Stephen Sondheim

When I heard on the day after Thanksgiving 2021 that Stephen Sondheim had died, it was not unexpected, and not sad -- at 91, he had lived to see his work and his own self better-appreciated than ever -- but still the loss of someone I've revered for 50 years is heavy. I expressed gratitude. See How Stephen Sondheim Responded When I Told Him His Impact on Me. 

I've collected links to many tributes that came out soon after his death and reflected on them in Sondheim is Alive and Well.  Certainly a lot of the same material gets repeated as people write about his life and career.  But that's what we love about Sondheim's work: it's layered enough to keep revealing more detail as we look.  (President Obama said much the same thing.)   New details and opinions came up in The New Yorker after his death (Sondheim talks Poetry, and Other Surprises).

The rest of this page is a curated list of my postings about Sondheim, his work, and his colleagues.

First, I recommend a wonderful compendium of Sondheim video excerpts at the website of Macleans Magazine of Canada.

  Some of these video clips are from the original cast of FOLLIES that I've longed to see for 40 years, including the original "Sally" Dorothy Collins singing "Losing My Mind" and a grainy film of the original cast's performance of "Who's That Woman?"  Another clip shows the final minutes of Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in SWEENEY TODD on Broadway, bringing back memories of my seeing it the night after Cariou completed his tracks for the original cast album. 

Here are other items I've written.

Personal Gratitude and Lessons from Sondheim

  • Tribute to Sondheim as Teacher.  I sent a copy of this to Mr. Sondheim on his 80th birthday, and I've framed his brief response:  "Dear Scott Smoot, Thank you for sending me the article. I blush."
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  • Statement of religious personal connection to Sondheim's work, exemplified in "Sunday." 
  • Sondheim-Bernstein-Weill: "Saga of Lenny." Along with Sondheim's special lyrics for a birthday tribute to his old friend, I give some personal notes about my glancing personal connections to three of the parties involved.
  • We're Still Here reflects on the sense of community brought out by Take Me to the World, a virtual concert honoring the composer on his 90th birthday featuring performers recorded in their own homes under COVID-19 lock-down. Twenty years after the Kennedy Center's Sondheim Celebration in 2002, I remember how it felt to find my tribe. 
  • The Sondheim tribe had its own magazine The Sondheim Review. Its founding editor quotes a lot of letters from Sondheim, and I show off one of mine at Sondheim & Me & Me

Reflections on Sondheim's work: Themes, Craft, Comparisons
    INTO THE WOODS, St. Andrew's Middle School, Jackson MS 1991


