“Johanna”
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performer:
Victor Garber (orginial Broadway production), 1979
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performers:
Len Cariou and Victor Garber and others (Johanna Quartet), 1979
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performer:
Cris Groenendaal, 1982 revival
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performers:
Jamie Campbell Bower and Johnny Depp and others (film Quartet),
2007
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performer:
Bernadette Peters
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performer:
Nathan Gunn
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performer:
Max Chernin, 2015
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Performer:
Josh Groban
Composer:
Stephen Sondheim
Perforner:
Blake English
With
its often minor-keyed orchestration, its crashing trumpets and tympani, and the
soaring tenor melody, Stephen Sondheim’s song, “Johanna,” from the darkest of
his many dark musicals, might be among the most beautiful songs ever created
for the musical stage.
I saw the original production with my
companion Howard in 1979; we were on an overnight trip to New York, and I
simply walked over to the Uris Theater and brought tickets for that evening to
the show, an event that will probably still be rolling around in my mind even
if I sink in Alzheimers. Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury are not a pair you
easily forget. But then, too, Victor Garber’s solidly lyrical voice (we will
soon be seeing the Canadian singer again in Hello,
Dolly! playing with Bernadette Peters as a substitute to Bette Midler) is
nothing something that cannot be ignored. His dulcet tones as the young sailor
Anthony Hope represent everything in Sondheim’s sad musical that Sweeney Todd
and Mrs. Lovett are not: love, faith, youth, and dreams. In his version of this
Maria-like repetition of her name, his sole goal is to “steal her away” and
bury himself in her yellow hair.
It’s simply a beautiful melody. But then
Sondheim transforms it in its reprise into something that is even more amazing:
a mini-opera sung as a quartet between Anthony, 
Sweeney, an old beggar woman right of our
Weill’s Mahagonny (actually Sweeney’s
now-mad wife) and Johanna herself, trapped in an insane asylum. The dramatic
import of this operatic grouping is so amazing that it is transformed into a
metaphor that speaks for the entire work, combining the hatred and obsessions
of Sweeney, the desperate pleas of the heroine (Sarah Rice), the total madness
of that heroine’s mother, and the pleading youthful hopes for love from
Anthony. Musical theater simply doesn’t get better than this, and it’s a song
filled with such a deep sense of possibility and utter failure that it quite
literally saves Sondheim’s work from its basic morbidity, just as his “Not a
Day Goes By” attempts to stave off the cynical tones of Merrily We Roll Along.
Sweeney, an old beggar woman right of our
Weill’s Mahagonny (actually Sweeney’s
now-mad wife) and Johanna herself, trapped in an insane asylum. The dramatic
import of this operatic grouping is so amazing that it is transformed into a
metaphor that speaks for the entire work, combining the hatred and obsessions
of Sweeney, the desperate pleas of the heroine (Sarah Rice), the total madness
of that heroine’s mother, and the pleading youthful hopes for love from
Anthony. Musical theater simply doesn’t get better than this, and it’s a song
filled with such a deep sense of possibility and utter failure that it quite
literally saves Sondheim’s work from its basic morbidity, just as his “Not a
Day Goes By” attempts to stave off the cynical tones of Merrily We Roll Along.
Who wouldn’t want to record this song, and
almost all males with a good voice and the musical range it demands had done
fine recordings, including Josh Groban, Max Cherin, and Nathan Gunn. In the
1982 revival, Cris Groenendaal rather over-dramatizes it and sings it a bit to
emphatically. But the film version, sung by Jamie Campbell Bower has a much
lighter and charming touch, that when joined later by Johnny Depp and other
film singers makes, once more, for a remarkable dramatic statement—even if the
blood punctuations of Sweeney’s throat cutting assaults seem a bit too much.
Depp is no Len Cariou, who could make a death ballad sound beautiful (I’d love
to hear him sing “Poor Judd Is Dead”), but he is no musical slouch, performing
the song with great musical panache.
ANTHONY
I
feel you Johanna
I
feel you
Do
they think that walls can hide you?
Even
now I'm at you window
I
am in the dark beside you
Buried
sweetly in your yellow hair
Johanna
TODD
And
are you beautiful and pale,
With
yellow hair,
Like
her?
I'd
want you beautiful and pale
The
way I've dreamed you were
Johanna
Bernadette Peters is one of the few women
who have sung this song straight on, and so beautifully that you might think
the “angels” who no longer prevail in Sweeney’s world are still there in her
voice.
After now listening to more than 10
versions of Sondheim’s melody, I may suffer many an upcoming night humming to
myself in my sleep.
Los Angeles,
September 21, 2017
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