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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation. I'm David Armstrong, and my guest again this week is Richard Schoch, who is the author of the much-acclaimed book, How Sondheim Can Change Your Life. This is the fifth and final episode in this series, which I'm happy to say has garnered a great deal of response. Today, Richard and I talk about two of Sondheim's most controversial musicals, Assassins and Passion. Richard Schoch is professor of drama at Queen's University, Belfast in Northern Ireland, and is the author of eight books, both popular and academic, ranging from musical theatre to Shakespeare to Queen Victoria. I have to say that one of the great privileges and pleasures of creating and hosting this podcast over the past five years has been the opportunity to meet and interact and become friends with so many brilliant musical theatre authors and historians.

And I owe them so much because they inspired me to take the concept and themes of this podcast and of the course that I teach at the University of Washington School of Drama and expand them into my own first book, which is titled, Broadway Nation — How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical. As many of you know, it was published just weeks ago by Methuen Drama, which is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, and so far, I'm thrilled to report that the response has been terrific. The renowned author and Broadway historian Peter Felicia says that there's so much information in Broadway Nation that it could almost be called a textbook, but it's much too fun to be described as such.

Let's just say it's a textbook example of how to write about musicals and how to do it right. Thank you, Peter. I'm especially pleased that the publishers have released the book both in hardcover and paperback simultaneously and have priced the paperback at only $34.95. You can find it everywhere books are sold, but I recommend that you go to the publisher's website, bloomsbury.com, where you'll receive a 10% discount. If you enjoy this podcast, I know that you will love the book. Now let's talk about one of those Jewish and queer inventors of the Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim. Here we go. Let's move on to a challenging show, which is Assassins. It's been challenging from the moment it premiered.

Every incarnation had literal challenges of even getting onto the stage and being delayed and postponed and all those kinds of things for political reasons or political things that were happening in the world. You make the point that the Assassins themselves are presented not as darkly realistic drama the way we might expect. We think about who these characters are and how serious the events and the actions that they take, but the way they're presented is in a carnival extravaganza with, as you say, bright lights, bold colors, and calliope music, which is the opposite of what you might initially think when someone says we're going to do a show about the people who tried or succeeded in assassinating the president of the United States.

[3:40] Richard Schoch: That's right. I think one of the strengths of Assassins, which I have to say is one of my favorite Sondheim shows. The more I listen to it, the more I see it. I just think it's a work of genius that, again, feels more and more timely as the years go by. One of the strengths of Assassins, which is a history musical like Pacific Overtures is, it doesn't prejudge the characters. It doesn't cast them immediately into the roles of villains. It's not a dark history. In fact, it does the opposite. It is a glaring, bright lights story. Now, the fairground lights, you know, and all the games you play at the carnival, the strongman game or whatever it might be, this is the system, the rigged system, the rigged system in which the assassins find themselves trapped.

The gaudy, seductive Americana in which the assassins are destined always to lose. They never win at the shooting gallery or the fairground games. They are suckers, as the huckster of the fairground calls them at the beginning of the show. And the only victory they have, and it's not all the time, is to kill the president. But from the outset, the show sets up the assassins as people who feel the country they love has made a promise to them and then has broken that promise and left them alone, outcast, suffering, ridiculed, maligned, condemned, and they are not happy and they must do something about it.

[5:27] ♪ Musical number: "Everybody's Got the Right" ♪

[6:55] Richard Schoch: Now, this is not to take their side. It is only to say, what is their point of view? And here we must think, again, of Pacific Overtures. To tell the story of the assassins from the perspective of the assassins is not to endorse the terrible things that they did, not at all. But it is rather to investigate, well, why? Why did they do the awful things that they did? And why did they think that shooting or trying to shoot the President of the United States would bring about a better world? And the starting point for that, for each of the assassins, is to recognize that each assassin, in his or her own way, feels themselves to be an outsider, an outcast, evicted and by their homeland. And sometimes the image for this is so beautiful.

The ones who cannot get into the ballpark, that classic American venue. Baseball is the classic American sport. Every kid has been to a baseball game. And of course, baseball games start with the national anthem. They cannot get in. They are outsiders in their own country, and they're not going to take it anymore. So to me, this is the genius premise of Assassins. Let's flip the script and try to understand how and why these people turn to the dark side, because they didn't start that way. They consider themselves to be patriots. How did somebody who considers themselves to be a patriot end up becoming a traitor? And that makes for a wonderful piece of theater.

