Source: Playbill
Date: April 27, 2008
Byline: Steven Suskin

Finn's Make Me a Song

MAKE ME A SONG: The Music of William Finn [Ghostlight 8-4427]

The many fans of William Finn have long realized this distinctive composer — the first of the post-1950 generation to burst prominently onto the scene, in 1981 with March of the Falsettos — is not creatively suited to turn out a new score every year or three. We are lucky to get new Finn shows five or six years apart. In the last decade or so, there have been a couple of not-quite-full-scale alternate evenings — Infinite Joy, at Joe's Pub in 2001, Elegies, a song cycle produced by Lincoln Center Theater in 2003 — that have brought us more or less up to date. Most importantly, they both resulted in satisfyingly good cast albums.

The most recent installment in this Finn parade is Make Me a Song, a revue that began its life in the summer of 2006 at Theaterworks (in Hartford) and opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages in November 2007. The show attracted a fair share of vehement fans along with a few naysayers — a not atypical reaction to Finn — and closed at year's end after a disappointingly short run. Count this viewer in the group who found Make Me a Song a fine evening's entertainment. As with other Finn shows that did not initially find a large audience, it is to be expected that the original cast album, on Ghostlight, will reach people who could not make it to the Off- Broadway run, and new fans for Mr. Finn. (Disclaimer: I wrote liner notes for the CD, and gladly so.)

The revue was conceived and directed by Rob Ruggiero, the associate artistic director of Theaterworks. The cast — most of whom transferred from Hartford — featured Adam Heller (as the Finn stand-in), Sandy Binion, D.B. Bonds and Sally Wilfert. Each has their solo spots on the album, and each does especially well with same. Darren R. Cohen is the hard-working solo musician, assaulting the keyboard in authentically-Finnian style.

The cast album, which includes the entire revue on two CDs, presents a fairly complete overview of Finn's career. (Missing, only, is any mention of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which at the time was still playing a block away. Material from that show was apparently incorporated into the London production of Make Me a Song, which opened in March 2008.) This means that many of the songs will be familiar to Finn fans, but in most cases they do well with repeated listening. These include selections from A New Brain, which was seriously undervalued when it was presented in New York in 1998. Talk about a show with subject matter that is hard to sell! But the thing is filled with wonderful work, even if it did feature a solo spot for Kristin Chenoweth singing about calamari. (Anyone who likes Finn's work and doesn't know this score, do treat yourself to a copy [RCAVictor 09026-63298.])

Make Me a Song does include some relative rarities. One is the title song, which Finn wrote upon the request of Mandy Patinkin (who never did sing it). "All I'm asking for is perfection," Finn writes; there's an epitaph, all right. (The revue opened with a taped version of Finn singing the song, segueing to a live performance by Heller. The CD begins with Heller performing the song, and ends with a bonus track of Finn singing it.) "I Have Found" comes from The Royal Family of Broadway, which ran into rights problems and was never produced; so does "Stupid Things I Won't Do," which might perhaps be a bit more familiar to the listener. From the twice-produced but never-quite-finished Romance in Hard Times comes "That's Enough for Me" and "All Fall Down," the latter being one of the composer's most powerful pieces. "When the Earth Stopped Turning" and especially "Anytime (I Am There)," both of which were included in Elegies, are what we should consider required listening.

Mr. Ruggiero also gives us a lengthy chunk of March of the Falsettos / Falsettoland. This is inevitable; how to do an evening of Finn without them? But how to take the songs out of context? The solution includes sections of ten songs, most of them understandably fragmented. "Unlikely Lovers," delivered intact, retains its full impact. Those who claim that Finn writes frenetic melodies over-filled with words might want to sit back and listen to this one.