by Nathaniel R
Back in the early days of the internet, when listserv discussions were the norm, I remember engaging in a robust discussion about what the best musical ever written was. Someone said "the one about the murderous barber and the meat pies" and online friends began riffing on that response. Answers followed like "fairy tale characters collide" "a commitment-phobe turns 35", "a French pointillist epic " and "the one about old showgirls reuniting / reiminiscing". It took a while before the spell was broken and a musical not written by Stephen Sondheim entered the discussion and even some of those, like "the rise of a burlesque star and her overbearing mother" and "two street gangs in New York City" had Sondheim's fingerprints on them. While the conversation began in a tongue-in-cheek way, the answers were genuine. It was hard to shake the realization that there were at least a half dozen shows by the same artist that could legitimately battle for the title of Greatest Show Ever Written. It was, quite frankly, awe-inducing.
I've never felt more spiritually transported in a Broadway house than during Sunday in the Park with George. And reverence is what everyone who knows what there is to know about musicals feels for Sondheim. Especially now. Nevertheless, a caveat: Reverence is not always the best way to approach art. Sondheim's work is complex and lively and varied enough to invite many moods in. Adjectives that are or should be frequently thrown at his work -- multi-faceted, polyphonic, panoramic, prismatic -- all suggest a difficult plurality...
The greatest gift Sondheim gave to the musical theatre was inviting audiences all the way in. That's ironic since the most frequent criticism of his work is that it is too alienatingly cerebral and non-hummable. The fact is that his shows and songs are emotionally complex, often an impossible mix of ambivalent and deeply felt, so if you want the most out of them you have to not just meet them halfway but enter them. There's no satisfying way to admire then from afar, which is surely why they are so endlessly rewarding to revisit, as you age along with them. It makes perfect sense that so many of his musicals (Company, Merrily We Roll Along, Follies, Sundey in the Park with George, Into the Woods) make the passing of time not just subtext but text.
To say that the world lost a giant and a genius this weekend when the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim passed away at 91 is an unavoidable understatement since it's difficult to overstate the man's gifts...
Sondheim at the piano during a West Side Story rehearsal in the 1950s
Born to well-to-do Jewish parents in New York City, he had a complicated childhood with an emotionally abusive mother and a distant father (who had fought for custody but lost). The celebrated lyricist Oscar Hammerstein (of Carousel, Oklahoma!, Sound of Music fame) became a surrogather father to him when he was still a child, setting him on his musical course.
After writing the lyrics to two mega-popular musicals that immediately entered the American songbook, West Side Story and Gypsy, he broke out on his own writing both music and lyrics from then on While he had success with only his second solo musical (A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum) it was three musicals back to back in the early nineteen-seventies, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, which cemented his status as the heir to Rodgers & Hammerstein throne. While Sondheim's shows were never quite as popular with general audiences as they were with artists, performers, and New York's theater-aficionado crowds, they neverthless deeply permeated popular culture. How many musical theater composers have ever won the Grammy for "Song of the Year". How many musical theater composers get spontaneous tributes within unrelated dramas like the double-Sondheim performance in the riveting Marriage Story (2019). Or get major all-star productions, however compromised (Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd) when Hollywood comes calling.
A break to list the body of work (but the reverence continues thereafter).
Stage Musicals
* if they have already had film versions
Saturday Night (1954)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)* Tony Award
Anyone Can Whistle (1964)
Company (1970) Tony Award, Grammy Award
Follies (1971). Tony Award
A Little Night Music (1973)* Tony Award, Grammy Award Song of the Year "Send in the Clowns"
Frogs (1974)
Pacific Overtures (1976)
Sweeney Todd (1979)* Tony Award
Merrily We Roll Along (1981)
Sunday in the Park with George (1984) Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Award
Into the Woods (1987)* Tony Award, Grammy Award
Assassins (1990)
Passion (1994) Tony Award, Grammy Award
Bounce/Road Show (2008)
Other Work and Collaborations
West Side Story (1957)* lyrics by
Gypsy (1959)* lyrics by
Do I Hear a Waltz (1965) lyrics by
Evening Primrose (1968) -television musical
The Last of Sheila (1973) -screenplay
Dick Tracy (1990) - Oscar Best Original Song "Sooner or Later"
10 personal favourite Sondheim songs
(in no particular order and changing all the time -I'd love to hear yours, too, as there are no wrong answers to this question but only the joy that answering it brings)
"Sunday" from Sunday in the Park with George
"Good Thing Going" from Merrily We Roll Along
"Being Alive" from Company
"I'm Still Here" from Follies
"Someone in a Tree" from Pacific Overtures
"Not While I'm Around" from Sweeney Todd
"Agony" from Into the Woods
"A Little Priest" from Sweeney Todd
"Geting Married Today" from Company
"Losing My Mind" from Follies
Sondheim with one of his most celebrated interpreters, Bernadette Peters, for "Into the Woods"
Long before the end of Sondheim's actual life it was already impossible to imagine the musical without him. His list of classics is enviable and the reach of his influence impossible to calculate. That's what happens when you redefine an entire artform.
Not a year has gone by since I moved to New York City in December 1998, that there hasn't been either a majorly buzzy Sondheim revival, a star studded birthday concert, a movie adaptation, or multiple unofficial tributes usually by way of long sets in random performers shows or covers of individual songs from his vast catalogue. One thing we've heard over and over again in personal tributes on social media this weekend, from civilians and celebrities alike, is how privileged we were to live in Sondheim's time. Most artists only get this kind of rapt attention and appreciation around the time of their lifetime achievement awards or deaths, but Sondheim has been inspiring this kind of attention for decades without pause. Shortly before he died he told Stephen Colbert (who had performed in a starry production of Company) the he was writing a new musical. Though it's sad that we will never have a 16th full length musical to enjoy, it's not quite a tragedy either. Sondheim's prolific career basically ended with Passion (1994) but in the twenty-seven years that followed his work has been consistenly reevaluted and performed. And we've barely scratched the surface when it comes to cinematic takes on his work (with so few of his musicals having made that difficult leap)
"Company," currently in previews on Broadway
Just two weeks ago my friend and I (also a Sondheim fanatic) attended the latest Broadway revival of Company. We were completely enraptured though we shared a major quibble --as one might with any singular production of any classic. We talked about it for a long time after and compared it to the Raul Esparza led revival (2004) and even to the original production, if only by way of D.A. Pennebaker's classic documentary Original Cast Recording Company (1970) since we weren't yet around for that debut. We agreed that the gender-swapping of the lead role might continue in future revivals since it works surprisingly well, managing to modernize the text without really changing it. I loved the interpretation and staging of "Ladies Who Lunch" though I wasn't expecting to (confession: I am infinitely more of an Elaine Stritch gay than a Patti Lupone gay.)
A week later, with the production still fresh, and a day before the abrupt news of Sondheim's death we were reommending it to friends over Thanksgiving dinner. I began to feel weirdly grateful for the elements of the current revival that I didn't quite love, a surprisingly pleasant reminder that there can be no "definitive" production of any of Sondheim's musicals any more than there can be a defining take on a Shakespeare play. There's too much room for not just the particulars of the audience but the artists with the glorious task of interpreting the material. It doesn't even feel like hyperbole to put the names side by side. Sondheim has died but like other immortals of the arts, he also can't. His work will live forever.
He finished the hat. Where there never was as hat. But, also: the hat will never be finished.