[8:37] David Armstrong: Well, as you say that, this carnival setting, and I hadn't totally thought about this before, is really fascinating because, of course, carnivals are inherently have a sort of a seedy undertone to them. All carnivals everywhere, anytime. There's a behind the scenes, you know, you don't want to go look there at what's really going on. And they are a rigged system. As you said, actually, my own mother ran away when she was 16 and called bingo at a carnival for a season. Yeah, this is back in the 30s, I guess, or the 40s, probably the 30s. When we would ever go to any carnival or where there would be something like that at the state fair, she'd point out how everything, the milk throw, you know, you throw the balls at the milk, all of it is rigged, so you can't win.

It's all tricked, in a way, or you're up against someone that you can never beat because they're experts and you're an amateur at what you're doing. And so that is a genius sort of metaphor for an unjust system, a systematic way of keeping people down and keeping people on the outside and never allowing them to get forward. So that is quite interesting. And yet it's all lights and sparkle and music. Yes, it's sort of the gift that keeps on giving because it sets up, if you will, the ideology that for America to be America, and I think Assassins is a very radical show, but the carnival scenarios sets up the ideology that for America to be America, there must be a permanent cadre of outsiders, whole populations of people who are quote unquote, not real Americans.

This is why I say Assassins feels more timely than ever, even though it's what, 35, the show is 35 years old. So the carnival gives you the idea of systemic exclusion, oppression and injustice, but then gives you theatrical exuberance, which allows the Assassins to be stars. They're not clowns at the carnival, but the bright lights and the exuberance and the thrill that comes with the carnival allows the Assassins to be showstoppers because they are heroes in their own minds. They are the central protagonist in a great story that is going to redeem America. What is it Giuseppe Zangara as he's dying in the lecture chair sings, you know, I'm no foreign tool, I'm American. But of course, the music is a tarantella, is an Italian song.

So he keeps saying, I'm American, I'm American, I'm American. But his environment represented here musically says, No, you're not. You're a foreigner. We don't like that. And then he meets his, he meets his end. And then you get Charlie Guiteau, who, although he's going to hang for killing Garfield has this amazing cakewalk number, look on the bright side, which comes out of the hymn he actually wrote, the historical Charles J. Guiteau wrote a hymn the morning of his death or the day before his death, I am going to the Lordy, which also becomes part of that part of that number. So when we see the Assassins, as showstoppers, as sort of theatrical virtual headliners, basically, headliners, a better word, they're vaudeville headliners, when we see them doing their routines, that gives us a moment to say, well, I can't write you off so quickly. I want to know what's going on. What is your story? And Assassins gives us that.

[12:04] David Armstrong: And the form of the show ties right into that, because it's basically a review. It's a vaudeville. There is, again, not a linear story. And it is sort of a classic thematic review format with scenes and songs, all built around a theme, the classic thematic reviews of the 1930s, in a way. And past and present and future all mix up, particularly in the Texas Book Depository.

[12:29] Richard Schoch: Absolutely.

[12:29] David Armstrong: So we're back to time doesn't make sense in Assassins. Loosely, loosely, maybe, but even then, not really. But it doesn't matter, right? Because in a review, you're not looking for chronology. Each episode is related.

[12:46] Richard Schoch: You take each one on its own terms, and I think as a review it works very well. And as you say, it allows each of the assassins to be a headliner. And then always with Sondheim, it's a little bit like what we talked about with Sweeney. It's like, oh, what exactly am I applauding? What am I finding so charming and funny? Because these characters really seduce us. John Wilkes Booth, the Ballad of Booth is an amazing, amazing number. He looks so handsome and he's so passionate about the cause of the South, and he's indulging in this myth of the noble confederacy. You know, "there was blood on the clover, we shed our lives for the South," and he kind of almost comes across as a sort of noble tragic hero.

And then in the most brilliant timing of a lyric, Sondheim makes him shout the n-word just when you are about to go to his side, when you're buying it, and you realize, oh, I'm buying white supremacy and human trafficking and the confederacy. Oh my god. But it's that word that must be uttered with full conviction by the performer. And in my view, although I understand others may have a different position, in my view, it should remain in the performance, not be percussioned out, because in the frame of the show, we must see Booth showing us who he really is—a violent white supremacist. And he uses that word so the audience can have the appropriate reaction, which is no, we're not having that.

