Aidan Cutler: GSA.

The Ladies Who Lunch; an Investigation on the

Representations of Women in Stephen Sondheim Musicals.
For almost 60 years now, the combination and integration of three elements of
performance (Singing, Dancing and Acting) has been used to communicate
emotions, provide lessons in morality and essentially to tell stories. Over this
course of time, many reviled and rejected social groups have made efforts to
combat against historically typical social oppression and as many forms of
performance art do, such as television programmes, films or plays: musicals are
no exception when it comes to not always representing all groups of people in
the most positive or truthful light. In this investigation, I will be focussing on
the representations of women in Stephen Sondheim Musicals and how the
female characters that he has written push towards breaking the limited and
outdated representations of gender inequality and the female sex in musicals.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim is the writer and composer of many successful

musicals including: "A little Night Music", "Sweeney Todd", "Company",
"Into The Woods", "Sunday in the Park with George" and "Follies" (To name
a few) and is renowned for the way in which he writes female roles. This is
most likely due to the fact that the way in which the roles are written leaves
open to analysis the classic representations of women within musical theatre,
allowing us to question if there is any progression or improvement in the
writing and portrayal of female characters.

*I would just like to fore mention a device that I will use to highlight the lack
of equality in the representation of women in Musicals throughout this
Aidan Cutler: GSA.

investigation .The Bechdel Test, created by Liz Wallace is a "litmus test for

female presence in fictional media" (TV Tropes, 2018) In this case the form of
fictional media being musicals. In order to pass the Bechdel Test, a musical
must tick off three simple criteria: It must include a minimum of two female
characters, whom talk to each other at least once and they must talk about
something other than men. (TV Tropes, 2018). I am certain that women in real
life do not spend the entirety of their time talking solely about men... so why
do so many musicals paint it to be this way presenting a poor representation
of the female sex, failing the test as a result.

Thinking about the classic representations of women, I would like to focus

on two of the clear archetypes of female characters in earlier musical

theatre - The Mother and The Ingénue . Many musicals feature characters that

fit solely into these archetypes including characters in the infamous Rodgers
and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma" (A Musical that just so happens to fail
the Bechdel test.) . These two archetypes (as were/are most female characters
in musicals) are very two dimensional beings that serve only one real purpose
in the story. In "Oklahoma", the character of Aunt Eller serves to provide and
functions solely as a "Mother Figure" and nothing more. The character of
Laurey serves as the Ingénue whose purposes seem to stop at creating the
stereotypical image of a love interest and giving herself up to resolve the
narrative of the musical. Another example of a musical that not only fails the
Bechdel Test, but also contains the Archetypal characters of The Mother and
The Ingenue, is the long running West End and Worldwide hit, "Les
Miserables". The Character of Fantine serves as the "Mother Figure" and
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even though she doesn't encounter her daughter Cosette in the production, all
of her actions point solely in the direction of protecting her. With the
character of Cosette, much like Laurey in Oklahoma, she merely acts as a love
interest for a male character in the story, and her entire timeline in the
production focuses on her desire for a man. So how do these two dimensional
and archetypal characters compare with those of Stephen Sondheim?...

