Stephen Sondheim

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Career

Burt Shevelove treated Sondheim to a party where Sondheim appeared before him but knew no one else well. Arthur Laurents, who had attended one of Saturday Night's auditions, was seen as a familiar face, and the pair began to talk. Laurents told him he was composing a musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with Leonard Bernstein, but they needed a lyricist; Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who were supposed to write the lyrics, were under Hollywood labor law. Though he wasn't a huge fan of Sondheim's music, he loved the lyrics from Saturday Night and considered auditioning for Bernstein. Sondheim met and played for Bernstein, who said he'd tell him. Sondheim wanted to write music and lyrics, and he worked with Hammerstein, who said in a 2008 New York Times video interview, "Look, you have the opportunity to work with very gifted people on a show that sounds exciting, and you could even write your own music." My suggestion would be to work. Jerome Robbins' West Side Story began in 1957 and ran for 732 performances. Sondheim expressed dissatisfaction with his lyrics, saying that they did not always match the characters and that they were often too ly poetic. Bernstein was originally known as a co-writer of the songs, but later on, Bernstein gave Sondheim solo credit as Sondheim had essentially done all of them. The show's review in the New York Times never mentioned the lyrics. Bernstein received three percent and he received one percent, according to Sondheim, who explained the royal divide. Bernstein recommended that the two percent percentage be fixed on evening, but Sondheim declined because he was content with just getting the credit. Sondheim later said he wished "someone stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth because it would have been nice to get the extra percentage."

Shevelove expressed disappointment on Broadway with a lack of "low-brow comedy" and mentioned a potential musical based on Plautus' Roman comedies as the opening West Side Story began. When Sondheim was curious in the possibility, he called a friend, Larry Gelbart, to co-write the script. The display went through a number of drafts, and Sondheim's next project interrupted it for a brief period of time.

After Irving Berlin and Cole Porter refused to publish a musical version of Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir in 1959, Sondheim was approached by Laurents and Robbins for a musical version of Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir. Sondheim agreed, but Ethel Merman, played as Mama Rose, had just finished Happy Hunting with an unknown composer (Harold Karr) and lyricist (Matt Dubey). Although Sondheim intended to write the music and lyrics, Merman refused to let another first-time composer write for her and instead demanded that Jule Styne write the lyrics. Sondheim, who was worried that writing lyrics again would pigeonhole him as a lyricist, sought help from his mentor. Hammerstein told him he should write a good learning job because writing a script for a character would be a good learning experience. Sondheim accepted; Gypsy opened on May 21, 1959, and went on to 702 performances.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sondheim's first Broadway performance for which Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics, opened in 1962 and ran for 964 performances. Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart wrote the book, which is based on Plautus farces. The show received six Tony Awards (including Best Musical) and had the longest Broadway run of any show for which Sondheim produced both music and lyrics.

Sondheim had appeared in three straight hits, but his next performance – 1964's Anyone Can Whistle – was a nine-performance bomb (although it introduced Angela Lansbury to musical theater). I Hear a Waltz? The Time of the Cuckoo, Arthur Laurents' 1952 play The Time of the Cuckoo, was planned as another Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with Mary Martin in the lead. A new lyricist was needed, and Laurents and Rodgers' daughter, Mary, begged Sondheim to fill in. Despite Richard Rodgers and Sondheim's agreement that the original play did not lend itself to musicalization, they began to write the musical version. The project was plagued by numerous obstacles, including Rodgers' alcoholism; Sondheim, who branded it the one project he regrets, then decided to write both music and lyrics only when he could write both music and lyrics. He asked author and playwright James Goldman to join him as bookwriter for a new musical. It was inspired by a New York Times article about a group of former Ziegfeld Follies showgirls, and it was later called The Girls Upstairs (and would later be Follies).