And so that we can go on that journey of being seduced and then being pulled to our senses, betrayed. So that again, it all comes back to perspective, so that we can shift our perspectives. Instead of being inside the moment as the adoring spectator, we can step back and be outside of that moment and say, okay, well, I'm not seduced by the assassin, so I'm not gonna go on that journey with you. But now I think I understand how you got there. What you did, of course, was terribly wrong, and you paid the correct price for it. But now the question becomes not about individual crime or individual crime and punishment. The question becomes, how did we get here? Why does America always seem to end up in the same place where people who feel excluded, shunned, derided, outcast, "where's my prize," as Sam Bick says, people who feel they never get a prize—and this is another Sondheim lyric that's by design—how does America always seem to end up in this place and with always the same result?

Just that somebody leaps to violence to try and solve a problem that is much bigger than what can be solved by simply one gunshot or one thrust of a knife. The question is, how did we get to a place where again and again and again we seem to have this cycle of political violence, and nobody seems to care that we keep ending up here? So for me, the message of Assassins is there's an assassin lurking inside all of us. That is not the message; that is a banal point of view. The message is there are assassins still among us, and we just don't care how that came to be. That, I am convinced, is why Assassins is never going to be anything but an unsettling, edgy, provocative, contentious show, especially in the United States.

In the United Kingdom, it's actually had a better critical reception than in the United States because it is, for an American audience, Assassins is very tough to take. And I think one of the things that makes it so tough for us sometimes, again, making it hard for us to understand how we feel about these characters and these scenes, is he's using the American songbook again in a review-like format to complicate our reactions to it.

[16:56] David Armstrong: And you point this out in the book, that the score is made up of pastiches of Stephen Foster and Scott Joplin and John Philip Sousa and Woody Guthrie and even the Carpenters. So we're, of course, seduced by the songs, these familiar, inherently American song styles. And yet what they're about, what the assassins are espousing, is of course repulsive at the same time. So we've got this—that's why it's so unsettling.

[17:24] Richard Schoch: Absolutely. Again, this is the musical genius of the show, which is that it shines light on the American songbook. Instead of being consoling and almost trivial, a Fourth of July pageant, it's sort of, you know, the call is coming from inside the house. The problem with America is in America, is woven into the very myth and identity of America. So it is not the one bad apple, although we are constantly told the problem is the one bad apple and we just need to get rid of that one bad apple. That's not the problem. The problem is more intractable. The problem is structural, as we say today. The problem is embedded in the very shape and structure of society as we live it. There are people we let into the baseball stadium, and there are people that we lock outside the baseball stadium. That's the problem, not the one bad apple.

[18:20] David Armstrong: And you have a very interesting take on the song "Something Just Broke," which was a song that was not in the original production of Assassins.

[18:26] Richard Schoch: Again, coming at not only at the last minute but after the last minute, after the first production, this song was discovered and for many people has made the show work for people in a way that it didn't work prior to that. But you take a little exception with that song. It's not quite as easy as that either.

[18:49] Richard Schoch: "Something Just Broke" was added for the production at the Donmar Warehouse in London, directed by Sam Mendes. And Mendes said there should be a song here, America in mourning, a chain of grief, Sondheim called it. And I think the show works, but as you've hinted, I think it works in a different way than is typically supposed, or rather in a very Sondheimian way, it works in both ways at the same time. So it does deliver a kind of emotional catharsis or relief after all the murders and attempted murders, and we've just been through the Harvey Oswald. After all of that, we need a safety valve.

[19:28] ♪ Musical number: "Something Just Broke" ♪

[24:17] Richard Schoch: As so often happens, and I find myself returning to something we've talked about many times, which is these shows don't just live for one night in the theater. We listen to the recordings, we perform them ourselves. These shows live with us, either through performances, our own performances, or in our memories, in our minds throughout our lives. So the work of the show, the way it moves us, the way it gives us more to see, is never done. There is always something more, which is why I think Sondheim's works will never die. They are classics in that they are perennial, they are always fruitful and always revelatory for an audience, including an audience who knows the material very well. I'm convinced that there will always be something more to see with Sondheim, even for a show like Passion that has divided audiences for decades.

