I need to get out of the house more. That may sound funny coming from a guy who travels for a living, but when I’m home I turn into a real home-body. Which is how I found myself grinning outrageously at some Sondheim.
Back in the day before full time school we employed a nanny to look after the Brat Pack. This young lady became a very close member of our family and had a distinct impact on our children, not least of which because she’s heavily involved in musical theater. Our kids, and especially our youngest, were exposed to all sorts of wonderful music, great local productions, plays, musicals, whatever. Sunday was her 30th birthday, and lo and behold!!! Closing matinee of her production of Into The Woods.
I’d like to say right out of the gate that Stephen Sondheim is a freaking genius. Within the first 5 seconds of music it was blatantly obvious to me that it could only be Sondheim. No other writer for the stage today has that understanding of orchestration, that willingness to not go where the ear wants you to go but where it SHOULD go, that sense of musical pacing. He learned a tremendous amount from Bernstein and his elders and it shows. I am deeply familiar with Sweeney Todd and I heard so much in Into the Woods that could have been transferred directly into that older show without so much as missing a beat. Yet it was fresh, different. Here was a true master at work. As for the production – I’m sure there are many “fully professional” productions that don’t reach this level. Great sets, great cast, and happiest of all to me – a live orchestra. Bring it on!
As much as I enjoyed the production what struck me was the setting. We schlepped from the cozy confines of the river section of Minneapolis down to the Southwest suburb of Bloomington. Normally I avoid suburbs like the very plague but beggars can’t be choosers. Once we got there, though, my jaw dropped like a stone. Confronting me was the Bloomington Town Hall and Center For The Arts. I think I could sum up my response as : WTF?
Since the current narrative throughout the country is that the Arts are 1) evil; 2) useless; 3) a waste of money; and 4) all of the above, I was somewhat surprised to see these two concepts thrown together. But there it was, in an absolutely magnificent new building in the center of Bloomington. The Center is run by the Bloomington Fine Arts Council and it has eight resident organizations ranging from the Bloomington Symphony through the Angelica Cantanti (a children’s choir). There were two large performance venues, an art gallery currently showing a wonderful collection of illustrations from children’s books, a store……. it was a lovely beautiful setting. Somebody, somewhere, in a fit of inspiration, had married the idea of a new city hall with an arts colony, and decided that it should be the focus of civic life in Bloomington. Right on.
Why Bloomington? Or better yet, why not every where else? Now admittedly, I live in Minnesota. Here the Arts are NOT 1) evil; 2) useless; 3) a waste of money; and 4) all of the above. The Scandahoovians like their performings arts, visual arts, and everything else arts. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting another Liberal Arts college around here (no animals were harmed in the typing of that last sentence). It takes vision, however, and a strong commitment to the future goodness of society, to put together a vision like the City of Bloomington did. Arts at the center of public life.
And just imagine – every day the City Council of Bloomington shows up to work and those councilors walk through an Arts Center.
But that center suffered from a non-resident management corporation who knew little or nothing about how to run a Hall and I suspect it’s harder to run a complex. It suffered from lack of use it’s first year, poor management of $$$, and a myriad of other abuses. Hopefully, it is on track now because it is indeed a beautiful complex. Sometime it’s best to let an amateur group decide how to use a venue instead of the ‘professionals’. Someday I will tell of my first few months at SMH! But that’s another rant.