoming one of the producers of last season’s sensationally received and award-laden revival of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.)
Except for THE KING AND I, every Rodgers and Hammerstein show involves marriage, most of the time approvingly. In their other 10 works, marriage has either happened or is in the offing for one, two or even three couples.
In THE SOUND OF MUSIC, Maria and Captain von Trapp even have a church-packed wedding with nuns singing. It’s a totally unnecessary sequence, for the following scene shows them returning from their honeymoon. That would have been enough to convince us they’d married.
Hammerstein’s belief in the institution can be gleaned by his song “Marriage Type Love” in ME AND JULIET. Those who consider THE SOUND OF MUSIC all-too-gooey shouldn’t use that as Exhibit A of Hammerstein’s sentimentality, but this lyric: “We were dancing, and her eyelash blinked on my lash. Marriage type love!”
Audiences might have been skeptical when, in PIPE DREAM, Hammerstein had lovable losers Doc and Suzy fall in love and wed. An until-death-do-they-part marriage between a naïve scientist and an occasional prostitute might well be a pipe dream worthy of Eugene O’Neill’s characters in THE ICEMAN COMETH.
ALLEGRO and CAROUSEL were the only R&H shows to have a bleak view of marriage. In the former, Dr. Joseph Taylor, Jr. discovers his wife’s infidelity and is planning divorce. Hammerstein doesn’t see marriage itself as the problem; it’s the person you marry who may be. We know that Joe will soon take devoted nurse Emily as his second wife.
In CAROUSEL, as unhappily married as Billy Bigelow is, he never turns to another woman. He even spurns the advances of Mrs. Mullins, his former boss, who offers him the chance to return to the only job he ever loved; Julie means more to him. As for Julie, even when the marriage turns inextricably sour, she believes that “He’s your fella and you love him. That’s all there is to that.”
(And that’s even after Billy hit her.)
Try to find something like that in Sondheim. Virtually all of his musicals expose everything from marital troubles to adultery. Granted, the times had a-changed so much from Hammerstein’s day. Still, of the 39 Tony-nominated or Tony-winning Best Musicals of the 1970s, three of Sondheim’s five involved adultery. Of the 34 others, a mere four did.
COMPANY has its share of problematic couples, which doesn’t escape bachelor Bobby. Harry and Sarah lie to each other. Peter and Susan get divorced. Amy and Paul are to marry but here’s a switch: while the man is usually the one who has the cold feet, Amy’s are the chillier ones. And if all that isn’t enough, at a nightclub, Joanne propositions Bobby while her husband is off paying the check.
COMPANY is all about not getting the girl. The husbands who tell Bobby “Have I Got a Girl for You” aren’t interested in finding their pal a lifetime mate, but an affair; they insist that “Marriage may be where it’s been, but it’s not where it’s at.” So, they want to live vicariously through Bobby. If they can’t benefit from “the Kama Sutra and Chinese techniques,” at least one of their friends can.
The best we get from anyone in COMPANY comes from three husbands who reveal that marriage means feeling “Sorry – Grateful,” admitting that good accompanies the bad. Bobby’s original final song stated that marriage meant living “happily ever after… in hell.”
If you don’t know this song, check out MARRY ME A LITTLE. It’s there, although it has been long gone from COMPANY. Sondheim replaced it with “Being Alive.” Some of the same sentiments that had negative slants suddenly had positive ones.
Sondheim may have gleaned, from cold Boston tryout audiences, that that’s what theatergoers wanted to believe. In the process, one could argue that he came a bit closer to Hammerstein’s take on marriage, but not much.
As for Sondheim’s next musical – FOLLIES, of course – it was bleaker still when investigating marriage. “Marriage type love” had long ago evaporated for Ben and Phyllis as well as Buddy and Sally. With both couples having passed their silver anniversaries, they knew full well that the silver had tarnished into jet black.
The two couples make no bones about their serious unhappiness. In two great songs, Buddy (in “The Right Girl”) and Phyllis (in “Could I Leave You?”) even reveal that they’ve had other partners. And if Buddy’s wife Sally hasn’t, she’d divorce her mate in a minute and make Phyllis’ husband hers.
Many watching the show might have expected that both couples would split. To be sure, none of the four spouses would ever miss the discarded mate. Although all of them should have gone their separate ways, Sondheim and bookwriter James Goldman may have felt they’d dispensed enough gloom during the long evening. Because theatergoers had witnessed the four not experience a single moment of happiness together, FOLLIES concluded with all seeming reconciled.
That wasn’t quite believable, but again, Sondheim might well have had Hammerstein in the back of his mind when deciding that he’d better offer a ray of hope. Had he not, FOLLIES may well have lost every dime of its $800,000 budget instead of “only” 6,500,000 of them.
In A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, Anne and Fredrik have a May-December marriage that, after many months, she still isn’t willing to consummate. Fredrik becomes a covert adulterer with former love Desiree, whose usual bedmate, Carl-Magnus, is an out-and-out adulterer. Before the show is over, Anne is ready to cuckold Fredrik – with his son, no less.
Look at the others. MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG has Frank cheat on Beth with Gussie, who cheats on her husband Joe. Frank will soon cheat on Gussie. INTO THE WOODS has Cinderella’s Prince seduce the willing Baker’s Wife. Ludovic, husband to the unfortunate Fosca in PASSION, reveals that he already had a wife before he married her. And even in the light-hearted A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, Senex is ready to break his marriage vows, causing Domina to brand him “That Dirty Old Man.”
(It’s an expression that NIGHT MUSIC’s Charlotte could use for Carl-Magnus if only he were a decade or so older.)
Well, as the old children’s chant goes, “First comes love; then comes marriage; then comes baby in a baby carriage.” Next week, we’ll see how Oscar Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim dealt with children.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon.