[25:06] David Armstrong: Well, that's the perfect segue to a show that I've been divided by. That show, you're gonna have to help me with this because I love everything about Sondheim, but Passion for me jumps the shark and I never recover from it.

[25:30] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Richard and I will be back with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[25:36] Richard Schoch: I love everything about Sondheim, but Passion, for me, jumps the shark and I never recover from it. I'll just tell a quick story. I took a great friend of mine who had never seen Passion before. We were in Washington, D.C. They did a production at the Signature Theatre there a number of years ago. Anna Gastauer was playing Fosca. And it was a fantastic production. It was a better production than the original Broadway production, I truly believe. About three quarters of the way through the show, my friend turned to me and sort of whispered, I don't know what you're talking about. This show is fantastic. And I said, oh, yeah, it is. Just wait. And then when we got to that moment, I remember he turned to me and his face was just his jaw was on the floor.

He could not believe what that show was trying to, in my view, foist on us as being, as your subtitle says, how to love. So help me understand how Passion instructs us in how to love. Not to put you on the spot, but it's OK. I suppose I should start not so much with the qualification, as a reminder for myself, as much as for anybody listening, that it is not a requirement that we love all Sondheim shows equally. Why? Because the shows only have meaning for us individually. We can admire Sondheim as an artist and one can admire Passion technically, even if it isn't one's favorite show, because the show only carries meaning in that moment when it leaps across the footlights and either lands or doesn't land with an audience.

And those responses can change over time. So on the one hand, I am liberating myself from the burden of being an apologist, a defender of Passion, because it would be ludicrous for me to say to anyone, well, you know, here's what you're missing. Here's what you don't realize. That would be ludicrous, patronizing, an absurd thing to do. So I would not in any way try to defend or evangelize for Passion. What I will do is what I think every Sondheim enthusiast will do is say, here's how the show touched me. Here's what it stirred in me, provoked in me. This was my reaction. Maybe some of it will chime with you, resonate with you. Maybe it won't do that at all. Such is the theater. But as I say in the book, and for me, Passion was a difficult chapter to write, because for me, it's one of the more confessional chapters where I talk about myself, not at length, but just enough so that the reader understands how and why the show hit me in the way that it did.

So the central character in Passion is Fosca, whose, of course, name means darkness or obscurity, to obfuscate, that's kind of where it comes from, who is ugly, sickly, unloved, crazy, hysterical, yet desperate to be loved. And she's the, I think his cousin of the regiment commander. So lives in a house with her Colonel cousin and all of the Italian soldiers. And she falls madly in love with a handsome young soldier named Giorgio, who thinks that she is repulsive, but he's nice to her because he's a nice guy. And he was brought up to be nice to everyone, especially to ladies. So there's some courtesy, and she either mistakes this or willfully misconstrues this. And long story short, basically extorts his love through all sorts of schemes and maneuvers and gets him to write a love letter addressed to her from him, just sheer craziness.

And meanwhile, Giorgio has a lover who is married, Clara, whose name means light. So we get the light-dark polarity. She's back in Milan, and he goes back a few times to see her, and they exchange letters. And Fosca's scheme, if you will, is to get Giorgio to stop loving Clara and to start loving her. And she will do anything. She will be aggressive. She will be submissive. Anything to win over his love. And the crazy thing is that by the end of Passion, she does. He does fall in love with her by the end of the show. And what many, many spectators have never been able to get their heads around is how does a romantic, young, handsome soldier fall in love with a conniving, manipulative, scheming, hysteric stalker?

How does that happen? But within the world of the play, Giorgio says, at the end, no one has ever loved me the way that you have, Fosca. You have shown me what true love is. So the audience is like, no, this cannot be. That is the moment. That is a bridge too far. True love is not stalking. It's not smothering somebody. It's not manipulating their emotions. That cannot be true love. But Giorgio says, you have taught me what love is. But Giorgio doesn't, in his very short song, No One Has Ever Loved Me, which is 90 seconds, but the lyrics are pretty intense. Giorgio for himself says, I thought I knew what love was, the love I had with Clara, my married lover. But that was sort of make believe love.

It was too convenient. It was too easy. There was no sacrifice to it. But you, Fosca, you've shown me what love really is. It is absolute. It is total. It is reckless. It doesn't take no for an answer. It is all powerful and all persuasive, and it dominates your life, and it doesn't make life easier. It makes it harder. It's not a feather. It's a bludgeon. But there's something about the totality of Fosca's love, which is immense and will never diminish, that strikes him as paradoxically the purest kind of love. That is the bridge the show asks the audience to cross. It does seem illogical and unrealistic and unsustainable. So I can well understand that audience is like, this story is just nuts. Music is very pretty, but it doesn't make any sense. Fosca is not really a lover. She's a stalker. She's an emotionally violent, not physically, but she's an emotionally violent person.

[32:20] Richard Schoch: Abuser in a way.

[32:22] David Armstrong: Yeah, she's an emotional abuser. She tries to ensnare Giorgio. So how could anybody fall for that? And yet what's fascinating is that clearly that's why Sondheim wants to tell this story. He even said, we are all Fosca.

[32:37] Richard Schoch: That's right.

[32:39] David Armstrong: I get it. It's another leap I can't make with him. But clearly this artist that I admire, and the show has some of the greatest music. Loving You is a perfect song. There's no more perfect song ever written for the musical theater than Loving You. And it's so short, and it's the hardest thing you could ever possibly do because it packs so much into not even 32 bars, I don't think.

[33:02] Richard Schoch: It's not. It's like lesson number eight, a short song written very late in the process. And musically, it is not ornate. All the flowery music is earlier in the show, especially when Fosca's first song, sometimes called I Read, which is a crazy tour de force. And the reason you know Fosca's had a change of heart and in a sense has grown up a bit herself is because her music is plain. She's not showing off in her music. I think for me, which is why I alluded to the parts of the chapter where I'm a little bit confessional, is for me, I guess I was able to cross the bridge because there was a moment in my life when I did feel like Fosca. I did feel like I was on the outside of love looking in, and I felt not to be too melodramatic about it.

But I did feel this wasn't going to happen for me. And maybe the memory of that just gave me a way of being able to deal with the craziness of Fosca and saying, yeah, I've been there, wanting desperately to love, but making a really bad job of it. You know, poor Fosca. It's not that she wants to manipulate or ensnare Georgia, she doesn't know any other way. Because nobody in her life has loved her. They've always treated her as a burden or as a child. And so she doesn't know any better. And all she knows is an emotional power grab, an emotional assault. As you said, it is a tough show to take just in terms of the arc of each character. And I think Sondheim, for his sins, adds a whole other layer of toughness, making it even harder for musical theater fans to fall in love with Passion, because he denies us all the things that we tend to look for in musical theater.

For instance, charming, likable lead characters. Fosca is not charming, she is not likable. Giorgio is charming, but you know, he's not so entirely likable either. He's a man-child who thinks pretty highly of himself. And Clara, a secondary but important role, she's an adulteress. She's carrying on an affair with Giorgio, even though she's got a husband and a child, and eventually she goes back to them. So we see her only in her moments of moral transgression. So nobody's particularly likable. The soldiers are mean to Fosca behind her back. Wordplay, that we associate with Sondheim, the sort of brilliant linguistic dexterity, is not found in Passion. The lyrics are mostly pretty plain. The emotions are intense, but there aren't puns or lots of clever internal rhymes for us to delight in.

[35:43] Richard Schoch: There's very little humor in the show.

[35:45] David Armstrong: There's very little humor, and it's not very good with the soldiers. And we don't even get those lovely Sondheim ironies that are in every other show. In Passion, people just tell the truth. Nobody really lies in Passion except the lie of the affair. But the characters don't really lie to each other. They tell nothing but the truth. So all these safe harbors of musical theater where we could hide out for time, Sondheim and Lapine take them off the table. So we don't even get that. And then we get an unlikable character, and then we get implausible demands of the characters, and it just becomes a lot. It becomes a lot to take.

[36:23] Richard Schoch: Yes, and I regret it because...

[36:26] David Armstrong: You sounded weary.

[36:28] Richard Schoch: It does. That show makes me weary because I'm disappointed in myself in some ways for not liking it more because there's so much about it that is genius. And yet, he can't get me there.

[36:41] David Armstrong: I don't think any theatergoer should ever criticize themselves or be disappointed in themselves because they ought to like show X whatever. We like it. We don't like it. The obligation is on the show. The show has to work. We don't have to do the work of the show. But I take your point, which is that for Sondheim fans, it's like, gee, there's always one show that is going to be the one not for me. And that's just how it is.

