When Stephen Sondheim was in Houston for the Houston Grand Opera production of Sweeney Todd in the 1980s, he barely spoke to those outside his inner circle at parties around town. But when he recently returned to participate in a conversation with New York Times columnist Frank Rich at Jones Hall, the iconic Broadway composer couldn't have been nicer. He seemed genuinely touched by the outpouring of affection from Houston fans who attended a private backstage reception hosted by Society for the Performing Arts and engaged in long conversations with several admirers.
Everyone might have been in good spirits because Ziggy Gruber of Kenny & Ziggy's had a table load of deli food at the reception. Gruber said business at his Post Oak deli had jumped 50 percent since his September appearance on the Food Channel show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
Sondheim and Rich got a standing ovation from the audience when they walked onstage for An Evening with Stephen Sondheim. But the cavernous symphony hall was not conducive to an intimate conversation. Sondheim also mumbled a lot, so it was hard to understand everything he said during the 90-minute program. But he did impart a few nuggets of wisdom to aspiring Broadway composers.
He told the audience the opening number can make or break a show. He cited A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, where he turned a flop into a hit by coming up with a new opening number, "Comedy Tonight."
"If you have the first right first five minutes, you can coast, " he said.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made history in 1937 as the first-ever animated feature film from the then-fledgling Walt Disney Productions. As fate has it, it may also be the last of the classic Disney films to receive a live-action remake (of their big movies released prior to 1970, only Bambi and The Sword in the Stone have not been remade). And given the quality of the live-action remakes, that is a good thing, as few have come close to recreating the magic of the originals.
This new Snow White(minus the now politically incorrect second part of the title) stars Rachel Zegler as the titular princess who, in truly classic Disney form, loses both of her parents at an early age, leaving her to toil under the thumb of her stepmother, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot). An encounter with Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), the leader of a group of bandits, opens her eyes to how bad things have become under the Evil Queen’s rule, and a kind-hearted action puts her on the Queen’s bad side.
Forced to flee to the nearby forest, Snow White is taken in by a group of seven (inexplicably CGI) little people, who are solely in charge of mining the area’s vast jewel resources. Snow White, the group of bandits, and the miners find they have common ground in opposing the Queen, and they soon set out to bring some sense of normalcy back to the kingdom.
In the hands of director Marc Webb and writer Erin Cressida Wilson, this new version of Snow White sits in a middle zone of being neither very good nor very bad. It plays on the nostalgia many viewers will have of watching the original when they were children, but also adds in some updates that could be viewed as subtle commentary on the modern world, even current American politics.
Versions of songs from the original like “Heigh-Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” remain, but songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (along with Paul Feldman) have added a slew of new songs to make the film more current. Some of them make an impression, like “Waiting on a Wish” and “Princess Problems,” but the issue that arises is they sound too much like the Broadway world from which the songwriters come, giving an anachronistic feel to the decidedly old-timey story.
The film maintains a pleasant and solid pace that keeps it watchable throughout. There are odd elements like never really getting to know the bandits — really just resistance fighters against the Evil Queen — and miners, but that’s part and parcel of the classic story. Snow White still doesn’t exactly exude girl power, but the film’s excision of the song “Someday My Prince Will Come” points to a certain amount of autonomy it gives her.
Zegler proved in West Side Story that she has musical chops, and she shows her worth as the title character here. She embodies Snow White’s changing demeanor well, and can really belt it in her signature songs. Gadot is fine as the Evil Queen, but it's a one-dimensional role with little nuance. Unfortunately, nobody else stands out, which doesn’t allow the film to reach beyond its traditional limits.
On the sliding scale of live-action Disney remakes, Snow White makes it on the positive side of the ledger, but not by much. It offers up a few new good songs, a solid lead performance, and a slight subversiveness epitomized by giving a new definition of “Who’s the fairest of them all.”