Sondheim semi-anonymously wrote lyrics for "The Boy From...", a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema" in the off-Broadway revue The Mad Show, 1966. In the show's playbill, the song was credited to "Esteban Ro Nido," Spanish for "Stephen River Nest," and the lyrics were credited to "Nom De Plume." On The Girls Upstairs, Goldman and Sondheim developed a creative wall, and Goldman suggested that Sondheim write a TV musical. Evening Primrose was produced, with Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr. It was written for the ABC Stage 67 anthology collection and directed by Hubbell Robinson on November 16, 1966. The musical was only written because Goldman needed funds for rent, not because of Sondheim and director Paul Bogart. The network and Sondheim's alternative, A Little Night Music, were both dissatisfied with the name and Sondheim's alternative, A Little Night Music.

Jerome Robbins offered to adapt Bertolt Brecht's The Measures Taken after Sondheim's general dislike of his work. Robbins wanted to reimagine another Brecht play, The Exception and the Rule, and asked John Guare to adapt the text. Leonard Bernstein had not written for the stage in some time, and his time as conductor of the New York Philharmonic was coming to an end. Sondheim was invited to Robbins' house in the hopes that Guare would persuade him to write the lyrics for a musical adaptation of The Exception and the Rule; according to Robbins, Bernstein would not perform without Sondheim. Guare asked: "Why haven't you all worked together since West Side Story?" Sondheim answered. "You'll see," Sondheim said. Guare said working with Sondheim was like being with an old college classmate, and he depended on him to "decode and decipher their bizarre way of working"; Bernstein worked until midnight, and Robbins only in the early morning. Bernstein's score, which was supposed to be light, was influenced by his desire to make a musical statement. Stuart Ostrow, who appeared with Sondheim on The Girls Upstairs, agreed to produce the show (now called A Pray By Blecht and later, The Race to Urga). An opening night was supposed, but Robbins begged to be excused for a moment during auditions. A doorman said he had gotten into a limousine to John F. Kennedy International Airport when he didn't return. "It's over," Bernstein burst into tears and said. "I was afraid of the whole project," Sondheim later said of this experience. In the worst way, it was arch and didactic." He wrote one-and-a-half songs and threw them away, the first time he did so. Sondheim turned down Bernstein and Robbins' offer to retry the program eighteen years later.

Sondheim wrote of Gypsy in 1959 in a Turtle Bay, Manhattan brownstone. A knock knock knocked on the door ten years ago while playing guitar, the artist was playing piano. Katharine Hepburn, his neighbor, was "barefoot" when she told him, "You've been keeping me up all night." (She was preparing for her first musical appearance in Coco). "I remember asking Hepburn why she didn't call me back, but she said she didn't have my phone number." According to my estimation, she wanted to stand there in her naked feet, suffering for her art."

Sondheim continued to write both music and lyrics for the theater, and in 1970, he began a relationship with producer Harold Prince, which culminated in a body of work that is considered one of the finest shows of musical theater history, with critic Howard Kissel remarking that the pair set "Broadway's highest requirements."

Prince Albert was the first director of Sondheim's Company. Company, a single man and his married friends (with a book by George Furth), had no clear story to tell, and instead the emphasis was on marriage and the challenges of being close to another individual. It opened at the Alvin Theatre on April 26, 1970, winning Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Music, and Best Lyrics after seven previews, and Best Lyrics. The company was revived on Broadway in 1995, 2006, and 2021/2022 (the last revival's previews were in November but then was shut down due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic; in the last of these, the main character was gender-swapped).

Follies (1971), a series by James Goldman, opened in April 4, 1971 at the Winter Garden Theatre in London, and went for 522 performances after 12 previews. The plot centers around a reunion of performers in Weismann's Follies (a musical revue based on the Ziegfeld Follies, which appeared in the theater between the world wars). Michael Bennett, who later developed A Chorus Line (1975), served also in choreography and co-direction. In 2001 and 2011, the show was revived on Broadway.

A Little Night Music (1973), with a more recognizable plot based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and a score that largely takes place in waltz time, was one of the composer's greatest commercial hits. It was described as "Sondheim's most innovative feat to date" by a Time magazine. Judy Collins' "Send in the Clowns," a musical number, became Sondheim's most popular song. On February 25, 1973, the Shubert Theatre opened on Broadway, with 601 performances and 12 previews. In 2009, Broadway was revived on Broadway.

