Getting Away with Murder
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Performing Arts
Getting Away with Murder Details
Amazon.com Review From the creators of the musicals Company and Merrily We Roll Along comes this non-musical murder mystery that played briefly in San Diego and New York in 1995-96. In addition to his many Tony- (and even Pulitzer-) winning musicals, Stephen Sondheim is known as a devotee of intricate puzzles. George Furth is known for bitingly witty dialog. The play tells what happens when members of a group therapy circle arrive to find their therapist murdered and evidence that one of them did it. They must work through their neuroses and discover the killer before, one by one, all of them are bumped off. Even the secondary efforts of the greats are worth analyzing, and now readers will have a chance to do what few theatergoers got to. Read more From the Back Cover Longtime musical theatre collaborators Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, who together created the landmark musical Company, have joined forces again to create a compellingly original thriller - Mr. Sondheim's first nonmusical play. Getting Away with Murder unfolds on a stormy night on Manhattan's Upper West Side at a group therapy session. The patients arrive only to find that their faithful, Pulitzer Prize-winning psychiatrist is missing. What unfolds is a classic whodunit in the tradition of Sleuth and The Mousetrap that harkens back to Sondheim's screenplay collaboration with Anthony Perkins on the cult film The Last of Sheila. Read more
Reviews
i'm a huge fan of sondheim's musicals and i quite like his and furth's collaboration on -company-. w/ that said, this play was quite disappointing. the play has the same type of new york characters as in -company-, but here they're much, much more like stereotypes and caricatures. as for the plot, i was expecting it to be a mystery which is quite untrue as the murderer is revealed before the act 1 curtain. the actual subtitle is "a comedy thriller" and although there are indeed some funny moments as well as some "horror" elements, there's just not enough of either. there are some attempts at social comedy, but those don't really go anywhere either. i'd recommend it only if you're a sondheim completist like i am.
