“In
Buddy’s Eyes"
Stephen
Sondheim, Follies, 1971
Performer:
Dorothy Collins, 1977 Milwaukee
Stephen
Sondheim, Follies, 1971
Performer:
Barbara Cook, 1985, Lincoln Center
Stephen
Sondheim, Follies, 1971
Performer:
Bernadette Peters, 2011
Stephen
Sondheim, Follies, 1971
Performer:
Marin Mazie, 2005, Hollywood Bowl
Stephen
Sondheim, Follies, 1971
Performer:
Scott Morris, 2013, Los Angeles
Stephen
Sondheim, Follies,1971
Performer:
Patti LuPone
Stephen
Sondheim, Follies, 1971
Performer:
Victoria Clark
Perhaps one the most memorable of all songs in the American musical theater is a rather short anthem to the love of Sally by her husband Buddy. In fact, Sally, as we soon discover, is totally unhappy in her relationship, as is the much unappreciated Buddy, who is having affairs simply because the wife to whom is so devoted is up every night dreaming and “going out of her mind” for his former friend, Ben, who, unlike Buddy, has become very successful in his careers.
Meeting up with all of her old Weismann
Theatre performers in a gathering that reveals a long record of the theater
performer’s travails and tales of survival, it becomes quite clear that hardly
any of them is completely satisfied, that their time since their original
performances as “Weismann girls,” many of them have gone on to live in worlds
that are not what they might have imagined, some of them going on to perform,
but most of them now forgotten.
It is one of the saddest and most cynical
of all of Stephen Sondheim’s numerous dark statements about love and happiness.
Yet Sally, originally performed by Dorothy
Collins attempts to delude herself early in the musical and even later, that
she is still very much in love with her husband, Buddy, despite her almost mad
desire for her former friend Ben.
It’s a fairly short song, but in “Buddy’s
Eyes” she quickly sketches a situation in which she is still a prized love that
“will never grow older,” and a situation in which the couple is eternally in
love, another one of Sally’s numerous fantasies. Sally is all about desire, as
we later discover, and this is just another example of her intense insistence to
be loved. It’s a wonderful imaginative dream on her part, but the song is so
absolutely incredibly beautiful that we (and her old friends) cannot help but
believe it’s true. Perhaps even Buddy is convinced of its reality, although his
"The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues,” performed so brilliantly later by
Mandy Patinkin, makes it clear it’s been an almost impossible love affair.
Dorothy Collins sings this song quite
wonderfully, as do numerous great Broadway singers, including Bernadette
Peters, Marin Mazie, Patti LuPone, and even a gay version sung by Scott Morris.
I like them all. But there is simply no match to the remarkable Barbara Cook
rendition in the 1985 Lincoln Center concert revival. Both of Sally’s songs,
which are equally memorable, are sung by her with such an amazing
interpretation that I cannot possibly imagine better performances. Cook takes
down any other performers with her breathless suffering. She makes you truly
believe that Buddy loves her even before she reveals that she loves,
desperately and quite insanely, his friend Ben.
Yes, she is “going out of her mind,” and
the fact that she can reveal that so intensely is something that American
musical theater will never encounter again. If Sondheim had written only these
two songs, “In Buddy's Eyes” and “Losing My Mind,” he would have been declared a
great composer—but then we all know so my dozens of other great numbers that
greatness is not even a concern. He’s truly a genius and a major force in
Broadway and other musical theater.
Los Angeles,
September 1, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment