| This study is an examination of the song lyrics Stephen Sondheim has created for four productions written for the American musical theatre--A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, Anyone Can Whistle, Company, and Pacific Overtures. A brief history of musical theatre introduces the work, stressing the dearth of critical attention and the importance of the genre in theatrical history. A general discussion of song lyrics follows, including the importance of lyrics to the musical play, their respective relationships to music and poetry, the technical exigencies facing the lyricist, as well as some of the formal elements important to a critic of the genre--imagery, diction, rhyme, and other prosodic devices. The chapter concludes with a description of Sondheim's life and career to date.;Chapter II is devoted to A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (libretto by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart), a musical based on several of the ancient Roman farces of Plautus. The lyrics are studied as they reflect the comic personae of the play, as well as their structural importance and the challenge to the songs to capture the attitudes and the pace of the genre of farce.;Chapter III examines Anyone Can Whistle (libretto by Arthur Laurents), describing its major themes, its original staging, and Sondheim's contributions. The lyrics are seen as reflective of themes and character, with emphasis on the difficulties the authors had in creating a meaningful entity out of many disparate concepts.;Company (libretto by George Furth), is studied in Chapter IV. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the lyrics represent the theme of the musical in ways more fully realized than in any of Sondheim's works. The first of many subsequent collaborations Sondheim has had with director Harold Prince, Company is seen in the study as a seminal work in his canon.;From this, the study examines each of the aforementioned works in individual chapters. Each chapter details plot and theme, as well as other factors pertinent to a discussion of the lyrics--e.g., staging, sets, dance. From these bases, each work is discussed through its lyrics, their function and form. "Function" here refers to the ways in which the lyric operates as an extension of character, plot, or theme; "form" refers to those elements of sound and sense which create the texture of the lyric--rhyme, imagery, diction, syntax, etc.;Chapter V describes Pacific Overtures (libretto by John Weidman). Because the musical fuses techniques of the Japanese kabuki theatre with those of American musical comedy, a brief history and philosophy of kabuki is included. The lyrics are also seen primarily as they reflect both of these theatrical styles, as well as their use as agents of character delineation and thematic pursuits.;The final chapter briefly summarizes the previous chapters and concludes with an evaluation of Sondheim the artist, both as inheritor of a mantle created by traditions begun in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and as the prime innovator and explorer currently in the field of musical theatre. |
