5.5 The Way We Were!

The Gospel of Musical Theatre

It may not be a musical, but it sure is close... It's The Way We Were!

It’s 1973. Watergate has happened. Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Arthur Laurents, and Sidney Pollack get together to re-create the weepy romcom in the non-musical—but musical-theatre-adjacent!—classic The Way We Were.

We talk about:

• The Conflict: Streisand & Laurents versus Pollack & Redford, and some of the behind-the-scenes drama that led to the creation of this classic.
• The Song: Marvin Hamlisch’s classic song that put the film on the map.
• The Laughter: What does it mean to sing, "so it’s the laughter we will remember?" Laughter emerges as a marker of class & race in this film. How does that marker intersect with the misty, watercolor nature of memory – and the danger of nostalgia?
• The People & the Principles: the film’s central conflict between personal relationships and principles, and how that conflict maps (and doesn't) onto religious systems. Is Christianity about people, or is it about principles?

You’ll hear:

• Barbra singing the film’s title song from the 1973 film soundtrack, and an excerpt from the 1998 episode of Sex in the City, Episode 18 (“Ex in the City”).

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