[37:12] Richard Schoch: And every other show has won me over, even if I started off not being engaged, like Pacific Overtures, as now I love that show. But maybe Passion will find a way at some point or I'll find a way to learn to love it. Let's talk about this sort of coda to Sondheim's career. And we've jumped how many years between Passion and...

[37:35] David Armstrong: You don't address Roadshow or any of its other many names in your book.

[37:40] Richard Schoch: I don't, though if I ever do a revised edition, I think I will. Because I saw a production of Roadshow, which is the last of the four names. It was Gold, Bounce, Wiseguys, and finally Roadshow, though I might not have gotten the order correct. But Roadshow was the last name was produced off Broadway. It was also produced in London. I think it was off Broadway 2008. But I saw in December production in London at a small but wonderful theater called Upstairs at the Gatehouse, which specializes in musical theater. And I was quite taken with Roadshow, which in a way for me sits alongside a...

[38:16] Richard Schoch: And the show we're about to talk about, Here We Are, as a kind of meditation on the collapse of the American dream. So if I ever get a chance to do a revised version of the book, I may very well include Roadshow. But Here We Are, which is produced posthumously first at The Shed in New York in late 2023, early 2024, and then just this past summer at the National Theatre in London. And I was fortunate enough to see both productions. And I remember the first time I saw Here We Are, and I had just that day delivered the draft manuscript of the Sondheim book and had lunch with my wonderful editor, Peter Borland. And on the last page of the draft manuscript, which ended with Passion, I typed, conclusion, do we need one?

And Peter said, yes, you absolutely need a conclusion to the book. You know, this lovely phrase, don't leave the reader without saying goodbye. So it was a chance to say goodbye to the reader. And I was thinking later that day, you know, what should I do? Should I try and summarize themes? I thought that would be a bit boring. The reader's already been through that. I didn't know really what to do for the conclusion. I knew I didn't want it to be too long. That was the only thing I knew. And then I went to see Here We Are that night, January 2nd at The Shed. And I wasn't there five minutes before I realized this is the conclusion. It's going to be the perfect way to end the book with Sondheim's ending, his last show produced posthumously. So have you had a chance to see it?

[39:47] David Armstrong: I did not get a chance to see it either place, I'm sorry to say. So I'm looking forward to having that opportunity somewhere sometime.

[39:54] Richard Schoch: They did a pro shot in London. I'm not sure if that's going to be on NT Live or some other platform, but I hope one way or another there will be some kind of video of Here We Are. There is the cast album. I don't think it's going to be a show that is going to be produced far and wide.

[40:10] David Armstrong: Yeah, that's my impression from the album as well.

[40:12] Richard Schoch: Yeah, it had a protracted and kind of difficult incubation genesis, which included during the pandemic and Sondheim, you know, being in his late 80s and finding it hard. He was a procrastinator to begin with. And now he was just with decreased stamina. He was getting frailer. He was just finding it harder and harder to get the work done. And there are various accounts depending on, you know, who you're reading or who you're talking to. But I think the long and the short of it is that Sondheim, he put down his pencil, he put down the legal pad, and he said, I'm done. That's it. And this is in the grand tradition of artists not finishing a work, the non finito, as visual artists would call it.

Michelangelo didn't finish all his sculptures. Leonardo put down his red chalk and didn't finish all his sketches. So the idea that Sondheim said, I'm done. I'm calling it a day. I'm putting my pencil down is not unique. It is part and parcel of the history of how artists work. It is also, although some people believe otherwise, it's not traumatic. It happens all the time. It is nothing for an audience to get upset about, nor, although other people say differently, nor in my view, is it an occasion to grieve. The fact of the matter is that Sondheim decided he was done. And so there really are no, there's one song in Act Two and a lot of incidental music. There are many songs in Act One, but really very little music in the second act.

I'm not saying anything your audience doesn't already know. But for me, a critical debate about Here We Are that obsesses on the lack of music in the second act is sort of grieving for that lack of music, which is really a way of grieving for Sondheim. It's the last music, the piano in the second act that, you know, that stops playing. To me, this is understandable because to feel sorrow that there are no songs in the second act and to mourn their absence is a way of honoring Sondheim and mourning Sondheim. But I also feel that we will get beyond the obsession with there are no songs in the second act. And that will stop being the main point of focus. And so that we can start to ask different questions about Here We Are.

