Marry Me A Little

October 2, 2021 6:06 AM

Stephen Sondheim writes more songs than he uses, many cut from shows during development. An aspiring Sweeney Todd chorus member (Craig Lucas, who later wrote Prelude To A Kiss amongst other things) approached him about developing a show from this discarded material. Sondheim sat down with him and went through 77 songs before giving him the songs that form 1980's revue Marry Me A Little. One set, two apartments, two people, one lonely Saturday night... No official filming or audience bootleg for this one: here are Suzanne Henry and Craig Lucas and E. Martin Perry on the Original Off-Broadway Cast album. [Archive.org link, streaming and download links] Two Fairy Tales (cut from A Little Night Music) is really clever, and Pour Le Sport is delightfully biting.

Music Theater International has the synopsis for the original version of the show. More goes on to provide a story than just the songs indicate.

Since this is primarily known as an album, here are the original liner notes for the LP. It's an image, but it's readable if you zoom in. Interesting notes by Sondheim and Lucas about the songs.

The show was revised in 2013 with some songs dropped and new ones added, and the concept of the show the same but changed. Here are Lauren Molina and Jason Tam and John Bell on the 2013 Off-Broadway Cast album. [Archive.org link, streaming and download links] Two moments of note in this show... the song Rainbows, which was written for an abandoned film version of Into The Woods (long before Disney), and Ah, But Underneath (cut from Follies), in which Sondheim out-Cole Porters Cole Porter. [Also, this version of Can That Boy Foxtrot is significantly filthier than the first, and in my opinion the better for it.]

As for this new version of the show, Variety was not a fan, but also provides a good overview of the revamped plot.

To track changes to the show for different productions here's an overview of the show complete with various minor revisions and also links to all the things the most obscure songs are linked to. (The Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide hasn't been updated in over a decade, but it's an amazing resource.)

Finally, a tiny historical curiosity: Nilsson - Marry Me A Little

[For clarification: Marry Me A Little, the song, was not in the original production of Company. It was first publicly used in this musical. It was later added back into Company, and is now an official part of that book.]

posted by hippybear (7 comments total)

Today I learned two things about Craig Lucas.
posted by fedward at 7:28 AM on October 2, 2021

Gonna have to dive into this one later today. Thanks, hippybear. This Stephen Sondheim streak you've been on has been super interesting to explore!
posted by xedrik at 7:40 AM on October 2, 2021 [5 favorites]

Since Marry Me A Little is about cut songs, here are several songs cut from West Side Story.
You will recognize some tunes, but the lyrics are very different, like from an alternate universe. Other songs like "Girls ain't good for anything" have unique music and lyrics. The "Shrimps ain't good for anything" verse sounds a bit like Short People.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:43 AM on October 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

I actually had no idea why there was a show that had the same name as one of the songs from Company. Thanks!
posted by Tesseractive at 9:33 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

One of my favorite DJs gets obsessed with Sondheim songs. It used to be 'Ballad of Czolgosz' from 'Assassins', but this morning it was 'Bounce' for like the second or third time in the last eight shows. Not sure if I'm losing my hearing, but I thought it was Nathan Lane instead of Howard McGillin until I just looked it up.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:10 PM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

We did this as a little one-off show at my university's student theatre society; I did the sets for it. As I recall we did kind of a meta thing for the set... I made a big marquee sign with lightbulbs surrounding MARRY ME A LITTLE for the backdrop and I did oversize props, like a huge newspaper for the female character to read and a big grocery bag with oversize groceries for the male character to carry home. Kind of an acknowledgement that you're watching a stage show I guess (hey, what can I say, we were students). Lovely songs, I still listen to the soundtrack sometimes.
posted by cpatterson at 11:55 PM on October 2, 2021

Based on all the songs cut from Follies, it seems there was a whole version of it at one point that was full of double-entendre strip tease songs, perhaps also perhaps performances. It might have been a very different show at one time!
posted by hippybear at 8:08 PM on October 3, 2021