Stephen Sondheim, Quite Contrary: Mary Me a Lot
Rethinking assumptions about Maria, Mary Flynn, Marie, and Marianne
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In today’s MARQUEE: The Broadway Maven’s Weekly Blast: A) an essay about possible meanings of the four major Sondheim characters with “Mary” names; B) a Broadway Blast about Fun Home; C) a student review about the play Purpose; D) some results from the recent curriculum survey; and E) a Last Blast about Next to Normal.
ESSAY: For a man who famously never did anything twice, Sondheim's shows sure have a lot of Marys in them. In fact, four of the Broadway icon's 19 musicals have major characters with variations on that name. That’s a surprisingly high number for a single composer—the assumption would be that he'd work on more varied names in every show.
There's Maria (West Side Story), Mary Flynn (Merrily We Roll Along), Marie (Sunday in the Park with George), and Marianne (Here We Are). Their shows run the gamut of Sondheim's career, biography, and themes.
In his lyrics for the characters with these names, did Sondheim reference the Madonna? Was he playfully honoring his best friend, composer Mary Rodgers (Once Upon a Mattress)? Or is it just a coincidence, with no connection beyond the accidental? From what I've found, these questions are, well, virgin territory for Sondheim analysis, so consider what's below to be an initial attempt to find meaning in all the Marys in Sondheim's work.
(Of course, Sondheim didn’t write the books or originate the source material for all these shows—Maria and Marianne, in particular, weren’t his choice. But that only makes the pattern more intriguing. These Marys were handed to him, and he gave them voice: shaping their emotional arcs, their most resonant lyrics, their inner lives. The names weren’t always his—but what he did with them absolutely was.)
Maria: Maria, Sondheim’s first Broadway heroine, bursts into West Side Story with the purity and radiance of an icon. Young, impulsive, and untethered from cynicism, she embodies the Madonna in her aspect as virgin mother—not literally, of course, but symbolically: she sings love into being and then bears its loss with grace that feels divine. Her final moment, cradling Tony’s body in a clear Pietà echo, makes her not just a romantic lead but a spiritual figure—grieving, dignified, and suddenly eternal. For a Jewish lyricist stepping into his Broadway debut, to write such a character—so devoutly entwined with Christian imagery—was a bold, if perhaps unconscious, gesture toward universality.
Mary Flynn: Where Maria mourns what’s been lost, Mary Flynn mourns what never arrived. She’s the watcher in Merrily We Roll Along, standing by as promise turns to compromise and talent dims under the weight of time. Her role echoes the Madonna not in motherhood, but in sorrow: not the creator, but the observer, the one left behind to carry the memory. She bears nothing tangible, but everything emotional.
Marie: By the time Marie enters Sunday in the Park with George, she is past creation, past passion. She exists to carry meaning forward—through stories, fragments, names barely remembered but fiercely held. She embodies preservation as a sacred act, curating the past not for nostalgia, but for continuity. Sondheim, reckoning with what might endure of his own work, gives her the quiet sanctity of endurance—the grace of the one who remembers when no one else does.
Marianne: Where Maria began with love, Mary Flynn with longing, and Marie with memory, Marianne begins with absence. In Here We Are, she drifts through a space emptied of action, purpose, even causality. There is nothing to hold onto—no resolution, no direction, no anchor. What she’s asked to bear is not suffering, but suspension. She isn’t tasked with remembering or mourning—only with continuing. In this, Sondheim offers a final meditation: a character who embodies not what we do, but how we endure when doing ends.
These characters reflect the Madonna in her many forms: innocent, sorrowful, preservative, transcendent. And perhaps, layered beneath all that, they also carry a quiet tribute to Mary Rodgers—his closest friend, confidante, and the person he turned to when he needed honesty or comfort. Unlike Tony, Franklin Shepard, or George, these women don’t really drive the action forward—but they stay with us, which may be enough.
My gratitude to Grace Fay and Frank John for their assistance.
BROADWAY BLAST: In Fun Home, the keys in “Ring of Keys” aren’t just jangling on a belt—they’re one of the show's major metaphors. Keys, after all, open closets. When Small Alison sees a butch woman in a diner, she doesn’t yet know what she’s feeling, but she knows it matters. She sings, “Your swagger and your bearing and the just-right clothes you’re wearing…” and lands on the ring of keys—not flashy, not symbolic, just present. But in that everyday image is the promise of freedom. The woman may be a stranger, but she’s holding the keyring to a life Alison didn’t know she could live. It’s not a crush—it’s a click. And somewhere deep inside, a door starts to unlock.
STUDENT REVIEW: After the success of the Tony-winning Appropriate, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has come back this Broadway season with Purpose, a highly anticipated follow-up. The family drama centers around the Jaspers, a politically prominent family with ties to the Civil Rights Movement. Like many family dramas, Purpose does a good job at exploring complex characters, and the way they interact with each other. What makes it stand out from others, however, is the way Jacobs-Jenkins explores activism. With a modern-day setting, the show looks back at the Black Lives Matter movement, and compares it with the Civil Rights Movement, of which patriarch Solomon was a key participant.
We also see how different members of the cast participate in activism in their own ways: the main character, Nazareth, explores climate change through his photography, and his brother Junior wants to be a prison reform advocate. His friend Aziza was a participant in the Black Lives Matter movement. To me, the most interesting conflict in the show thus comes from the skepticism that Solomon expresses to his children about their activism. As such, what stuck with me is that Purpose reinforces the idea that there are many valid ways to advocate for things that you find important, something that isn’t explored very often on Broadway, and a good lesson for all of us who may want to explore different social issues in our own lives. — Tatiana Atehortua, Maven Scholar Spring 2024
SURVEY RESULTS: The Broadway Maven is hard at work planning the curriculum for the second half of the year, and in support of that effort we conducted a survey over the past two weeks about student interest in various classes. Some takeaways:
• Far and away the show students most want to learn more about is Come from Away, which 53 percent of respondents said they'd like a class on.
• The second-most requested show (44 percent) is also from the 2010s, the farce Something Rotten!.
• Sondheim, as expected, was very popular, with more than 35 percent of the respondents wanting to learn more about Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods, Company, and Sweeney Todd.
• Disney did not do so well, with only 10 percent of respondents wanting The Little Mermaid content, and about twice as many wanting Aida and Aladdin, which still put those shows at the bottom. Even smash hit The Lion King came in low on the list.
• Also drawing attention: a grab-bag of popular Broadway shows like Camelot, Chicago, Hadestown, and Avenue Q.
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LAST BLAST: In Next to Normal, “I Miss the Mountains” is Diana’s turning point—a moment of clarity in the fog of her treatment. The medication may stabilize her moods, but it also flattens her world. “I miss the highs and lows,” she sings—not because they were safe, but because they were real. It’s not a cry for chaos; it’s a longing for aliveness. And that makes her duet with Gabe, “I’m Alive,” especially haunting. Her imagined son feels alive—dangerous, thrilling, impossible to ignore—precisely because she no longer does.
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This is an interesting one. I would say, at the very least "Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing— Say it soft and it's almost like praying" is a strong vote for yes.