    Reflections on Specific Shows:
    • Assassins My review of an excellent concert version in Marietta GA provides my best overview of the show. After I enjoyed Joe Mantello's production in 2004, I wrote mostly about the song "Something Just Broke" and the choice to cast Neil Patrick Harris as both Balladeer and Oswald. After seeing several productions around Atlanta, I conclude that low budgets and vocal weakness don't diminish the show's emotional impact. See Sondheim Mini-Festival in Atlanta.
    • Anyone Can Whistle. There are good reasons why the show flopped, and some good reasons to treasure it. See See What it Gets You.
    • Bounce See Road Show
    • Candide The 1974 revival of this was my very first Broadway show, and I loved it. I had no idea who Stephen Sondheim was, despite seeing his credit for "additional lyrics." My three favorite songs were ones he'd re-written for the revival: "Life is Happiness Indeed," "Best of All Possible Worlds," and "Auto-Da-Fe."
    • Company I played "David" at Duke in the late 1970s with Jack Coleman as "Bobby." I review the staged concert by the New York Philharmonic with a cast of stars led by Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone, broadcast to theatres from Lincoln Center in 2011. I dig deeper into one scene of that production to appreciate how Good Actors Make Good Company. I respond to revelations in a 1970 video of Elaine Stritch singing "The Ladies Who Lunch" 50 Years Later. I treasure my memory of the orchestrator John Tunick stepping up to conduct the Kennedy Center "Sondheim Celebration" production starring John Barrowman in 2002: the audience, packed with Sondheim fans from all around the world, stood and cheered for him in gratitude for his work.
    • Do I Hear a Waltz? Sondheim fulfilled a promise to his surrogate father Oscar Hammerstein to write lyrics for Richard Rodgers. The original cast album preserves a charming cast singing some appealing songs, but the consensus is, the show was an unhappy experience for all of the creative team and a downer for the audience as well.
    • Evening Primrose I read the story it's based on, I heard Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters in the recording of the score, and I know "Take Me to the World" and "I Remember" by heart. The most poignant moment for me in this made-for-TV musical is the expression of self-doubt sung in musical voiceover by the sheltered and shy girl "Ella" while her character stays silent: "Charles, am I pretty? Charles, am I dumb?"
    • Follies Thanks is my expression of gratitude for the 2017 production at London's National Theatre broadcast world wide in 2017. Haunting and Haunted is a mixed review of the production at Kennedy Center in 2011. Could any production live up to the memory of the original? I write what I learned about the original production from Ted Chapin's memoir Everything was Possible about his time as gofer for the creative team during the development of the show. After Follies was presented for the "Encore!" series in 2007, critic Ben Brantley refuted Sondheim's reputation for writing "cold" pieces. In Encore, I concur. (Three years later, Sondheim wrote in Look, I Made a Hat that his work with Harold Prince does strike him now as "cold," since James Lapine opened him up to a new approach.)
    • The Frogs I reviewed Susan Stroman's production starring Nathan Lane in 2004.
    • A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum It's a Hit! reviews a fine production by Atlanta's Lyric Theatre in 2010.
    • Gypsy would seem to be your basic showbiz musical. The 1959 musical tells how Rose Louise Hovick goes onstage a nobody and comes back "Gypsy Rose Lee," world-famous stripper. But, like the outfits she peeled on stage, there are layers. See Gypsy Stripped
    • Here We Are Before I've heard a word or note of it, I feel Dread and Hope for Sondheim's Last Show
    • Into the Woods I saw the original cast in 1987, directed and played piano for two middle school productions, and played keyboards with the pit orchestra for a high school production, so I know the show inside-out. The film, I write, is a Perfect Realization of the stage play. The song "Your Fault" crystallizes the entire show and also displays the qualities that make Sondheim great: See Sondheim's "Fault" and Virtuosity. (This is one of my most-read blogposts.)
    • A Little Night Music This cast album introduced me to Stephen Sondheim. A year later I got to play "Henrik" with Atlanta's School of Performing Arts in 1975. I've seen productions at the Kennedy Center in 2002, and in San Francisco a year or two later. In Two Revelatory Revivals, I reflect on seeing Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the Broadway revival from London in 2009. In 2012, I regretted that a young cast of music students couldn't overcome staging so bad that you won't believe my description of the final minutes of the show! See Sondheim Mini-Festival in Atlanta. (I saw the awful film, and met one of the stars, Hermione Gingold. She asked, "Did you like it?" Awkward! She answered herself, "I didn't.")
