I went to see my buddy Desmond in Glen Chin's production of 'Totally Sondheim' last weekend. As hard as it may be to believe, I actually AM a bit of a fan of the musical theater... but more the Rogers and Hammerstein ones... my exposure to Sondheim is limited to West Side Story (which he only wrote the lyrics for), Frank Sinatra's version of 'Send in the Clowns' which I had on CD somewhere, and Sweeney Todd, which I saw Kristina Lao perform in about a year and a half ago (and eventually saw the movie later).
Although not a fan of most of Sondheim's work, I still enjoyed this production. Good to see some local talent getting a chance to perform. But unfortunately like the aforementioned local production of Sweeney Todd, I find that amongst the male leads, their local accent distracts from the singing (you end up missing 50% of the lyrics because of pronunciation is too hard to parse.
Not a problem with Desmond though, who played a narrator / MC connecting the pieces. He even partook a bit at the end (but not nearly enough!)
