Word: showness
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...just hours ahead of the final, Moscow's riot police squashed a gay-pride rally, hauling away about 40 demonstrators. Critics said that clamping down on gay activists at Eurovision seemed decidedly out of tune with the show's mission to promote peace and harmony among the competing countries. As Rybak said himself, "Why did [the police] spend all their energy stopping gays in Moscow when the biggest gay parade was here tonight...
...stage it. In return, locals were privy to some camptastic performances. In a delightful English-as-a-second-language moment, Romania's Elena Gheorghe, the daughter of a priest, sang that her "hips are ready to glow, this record is so hot and I have so much to show." American burlesque star Dita von Teese stripped down to a black bustier to play the title role of Germany's entry, "Miss Kiss Kiss Bang"; she had originally hoped to go further, but officials warned her to respect "cultural differences." And the Ukraine's Svetlana Loboda, singing "Be My Valentine...
...genre's greats. But far from being a relic from a golden age, his work continues to gain new audiences and interpretations. This season saw major revivals of A Little Night Music in London and West Side Story on Broadway - where there's been at least one Sondheim show playing annually for the past five years. Add in smaller venues, there are hundreds - even thousands - of revivals of his shows in any given year. (See the top 10 plays and musicals...
...there may be more to come. Sondheim's "nibbling" at a couple of new shows with his two longtime collaborators, John Weidman and James Lapine, and is writing an annotated retrospective of his lyrics. But breaking fresh ground can be hard going, says Sondheim, whose latest work, Road Show - based on the lives of huckster brothers behind Florida's ill-fated 1920s real-estate boom - was more than a decade in the making. "You think every time you pick up your pencil it's going to be a little bit easier, but it isn't," he says...
...Road Show had a limited run and mixed reviews when it opened in New York City last winter, but that's an old tradition with Sondheim. Many of his original productions were commercial - and critical - flops the first time round. Critics found him cold, audiences found him élitist, and producers wanted tunes people could hum. Much of Sondheim's career has been spent waiting for everyone else to catch up. And they usually do. This season, fans in the U.S. can see productions of his works from the Midwest to Florida, or take their pick from hundreds of versions...