    • Merrily We Roll Along Featuring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez, directed by Merrily veteran Maria Friedman, the Broadway revival in 2023 seems to be a big hit with critics and audiences alike, even at exorbitant prices, redemption for Sondheim's worst failure. Redemption is now part of the story, in more ways than one. I analyze what the song "Growing Up" did for the show when Sondheim added it for a revised version in Rhymes with Integrity. I reflect on John Doyle's 2012 production in Cincinnati, How Did You Get to Be Here?. In Mary's Time, I review a staged concert featuring a young cast in Atlanta. I reflect on how Greta Gerwig makes Merrily We Roll Along an integral part of her film Lady Bird interwoven with elements of Catholicism.
      • During one Christmas break, I watched a documentary film about the young actors of the original cast, their trauma, and the triumphant 20th anniversary performance: see A Merrily Little Christmas.
    • Pacific Overtures A year after Broadway's only kabuki musical closed, I met Stephen Sondheim and asked how he had expected audiences to react to a show about the industrialization of Japan. Sondheim's Joy appreciates the show in light of his response.
    • Passion I saw the original cast onstage and on film. A different approach at the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration in 2002 focused more through Giorgio's eyes, a big improvement.  Producer Scott Rudin told how one song saved Passion.
    • Road Show I saw this show's earlier incarnation Bounce in Chicago; after hearing the new cast recording, I laud John Doyle's reshaping of the story: Road Show Arrives at Last. The production at Signature Theatre, directed by Gary Griffin, was a delight from start to almost finish: Road Trip to Road Show.
    • Saturday Night I had tickets, but a car crash nixed my Christmas trip to NYC. I've heard the album.  Nothing to say, here.
    • Sondheim on Sondheim and other revues. "You have to think the whole time!" is a complaint I heard from my parents' friends after they saw Side by Side by Sondheim, the first Sondheim anthology with wide circulation. I saw the original cast on Broadway, and met the man himself! In this article, I consider the latest anthology show in Sondheim on Sondheim, along with Putting it Together, Marry Me a Little and James Lapine's film Six by Sondheim. That one gets a full article by itself: Six by Sondheim, six Sondheim songs directed by six different filmmakers, intersperced with documentary footage. Signature Theatre live-streamed a new anthology during the pandemic in 2021, Simply Sondheim: I'll Drink to That. Someday, I may get around to writing about one-time-only events such as the "Scrabble" tribute in 1973, a "Lyrics and Lyricists" show, a Carnegie Hall tribute, and others.
    • Sunday in the Park with George I saw the show on Broadway in 1985, at the Sondheim Celebration production at Kennedy Center in 2002, and the Broadway revival 2006.  So Much Love in Their Words tells how the musical is a love story wrapped in an essay about making art, and so is writer-director James Lapine's memoir of creating it.   In Sunday, Art, and "Forever" I speculate why many people cry for the song "Sunday." The show is key to what I see as Sondheim's Religious Vision, with George and Dot as saints. With my fellow arts teachers' thoughtful Sunday-themed retirement gift, the show spoke to me in a new way: Children and Art: Sunday in Retirement with George.
    • Sweeney Todd I saw the original cast the day after they finished recording the album. Since then I've seen many productions, including the Kennedy Center version with Brian Stokes Mitchell. I can't imagine a better filming of Sweeney Todd than Tim Burton's, and yet it misses an essential element that any live performance provides: the audience. See First Reactions and Second Thoughts. I borrow from my 19-year-old self's journal entry after seeing the original production for Reliving 40 Years of Sweeney Todd.
    • West Side Story   Steven Spielberg's movie had me Falling in love with West Side Story again.  I include a list of ways that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner mitigated some flaws that embarrassed Sondheim.
    Sondheim's Collaborators, Comrades, and Competitors
    • Popular composer/arranger/performer Burt Bacharach might not appear to have much in common with Sondheim. They both worked with orchestrator Jonathan Tunick -- Sondheim wanted the arranger of Bacharach's Promises, Promises to do his musical Company the following year. Besides that, they both revered Ravel, studied with modernist composers (BB with Darius Milhaud; SS with Milton Babbitt), and drew on their wide musical vocabularies to write music that some musicians found difficult. I used to think that's what made their music good. See Boomers for Bacharach.
    • Paul Ford was the young teacher who got me into Stephen Sondheim when I was only 15. He played piano for many Sondheim musicals and concerts. Read about his memoir Lord Knows at Least I Was There.
    • Elaine Stritch saw her career rekindled when she starred in Company. I write about what I learned from interviews with her and a folk singer, her contemporary Jean Redpath, at Diverse Divas and the Art of Showbiz. I reflect on her signature song in The Ladies Who Lunch 50 Years Later