The first example of a Sondheim musical that I want to focus on is "Into The
Woods". With Music and Lyrics by Sondheim and a book by James Lapine,
Into the Woods is a musical adaptation of the original Brothers Grimm and
Charles Perrault Fairytales. The musical contains the stories of Little Red
Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Cinderella and two original
characters - The Baker and The Bakers Wife. Watching the 2014 movie
version of Into The Woods, it was clear to see that Sondheim and Lapine have
very cleverly written their female characters so that they touch upon the ideas
of, but challenge the thoughts about, concrete archetypes. Representing the
women in the story as strong and independent, three dimensional and
individual characters (as opposed to the earlier given examples from Oklahoma
and Les Miserables). Firstly, The Ingénue... With her tragically beautiful
appearance, sweet-sounding soprano voice and poor lifestyle at the beginning
of the musical; Cinderella is immediately introduced to the audience as the
classic Ingénue archetype and although to some extent this is true, she can be
seen as much more three dimensional and progressive than the archetypal label
implies. Within the prologue of Into The Woods, Cinderella sings the lyrics -
"What's the good of being good if everyone is blind, and you're always left
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behind? Never mind Cinderella, Kind Cinderella, nice good nice, kind good
nice." (Into The Woods - Piano Conductor Score, 2018) suggesting
immediately that she feels trapped within the confines of her characters
narrative and the sheer anger/frustration in her voice when singing these
lyrics, implies that she wants to break this regime and change her characters
journey - and in doing so, progress further than the ingénue archetype role
normally would, re-writing her 'role' as a woman. The pivotal moment for me
in the story in regards to Cinderella, is when she overthrows the ingénue
archetype (thus presenting women, in general, in a better light) in her decision
to consciously leave her shoe behind on the palace step, rather than have it fall
off as it is said to have in the original versions of the story! Although it is still
the prince in the musical that searches for Cinderella so that they can be
together, this is due to a decision that Cinderella has made, rather than as a
result of a clumsy mistake. (Into the Woods, 2014). This is clear evidence of
Sondheim's feminist approach at writing female characters in order to subvert
degrading representations of women in the "media" as the growth and
development of Cinderella within Into The Woods challenges the idea of
ingénuic characters in older musicals and works to introduce a better well-
rounded and realistic woman... one who does not need a man to be complete!
Towards the end of the show, Cinderella's character seems to begin to morph
her character type into the ingénuic mother role as she sings the opening verse
of “No One Is Alone” to Little Red Riding Hood. She teaches
Little Red the lessons she has learned within the musical, like a mother would,
but not until she has learned the life lessons she had learned, in being
“Cinderella”. This type of female character is also explored in Sondheim’s
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Musical "Passion", a production that I saw myself in London in 2010 at the

Donmar Warehouse in London, at the time I was I think slightly too young to
understand some of the themes discussed within the show, but upon reflection
it is clear to see that there is a massively twisted idea about the representation
of male dependence. We are presented with the female character Fosca, a
somewhat alternate representation of this archetype, who gives up her own
personal feelings to be with a man, but with her unattractive appearance, and
alto vocal range, she again subverts this archetype. She becomes very attached
to Gorgio, the male protagonist of the production, and says to him that loving
him is not a choice she has made but it is who she is. In other shows this may
be seen as romantic, and although they partake in sexual intercourse within
the show, this results in the death of Fosca. This take on the Archetypal
ingénue works to present the dangers of naivety within this character type.
This is another great way that Sondheim uses feminism to challenge
stereotypes... instead of making the character more three dimensional and
"powerful", he instead sticks to the stereotypical character archetype, but uses
this to present danger. Allowing the message to be presented that if women
were always represented in the media realistically (instead of being presented
as two dimensional characters) situations such as this would not occur.

One final example of Sondheim manipulating female stereotypes in his

musicals includes the role of Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Lovett influences
Sweeney to murder for the good of her own business, and due to her immoral
influences, dies in the musical as a result. This is where my main
counterargument can be presented against Sondheim writing progressive
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female roles. You could argue that Lovett dies due to her attempt at
overthrowing male authority in the musical... However, Mrs Lovett is, again,
not presented as a typical two dimensional female character. Through her
motherly instincts for the character Tobias and her desire for Sweeney aswell
as the success of her business, she can be seen as a three dimensional character.

In conclusion, the portrayal of women in many Stephen Sondheim musicals

presents audiences with a more realistic interpretations of women and allows
them to see that they do not have to be oppressed, that they can have power
and that they do not have to conform to any previously connotated ideas
of femininity.

Sources
1) TV Tropes. (2018). The Bechdel Test / Useful Notes - TV Tropes. [online]
Available at:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest?from
=Main.TheBechdeltest [Accessed 6 Jan. 2018].

2) Into The Woods. (2014). [film] New York: Disney.

3) Into The Woods - Piano Conductor Score. (2018). [ebook] New
York, NY: Music Theatre International, pp.27-28. Available at:
http://www.ndpma.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Into-the-
Woods-2.pdf [Accessed 7 Jan. 2018].