Pacific Overtures (1976), with a book by John Weidman, was one of Sondheim's most experimental efforts: it explored Japan's westernization and was first published in a mock-Kabuki style. Following a run of 193 appearances, the show was revived on Broadway in 2004.

Toddis' book The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), with a score by Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler, is based on Christopher Bond's 1973 stage play derived from the Victorian original. In the spring of 2023, the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre will revive in Broadway, with previews starting in February and then opening in March.

We Roll Along (1981), one of Sondheim's more popular scores, is one of Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon's recordings; Merrily We Roll Along (1981), with a book by George Furth, is one of Sondheim's more popular scores; songs from the musical were recorded by Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon. "Understandable versatility" is a pillar of Steve's success, according to Sondheim's music director, Paul Gemignani. However, the show was not the success that previous collaborations had been: following a whirlwind of preview performances, the show opened to largely critical feedback and then ended after a short period of less than two weeks. Sondheim's score has been consistently updated and produced in the subsequent years, owing to the high quality of the show. "Sondheim had set out to write traditional songs," Martin Gottfried wrote. [Despite] that there is nothing normal about the music]. Later, Sondheim wrote, "Did I feel betrayed?" I'm not sure if I'd do it like that. The feeling around the Broadway neighborhood – if you can say it that way – was that they wanted Hal and me to fail." Best Worst Thing That Ever Happened, directed by Merrily cast member Lonny Price, Kitt Lavoie, and Ted Schillinger premiered at the New York Film Festival on November 18, 2016. Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Richard Linklater, began production in 2019 and is expected to continue on a regular basis over the next two decades to allow the actors to age in real time. The New York Theatre Workshop will stage an Off-Broadway revival from November 2022 to January 2023.

Merrily's loss greatly affected Sondheim; he was eager to leave theater and do films, create video games, or write mysteries: "I wanted to find something to satisfy myself that does not involve Broadway, dealing with all those people who despise me and Hating Hal." Bounce's three principals, Merrily, Sondheim, and Prince did not collaborate again until the 2003 production of Bounce.

Sondheim, on the other hand, decided "that there are better places to begin a show" and found a new collaborator in James Lapine after Lapine's Twelve Dreams off Broadway in 1981: "I was discouraged, and I don't know what would have been like if I hadn't discovered Twelve Dreams at the Public Theatre in particular," says Lapine; Lapine describes "for the avant-garde and for visually focused theatre in particular." George Seurat's first collaboration was held in the Park with George (1984), with Sondheim's music eliciting Georges Seurat's pointillism. Sondheim and Lapine won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the role, and it was revived on Broadway in 2008 and then in a limited run in 2017.

They worked on Into the Woods (1987), a musical based on several Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Despite Sondheim's being named the first composer to bring rap music to Broadway (with the Witch in the opening number of Into the Woods), he attributed the first rap in theater to Meredith Willson's "Rock Island" (1957). On Broadway in 2002 and 2022, Into the Woods was revived, as well as at the St. James Theatre.

The rhapsodic Passion (1994), which was based on Ettore Scola's Italian film Passione D'Amore, was Sondheim and Lapine's last collaboration on a musical. Passion was the shortest-running show to win a Tony Award for Best Musical with a string of 280 performances.

Lapine produced the HBO film Six by Sondheim in 2013, which he coproduced with former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, an old friend and longtime promoter of Sondheim's work. In the song "Opening Doors," Sondheim himself appears and performs as Joe, the cynical theater producer.

Assassins appeared off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on December 18, 1990, with a book by John Weidman. The display examined, in a replay fashion, a group of historical figures who attempted (with success or not) to assassinate President Barack Obama of the United States. After 73 appearances, the musical closed on February 16, 1991. "The show has sold out since previews began," the Los Angeles Times said, reflecting Sondheim's popular success among the theater audience. In his article for The New York Times, Frank Rich said that "Assassins will have to fire with sharper aim and fewer blanks if it is to shoot to kill." In 2004, Assassins appeared on Broadway for the first time.

