EVENING PRIMROSE LIVE-BLOG

[Note from Matt: "Evening Primrose" is an obscure, artily muddled 50-minute television musical from the 1960s with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.]

3:40 watching "evening primrose" with the best-ishs, matt and sara. the characters all sound like t george. i have nothing. I am egged on but then chastised for all that i produce. a genius misunderstood in 'its own time.'

3:45 main character dealing in poker and singing furiously in his own head while wearing a very long scarf. i'm reminded of a certain 1920's silent film star who shall not be named who met her end when an equally impractical piece of neckwear became entangled in the workings of her automobile and sent her to a better place.

3:47 confused by SCW's apparent attraction to the handsome and decidedly non-jewish lead. but he was apparently closeted so that it explains it all.

3:48 all the songs are the same

3:49 Ms. Monday is religious with crystals.

[Note from Matt: At this point, Jake Schorr abandoned his anemic little stab at liveblogging and took the nap he'd been threatening to take since he woke up. Apparently the soaring, tremulous strains of "Take Me to the World" pushed him over the edge. It's not much of a show--in fact, Sondheim's songs are the only points at which the actors melt, are allowed to emote. It's hard to imagine that Sondheim was once criticized as being cold and heartless. At one point in Primrose the male lead--a poet--struggles fruitlessly to find an appropriate rhyme for his true love's name.  He sings: "Ella, poets who suffer pain should fall in love with girls named Jane, not Ella!"  Beautiful, brainy stuff.]

3:59 Matt here. We are nearing the finale.
me: "I'm almost done with the note. Do you want to add anything?"
Sara (coldly): "I want to focus. (pause) Does that make sense?"

Caught in the Act

1:45 AM, VGQ, Providence, Rhode Island