Wonderful Movie

Touches You

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

On Mandy Patinkin's 1987 CD Dress Casual, the music from Evening Primrose is sung by the two great interpreters of Sondheim's music: Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. It was a wonderful introduction to the songs. The CD itself suffers from something common in his albums, a too-large modulation in volume, which is forever causing you to turn the volume up, then down, then up again.But the singing itself is gorgeous. These are two magnificent voices singing music representative of Broadway's best composer, and it's a wonder we haven't heard the tunes more often in the many tributes to Sondheim. The plot idea is as old as Greek mythology, and over-used. Anyone interested in Sondheim at all should get a listen to this CD.

I agree that the score to Evening Primrose is excellent. There are only four songs, but every one is perfect. I've also seen the Tony Perkins version and agree that it's imperfect, but the 2001 recording from Nonesuch, with Neil Patrick Harris and Theresa McCarthy, is quite good. I think I prefer "If You Can Find Me I'm Here" to "I Remember Sky," but it's close.And then there's "Take Me to the World" and "When." Gotta love it. Sondheim just got better after this one, of course, but he was already brilliant in 1966.By the way, this wasn't a "special," in the conventional sense of the term. It was an episode of ABC's wonderful 1966-67 anthology series Stage 67. It featured plays by writers like Truman Capote and Murray Schisgal. It even featured a musical episode by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, though Sondheim blew those guys away. (Despite which, I love Burt Bacharach and Hal David.)"A world of skies that's bursting with surprise."

I first heard of this movie in a Steven Sodheim song book that I have which one of the songs was in, an amazing song called "Take Me To the World". I got a vague idea of the plot by listening to the songs and from what I could piece together from the internet and also the very helpful posting on IMDb (thank you whoever wrote that). Anyway it inspired me enough to go and see the film at the Museum of TV and Radio in NYC, an I have to say that it was worth it. While the casting creeped me out a little bit (a combo of leads from the Sound of Music and Psyco falling in love-- a little weird). The acting was good enough to make me forget about that and exceptionally well done for a made-for-TV musical from the 50s. While the quality was crappy even at the museum, I would love to get my hands on any copy of this as well and the plot (even though slightly creepy) and music are something that should be honored and possibly even remade. This was definitely worth the trip to NYC for me and I live in Seattle!!!

The 1966 TV special "Evening Primrose" still attracts interest because of its score by Stephen Sondheim and its leading performance by Sondheim's long-time friend and collaborator Anthony Perkins. I viewed a kinescope of "Evening Primrose" at the Museum of Television & Radio in New York City, where the curator told me that they receive frequent requests to view this show."Evening Primrose" is based on a short story of the same name, by English author John Collier. In the original story, a sensitive young man retreats from the cruel world by moving into a department store. He plans to hide in the daytime when the store is open, coming out only after closing hours at night, helping himself to food and clothing and writing materials from the store's merchandise. Then he learns that the store is populated by a Morlock-like group of subterraneans with the same idea but different motives, who spend their daylight hours hiding in plain sight, disguised as department-store mannequins. Among the living mannequins is a beautiful girl who was abandoned in the store as an infant and who has lived among the subterraneans for her entire life. The young man falls in love with her and tries to rescue her. But then danger looms...John Collier's story "Evening Primrose" is a classic of horror fiction, widely anthologised. But the TV special "Evening Primrose" dispels nearly all the eerie atmosphere of its source material. Anthony Perkins, cast as the sensitive young man, is too neurotic - too Norman Bates-ish - for the role to succeed. He's meant to be playing a normal guy among the weirdos; instead, Perkins manages to seem weirder than the (very normal and dull) actors who play the subterraneans.This project suffers from a small budget. "Evening Primrose" takes place in a luxury department store, but we're obviously on a tiny soundstage with a few props. When we first see the store's mannequins, we're meant to assume that they're REAL (plaster) mannequins, but they're obviously played by live actors trying to stand motionless. This gives us the impression that the producers were just too skint to obtain actual dummies, so they hired bit-part actors and paid them minimum scale (less expensive than renting real dummies) to stand still and pretend to be plaster dummies. Later, when we learn that the "plaster" mannequins really are flesh-and-blood denizens of this nocturnal realm, the surprise has been blunted by the clumsy early scenes. A well-known "Twilight Zone" episode ("The After-Hours") handled a similar idea in a much better way: use plaster dummies (with the facial features of real actors) to play inanimate mannequins, then bring on the real actors when the mannequins come to life."Evening Primrose" features some weird effects that are baffling rather than eerie. When Perkins first enters the department store, we hear a loud heartbeat: is it HIS heart? Somebody else's? Why are we hearing it? We never find out.Due to the short length of this musical (less than an hour), there are only a few songs ... but the Sondheim score is excellent. The best song is the poignant ballad "I Remember Sky", sung by the beautiful girl (who has lived in the store from early childhood) as she tries to recall her brief existence in the living world. This girl (the "evening primrose" of the title) is played by Charmian Carr, who gives a much better performance here than she did as Liesl von Trapp in "The Sound of Music". Make every possible effort to view "Evening Primrose". I wish it were available on commercial video: maybe this review will start some demand for it to be issued.