Dagens Nyheter 100213
By: MARTIN NYSTRÖM
The American musical composer Stephen Sondheim turns 80 this year and is praised at Berwaldhallen. Sondheim has never sounded better than this on a Swedish stage.
In the second season of the now much talked about TV series “Mad Men” the year is 1962 and everyone are suddenly keen to see “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum” that has just had a highly acclaimed premiere on Broadway. A musical farce with a story in free fall by the young Stephen Sondheim who has previously made the lyrics to “West Side Story” and who has now started his career towards becoming America’s most recognized and award-winning musical composer. ”A funny thing …” was also the first musical that I myself saw on Broadway a few decades later, with an unforgettable Nathan Lane starring in a show where the energy in the stalls had a given jaw-drop factor.
Now when the Radio Symphony Orchestra, fronted by Helen Sjöholm and Peter Jöback, make a tribute to Stephen Sondheim, who turns 80 in March, they begin with music from “A Funny Thing …” – but with newly written lyrics explaining that “this will not be a ballet or a choir, there will be no effects and nothing that interferes.“ Only a dedicated and passionate performance of a bunch of his very best songs and acts.
And it must be said at once: Sjöholm and Jöback has been spurred to great deeds and the Radio Symphony Orchestra will not be anything less either under the conduction of Anders Berglund. Indeed, Sondheim has never sounded better than this on a Swedish stage.
Because despite his greatness Sondheim has never, like Andrew Lloyd Webber, really made it big in Sweden – except for occasional productions of for example “A Little Night Music,” “Into the Woods,” “Company” and “Sweeney Todd”. He’s a bit too sophisticated and elegant for the general musical audience and too non-commercial for the producers. But at the same time he is considered something of a God among musical artists themselves and is a bit of an alibi for the true artistry of the musical genre. I remember sometime in the 90’s when the ensembles from two commercial musical productions in Stockholm “ran away” in the middle of the season and set up a self-funded Sondheim Evening at the Oscar Theatre.
A lot of that feeling is also in the show at Berwaldhallen when Sjöholm and Jöback tell of Sondheim’s works and perform at the top of their abilities in song after song. When they spur ahead into the often syncopated flow of words and make the wishes fly or make a stop in a moment of breathless awe.
Perhaps most of all in the duet from “Passion” that makes me dream of a Swedish staging of this darkly romantic and totally unique chamber musical based on a movie by Ettore Scola. And why not with Sjöholm, Jöback and Malena Ernman as the three main characters. In my opinion this is a given sequel to this lovingly brilliant “Congratulations” to Sondheim in Berwaldhallen.