The performance of Saturday Night at London's Bridewell Theatre was postponed until 1997. The following year, its score was released; a new version, with two new songs, performed off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre in 2000 and Jermyn Street Theatre in 2009.

Sondheim and Weidman reunited for Wise Guys, a musical comedy based on the lives of colorful businessmen Addison and Wilson Mizner in the late 1990s. Nathan Lane and Victor Garber's Broadway debut was postponed, but a spring production of 2000, starring Sam Mendes, was postponed. In a production directed by Harold Prince, his first collaboration with Sondheim since 1981, renamed Bounce in 2003. Despite poor reviews, Bounce's original version of the Broadway show on October 28, 2008. It came to a close on December 28, 2008, according to John Doyle, who was directed by him. The production received the Obie Award for Best Lyrics in 2009 as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.

Sondheim said in 2006 that he would not write new work: "No... a... ok." It's age. It's a decrease in energy and the fear that there are no new ones. It's also a growing lack of confidence. I'm not the only one. I've checked with other people. People want more of you, and they want to know you are aware of it, but you shouldn't be concerned." In December 2007, he said he was "nibbling at a few things with John Weidman and James Lapine" in addition to continuing work on Bounce.

Lapine created Sondheim: a Musical Revue, which was supposed to open in April 2009 at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, but it was cancelled due to "difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached to the project in raising the needed funds." Sondheim on Sondheim, the Roundabout Theatre Company's latest version, was produced at Studio 54; previews began on March 19, 2010; the Roundabout Theatre Company produced a new version. Barbara Cook, Vanessa L. Williams, Tom Wopat, Norm Lewis, and Leslie Kritzer were among the revue's cast members.

On A Bed and a Chair, Sondheim collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair, an Encores! On November 13-17, 2013, the New York City Center hosted a concert from November 13-17. It was directed by John Doyle with choreography by Parker Esse, and each piece was newly reimagined by Marsalis. Bernadette Peters, Jeremy Jordan, Norm Lewis, Cyrille Aimée, four dancers, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra conducted by David Loud were among the performers on the program. Steven Suskin called the performance "neither a new musical, a revival, nor a traditional songbook revue"; rather, a staged-and-sung chamber jazz interpretation of a string of songs; the majority of Sondheim's other Sondheim musicals are represented, including the less well-known Passion and Road Show.

Sondheim created the new song "She'll Be Back," a film adaptation of Into the Woods, which was later removed from the film.

Sondheim and David Ives would perform together in a new musical in February 2012, and the musical had "about 20-30 minutes completed." The show, which was tentatively titled All Together Now, was supposed to be based on Merrily We Roll Along's style. "two people and what goes into their friendship," Sondheim said of the project.... We'll write for a few months and then have a workshop. It seemed that 20 years ago, it was both experimental and new. I have a feeling that it will not be innovative and new any more. On October 11, 2014, it was announced that the Sondheim and Ives musical would be based on two Luis Buel films (The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) and would open (in previews) at the Public Theater. A reading for the musical took place at the Public Theater in August 2016, but it was revealed that only the first act was concluded, casting doubt on the rumored 2017 start of previews. In November 2016, Matthew Morrison, Shuler Hensley, Heidi Blickenstaff, Sierra Boggess, Gabriel Ebert, Sarah Stiles, Michael Cerveris, and Jennifer Simard attended a workshop. By the New York Post and other outlets, the working title had been confirmed as Buuel, but Sondheim later revealed that they still had no name. The Public Theatre denied claims that it would be included in the 2019–2020 season as it was still in development, but that it would be released "when it is ready." It was announced on April 27, 2021, that the musical was no longer in production. Sondheim revealed he was working on a new musical, Square One, with Stephen Colbert on September 15, 2021. Nathan Lane revealed that he and Bernadette Peters were involved in this new work's reading. Square One was adapted from Buel films in Sondheim's last interview before his death.

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