In this musical theater episode, Broadway stars Raúl Esparza, Melissa Errico, Donna Lynne Champlin, Kerry O’Malley, Andrew Arrow, and writer Adam Gopnik contemplate Stephen Sondheim’s singular ability to blend lyrics and music.
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by Stephen Sondheim
Mademoiselles…
You and me, pal…
Second bottle…
Ah, she looks for me…
Bonnet flapping…
Yapping…
Ruff!…
Chicken…
Pastry…
Yes, she looks for me–good.
Let her look for me to tell me why she left me–
As I always knew she would.
I had thought she understood.
They have never understood,
And no reason that they should.
But if anybody could…
Finishing the hat,
How you have to finish the hat.
How you watch the rest of the world
From a window
While you finish the hat.
Mapping out a sky.
What you feel like, planning a sky.
What you feel when voices that come
Through the window
Go
Until they distance and die,
Until there’s nothing but sky
And how you’re always turning back too late
From the grass or the stick
Or the dog or the light,
How the kind of woman willing to wait’s
Not the kind that you want to find waiting
To return you to the night,
Dizzy from the height,
Coming from the hat,
Studying the hat,
Entering the world of the hat,
Reaching through the world of the hat
Like a window,
Back to this one from that.
Studying a face,
Stepping back to look at a face
Leaves a little space in the way like a window,
But to see–
It’s the only way to see.
And when the woman that you wanted goes,
You can say to yourself, “Well, I give what I give.”
But the women who won’t wait for you knows
That, however you live,
There’s a part of you always standing by,
Mapping out the sky,
Finishing a hat…
Starting on a hat..
Finishing a hat…
Look, I made a hat…
Where there never was a hat
Mademoiselles…
You and me, pal…
Second bottle…
Ah, she looks for me…
Bonnet flapping…
Yapping…
Ruff!…
Chicken…
Pastry…
Yes, she looks for me–good.
Let her look for me to tell me why she left me–
As I always knew she would.
I had thought she understood.
They have never understood,
And no reason that they should.
But if anybody could…
Finishing the hat,
How you have to finish the hat.
How you watch the rest of the world
From a window
While you finish the hat.
Mapping out a sky.
What you feel like, planning a sky.
What you feel when voices that come
Through the window
Go
Until they distance and die,
Until there’s nothing but sky
And how you’re always turning back too late
From the grass or the stick
Or the dog or the light,
How the kind of woman willing to wait’s
Not the kind that you want to find waiting
To return you to the night,
Dizzy from the height,
Coming from the hat,
Studying the hat,
Entering the world of the hat,
Reaching through the world of the hat
Like a window,
Back to this one from that.
Studying a face,
Stepping back to look at a face
Leaves a little space in the way like a window,
But to see–
It’s the only way to see.
And when the woman that you wanted goes,
You can say to yourself, “Well, I give what I give.”
But the women who won’t wait for you knows
That, however you live,
There’s a part of you always standing by,
Mapping out the sky,
Finishing a hat…
Starting on a hat..
Finishing a hat…
Look, I made a hat…
Where there never was a hat
CREDIT: “FINISHING THE HAT” by Stephen Sondheim.
Rilting Music, Inc. (ASCAP) All rights administered by WC MUSIC CORP.
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
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French painter Georges Seurat’s most famous work, "A Sunday on La Grand Jatte — 1884." This painting was the inspiration for Steven Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George, which first opened on Broadway in 1984. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
Actor Raúl Esparza played the role of George, a fictionalized version of Georges Seurat, in a 2002 production of "Sunday in the Park with George" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In the musical, George struggles to decide between his love for a woman named Dot and his love for his art—a struggle that Sondheim so poignantly captures in his lyrics to the song “Finishing the Hat.” Sings Esparza, “Let her look for me, to tell me why she left me—as I always knew she would. I had thought she understood. They have never understood, and no reason that they should.”
In the musical, George works obsessively to perfect a single hat, to paint it just right. “When is a piece of work finished?” asks actor Kerry O’Malley. “Never. He's the work. The work will always exist. This piece, this painting might finally be shown, or hung in a gallery. But the work doesn't end, because there's another hat to be made.”
Sondheim’s lyrics are certainly poetry, but, as actor Donna Lynne Champlin points out, their performance as song adds yet another layer of complexity. “Part of the magic about Sondheim is the fifty-fifty of the lyrics and the music. It’s two parts of a map that you have to put together to get the complete poetry.”
Sondheim’s “Finishing the Hat” isn’t just about the painter George Seurat: “It’s about anyone who’s absorbed in their work to the degree that they pay a price,” observes Adam Gopnik, staff writer at The New Yorker, in conversation with actor Melissa Errico and host Elisa New at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in NYC.
"Sunday in the Park with George" is about the highs and lows of artistic creation. Actor Melissa Errico, who played the role of Seurat’s love Dot in a 2002 production, considers the poetics of Sondheim’s lyrics, and their insight into the mind of the artist. “He was able to create a poem that brings to life that sublime sensation of being lost in creativity.”
