I have never seen the show on stage, although I did try to watch the filmed play version when it was on Netflix but I got distracted and never finished it. I enjoyed the movie a heck of a lot. Meryl Streep was fantastic and I agree with whoever suspected it earlier that she recognized how weak her voice was after Mamma Mia and took steps to fix it. I grew rather attached to the Baker’s Wife and was quite disappointed that not only did she get killed off, but we didn’t even get a death pose. I suppose it’s for the sake of the kiddies but c’mon!
I was surprised to read above that the actor who played Jack and who played Gavroche is 15- he looks 10. England seems to have a lot of young actors who delay maturity for professional reasons, and most get jobs on Game of Thrones.
Tracey Ullman wasn’t as annoying as I usually find her (does anybody else think she mugs too much?) and I love Christine Baranski in anything.
I do wish they’d had the line from the play from the stepsisters when it’s suggested (I think by Jack’s mother) they be sent to the giant to put them out of their misery: “We’re not* that *miserable!”
Saw it a couple weeks ago when the showing of Unbroken we wanted was sold out. I saw the stage version on American Playhouse and forgot much of it so I wasn’t really bothered by the missing bits other than the narrator not appearing on screen.
“Comedy Tonight” has been performed by Muppets and elsewhere other than in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
I’m not a huge Sondheim fan (I think he’s overrated*) but
[ul]
[li]Lovely[/li][li]What More Do I Need? (obscure, from “Saturday Night”, but his catchiest song ever)[/li][li]Pretty Women[/li][/ul]
I might be able to come up with a few more but yeah, there aren’t many. 
*He’s the definition of overrated–no matter how good he is–and he is good, don’t get me wrong, he couldn’t live up to the utterly insane hype Frank Rich and other Sondheim groupies have saddled him with. Gabriel, in Heaven directing the Choir Invisible with music of the spheres, composed by God himself, couldn’t live up the idiotic level of Sondheim hype. He’s an excellent composer, but he’s not all that. He couldn’t be.
Just out of curiosity, what production did you run lights for?
I recognize the great talent of Sondheim more than I enjoy his shows. With some the problem is the story and-or the book: Passion and A Little Night Music both have some great melodic moments (including of course Send In the Clowns of course) but, imho and to borrow a line from Blanche on The Golden Girls, “why the hell tell it in the first place” stories that I just can’t invest in (Scandinanian Downton Abbeyists and Handsome Soldier Fatally Sexes Up World’s Most Depressing Military Cousin just don’t do it for me).
Sweeney Todd is so over the top it’s hard not to like but so unrealistic it’s hard to take at all seriously.
It occurs that I have similar problems with Sondheim to the ones I have with Gore Vidal’s fiction: a sort of intellectual Pinocchio syndrome in that I find them structurally brilliant but unable to come to life. The characters aren’t emotionally real to me.
Unlike Vidal, Sondheim does have a couple of exceptions in his plays: Sunday in the Park With George has a couple of moments of real emotion, and Assassins has, in Unworthy of Your Love, a song that’s as beautiful as its singers are warped.
Like Vidal, Sondheim had an absolutely terrible and loveless relation with his mother. No idea if there’s any meaning there.
Would you believe that the very first place I heard the melody was in a commercial for Stouffer’s frozen food? (Or some other frozen food, I may be misremembering.)
Speaking of A Little Night Music, did anyone else catch the snippet of music we hear from the castle during the King’s Festival? It’s “Night Waltz,” from A Little Night Music.