Title: Bookend for Saturday Night
Product review: This show has the same problem as Boch and Harnick's "Rothschilds" - lots of craft and obvious talent, but who gives a damn that members of a family cornered the market using questionable methods? It's like spending Thanksgiving with those relatives of your own that you'd rather not.Artistically it's the same level as Sondheim's first show, "Saturday Night" - interesting but you wouldn't pay it much attention if it's author had never written anything else. Which makes his career arc rather like one of Sondheim's better shows - brilliant with stunning passages, but ending a bit clumsy, unresolved or just fizzling. A master artist like Sondheim you'd hope for some kind of epiphany, a "Tempest". "Bounce" isn't a "Tempest".The recording is a little threadbare - the mother wobbly voiced, sythesizer in lieu of orchestra, bland second lead. In the heightened world of musical theater this just isn't a Sondheim worthy story.
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