And for me, I tried to start thinking about those questions sooner rather than later. And I found it highly intriguing and fertile, if you will, that Sondheim stopped his work. And I thought, this is so interesting. His last work is not finished, not unfinished. Unfinished is when you didn't get a chance to complete what you wanted to complete. He finished it. He just, you know, as far as he was going to finish it.

[43:08] David Armstrong: Exactly. He said, it's final. I prefer the distinction final, but not finished.

[43:14] Richard Schoch: Right. I could go on, but I'm not. I'm stopping. The work is final as it is. So once we kind of get into the headspace that this work is final, this is the shape in which Sondheim wanted it to be seen. And that's what all the evidence suggests. This work is final. Then we can start appreciating it in a different way. And there are many things to talk about in Here We Are. But one of them, I think, is it seems to me in the last 10, 15, 20 years of his career, there are three shows, Roadshow, Assassins, and Here We Are, all of which took a long time to get onto the stage and went through various revisions, aborted productions, what have you. So these are, you know, durational moments that these shows don't exist the month they opened.

For Sondheim, these shows existed over years, decades, more years than normally for a show. And at various points, they start to overlap. So in terms of kind of an artistic consciousness, it seems to me, and I don't want to be overly literal about this point, but there's something about Assassins and Roadshow and Here We Are sort of touching each other in various ways, or having common interests. And it seems to me that the common interest is the fraudulence and destruction, disillusion of the American dream. And, you know, and if I were asked to say, what is the shape of Sondheim's career, I would say, well, it seems to be bookended with shows that expose the dark underside, if you will, of American mythology.

And here I'm thinking, especially if anyone can whistle. And then Roadshow, Assassins, and Here We Are. So it's bookended by these dark sociological shows. And I might even put a bit of Gypsy in there as well, which is about, you know, the American dream and Manifest Destiny. And then in between, are all the shows we think of as the classic Sondheim shows about the psychology of character and the interior state of a character and going deep, whether it's Sweeney Todd or Desiree with tortured Franklin Shepard in Merrily We Roll Along. So I was just fascinated that at the end of his career, Sondheim once again, is always surprising us, always giving more to see by writing three shows that are amongst his most political in the broadest sense.

That is to say, they engage with public life, with social life, with communities, and how they don't work. So I think Here We Are is going to stand the test of time, not by the singular fact that it's his last show and the music stops in Act Two, not because of that, but because it is part and parcel of his deep and abiding interest in the myth of the American dream and how that myth is crumbling from the inside. So the last thing I'll say about Here We Are, and I discovered this, sorry, not about Here We Are, but about Roadshow, is there is a letter from Oscar Hammerstein to Sondheim in the late 1950s, because Hammerstein died in 59 or 60, so late 1950s, from Hammerstein to Sondheim. And it says, so interesting that you are thinking of writing a musical about the Meisner brothers, Addison and Wilson Meisner.

Here are my thoughts about that. But that's Roadshow. Roadshow, which was finally produced in 2008, is a musical about the Meisner brothers. Sondheim was thinking about that all the way back in the 1950s. So of course, you know, Oscar Hammerstein's fingerprints are on Sondheim's next to last show, Roadshow. But it also shows that this was a real arc or a real area of substance and concern for Sondheim throughout his entire career, not just the deep characters that we've come to know, and if not love, identify with, but also these broader sociological questions about how America works or how it doesn't. And that's why I think Here We Are is going to stand the test of time. And I would just suggest that Follies in the middle of all that is also dealing with those American Dream themes.

[47:43] David Armstrong: And it also has deep characterization. So Follies...

[47:47] Richard Schoch: Exactly, in both worlds. Yeah, really fascinating. It is so great to talk to you. We could go on and on. We've gone on quite a while.

[47:56] David Armstrong: I've enjoyed every minute of it. And when you do the sequel to your book with the chapter on Roadshow, come back and talk about that.

[48:04] Richard Schoch: Fantastic. I look forward to it.

[48:06] David Armstrong: Thanks, Richard. So great to, again, have the chance to talk to you about your amazing book, How Sondheim Can Change Your Life.

[48:13] Richard Schoch: Thank you, David. It's great to be with you and your listeners.

[48:20] ♪ Musical number: "Loving You" — performed by Richard Schoch ♪

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[50:47] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.