Sondheim Supplement #30
An animal-themed crossword, an exclusive Road Show essay, and more...
Happy Friday, everyone!
This week, we have a bumper Supplement for you. Included below is an animal-themed crossword, an exclusive essay on “Addison’s Trip” (Road Show), more from our conversation with Lucia Spina, a look back at Michael Granoff’s powerful “Stephen Sondheim and Me” essay, and there’s our survey of This Week in Sondheim, too.
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Lyric Essay: “Addison’s Trip”
I’m on my way
At sea, but far from wrecked
I went astray
As who doesn’t, now and then?
But on my way
I’ve acquired some self-respect
Plus an old stone jug and a fakir’s rug
A chandelier that’s a bitch to lug
And a rattan stool and a coconut
And a whatnot which wasn’t worth it, but
I’m on my way again
Again!
In Road Show’s “Addison’s Trip,” Sondheim crafts a dazzlingly bittersweet portrait of motion without arrival, ambition without anchorage. The opening lines establish Addison Mizner as both navigator and castaway, someone who has mastered the art of being lost while maintaining the fiction of forward progress. “I’m on my way / At sea, but far from wrecked” sums up the buoyant self-delusion that sustains him through a globe-trotting spree of failures and disappointments.
Addison’s tone is defiant, almost giddy—a man who refuses to acknowledge defeat even as he drowns in it.