    • James Lapine spoke of friendship with Sondheim in an interview about Lapine's book Putting it Together, memories of their collaboration on Sunday in the Park with George.  
    • Lin-Manuel Miranda, receiving the Tony award for In the Heights, shouted out to Sondheim with a quote from Sondheim, "Look, Steve: I finished the hat!"  Later, he starred as "Charlie" in the Encores! production and recording of Merrily We Roll Along.  I respond to his book, music, lyrics and performance for Hamilton, As if Hamilton Needed More Raves. I respond to a production of his earlier show with Aurora Theatre Hits "the Heights."  Since the story is densely-packed in the score, do you need to pay $400 to see it live? For my answer, see  Hamilton on Mute.
    • Learning from Harold Prince: A Director's Journey focuses on the book by Carol Ilson about Sondheim's friend and collaborator Harold Prince. 
    • The Rodgers and Hammerstein Touch examines two moments from scripts by Sondheim's mentor.  I revised my opinion of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific after seeing the revival at Lincoln Center in 2010.
    • A Little "Light" Music: Guettel and Sondheim.  This is mostly an appreciation of LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA by Adam Guettel, a young composer who happens to be Sondheim's godson.
    • Sharing Sondheim's profession and birthday, Andrew Lloyd-Webber is often presented as Sondheim's rival.  Both have been important to me.  I reflect in Andrew Lloyd-Webber: The First Things That Come To Mind. After reading ALW's memoir Unmasked, I reevaluated my opinions.
    • The composer-lyricist of Rent Jonathan Larson was described in print as "Sondheim's protege." I see a connection; not enough.  Read Rent: Quaint. 
    • Cole Porter is one of the few composer-lyricists who get a ringing endorsement in Sondheim's Finishing the Hat. Sondheim's comments inform my appreciation, Believing in Cole Porter.  
    • Sondheim commented on dead lyricists in his book Finishing the Hat, but not on the late Betty Comden and Adolph Green, "because they are not dead to me -- their loss is too recent, and they were friends."  I wrote an appreciation when Betty Comden died: Make Someone Happy.
    • Frank Loesser receives praise from Sondheim that I include in my reflection, Frank Loesser's Musical Martinis. 
    • Among Sondheim's other song-writing friends were John Kander and Fred Ebb who broke ground with Harold Prince before Sondheim did, with Cabaret.  Thirty years later, Kander and Ebb wrote Kiss of the Spider Woman.  
    • When young Sondheim expected fellow lyricist Sheldon Harnick to admire the clever rhymes in "I Feel Pretty" during a rehearsal for West Side Story, Harnick reminded him that this immigrant girl new to English shouldn't be singing like Noel Coward, and Sondheim learned a lesson.  I blogged about the live streamed Broadway revival of She Loves Me, Harnick's collaboration with composer Jerry Bock and book writer Joe Masteroff, from 1963. 
    • Sammy Cahn wrote "Call Me Irresponsible" and hundreds of pop songs for the swing era, not for theatre.  Still, his pride in the craft of lyric-writing complements Sondheim's.  See So He's Responsible (12/2013).
    • Jerry Herman is mentioned just once in Sondheim's memoir, with others of his generation, as a fine craftsman.  Herman died at the end of 2019, and I wrote an appreciation, We Need a Little Jerry Herman.
    • Barbara Cook's performances in Follies, Sondheim on Sondheim, and her own concert program Mostly Sondheim make her one of Sondheim's premier interpreters.  It was not always thus!  In my review of Barbara Cook's memoir, I devote a section to the Sondheim connection.  
    • Leonard Bernstein wrote the wonderful music for Sondheim's lyrics to West Side Story, Sondheim's first show to make it to Broadway.  No composer pushes my buttons as strongly as Bernstein, and I do have some personal connections.  After I read his daughter's memoir, I wrote a reflection during the "Lentennial," with links to articles about his Mass and about a parody Sondheim wrote for the 70th birthday.
    • Jason Roberts Brown wrote a tribute for Sondheim's 85th birthday that alluded to the theory that Sondheim has spent his life "fixing" his mentor's artistic misfire Allegro. Brown's own  The Last Five Years is part of his lifelong effort to "fix" Merrily We Roll Along. Both bend time to tell the story of a broken relationship.  My ecstatic take on the movie links to my less sanguine consideration of a staged performance.
    • More on Jason Roberts Brown: He wrote music and lyrics for Parade, with book by Alfred Uhry.  My essay "So you want theatre to be uplifting?" responds to a remark I overheard at the exit after the show.  
    • Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty contributed to The Sondheim Review's series of songwriters' tributes to Sondheim's influence.  I review their breakthrough success Ragtime.  
    • Producer Scott Rudin Talks Sondheim on Fresh Air, telling about their public feud over an earlier draft of Road Show, and looking forward to a new musical in 2017. 

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