Composer-lyricist-dramatist Stephen Sondheim transformed the American musical.  With romantic musicals like those of Rodgers and Hammerstein prevailing on Broadway in the fifties and early sixties, Sondheim struck a new note, combining sophisticated lyrics with modern music that employs triadic, diatonic harmonies as well as dissonance.  The effect is an integrated dramatic work in which the lyrics and the score reveal depth of character as well as emotion.  You probably won’t leave the theater humming his tunes.  But if you saw the Royal National Theatre production of “A Little Night Music” you might well have felt that “Send in the Clowns,” sung by Judi Dench as Desiree (who has missed the opportunity to rekindle an affair) was the most theatrically perfect expression of lost love that you are ever likely to experience.

Of the latest Sondheim production, “Follies” at London’s Festival Hall, John Peter proclaimed in the Times, “This is still one of the greatest American musicals” and Sondheim’s “music and lyrics…confirm that he is among the greatest creators of musical theater.”  At a 1970s reunion in their former theater, now derelict and facing demolition, “Follies” brings together the Weissman (read Ziegfeld) chorines thirty years after their heyday to confront the ghosts of their past as young lovers and as performers, statuesque beauties parading in glittering, revealing costumes and towering headdresses.

            Center stage are two disillusioned married couples, Ben and Phyllis and Buddy and Sally, who, as their younger selves, buy wholeheartedly into the romantic dream of marriage perpetuated in the song lyrics and movies of the thirties and forties, expressed in some of their songs, cleverly echoed by Sondheim.  Sally’s “In Buddy’s Eyes,” idealizes her husband – who is faithless - and the big production number “Loveland,” promises eternal bliss in love and marriage. (Remember the celebratory wedding lyric of “Me and My Gal?” “Someday we’ll build a little house … in Loveland, for me and my gal.”)

 In addition to Sondheim’s pastiche of the songs and lyrics of this bygone era are haunting melodies like “Too Many Mornings,” jazzy patter numbers like “Lucy and Jessie,” and character-revealing songs like “Broadway Baby” and “I’m Still Here,” two tributes to survival in show business.

            Throughout, the optimism of the young couples is contrasted with the cynicism of their present selves.  That the youths who plan marriage are adolescents is suggested by their songs as they wait at the stage door, singing the spirited “Waiting for the girls upstairs,” and the chorines reprise “Waiting for the boys downstairs.”  Prone to romanticize, they never grow up, and Loveland is a never-never land that time will replace with a real world of tension, disillusionment, and desertion. 

 Sondheim’s dazzlilng lyrics only emphasize that book writer James Goldman’s dialogue is mundane, and when it just about disappears in the second act, the show takes flight. Here the characters express themselves in solo turns that also are interior monologues like “I’m Still Here,” “Losing My Mind,” and “Nobody Loves Me Blues” (sung by Henry Goodman as Buddy, brilliant as the clown). The other principals are Louise Gold as the acerbic Phyllis, Kathryn Evans as the sprightly, despairing Sally, and David Durham, too stiff as the wooden Ben.  Paul Kerryman directs the production, concluding August 31 at the South Bank Festival Hall, but hopefully it will relocate.( Phone: 020 7960 4242)  

The latest Sondheim revival on Broadway is “Into the Woods,” with Vanessa Williams as the Witch, an outstanding production.  Read more in Must See: New York.  Summer 2002 saw six new productions of Sondheim musicals presented in a fifteen-week season at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., “Sweeney Todd,” “Company,” “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Passion,” and “A Little Night Music.” Artistic director for the series: Eric D. Schaeffer.

“Pacific Overtures,” Sondheim’s musical about the 19^th-century mutual encounter between Japan and the West, was seen in July at the Lincoln Center Festival, produced by the New National Theatre of Tokyo.  Amon Miyamoto directed the performance,  in Japanese with English supertitles. In New York, an all-star revival of  “Follies” was seen on Broadway in 2001, following an award-winning revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” at London’s Donmar Warehouse.  Not content to rest upon his laurels, Sondheim has been working on a new musical, “Gold!”  Scheduled for a premiere at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, it is based on the famous (and infamous) Meisner brothers, one a con man and the other a renown architect who in 1920s Miami set the taste and style of houses that are still treasured today. 

  “Merrily We Roll Along” is based on a 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, about hope and disillusionment, practicality and ideals in show business. It follows the careers of three friends, one of whom sacrifices his earlier ideals and their friendship for success. In the musical’s Broadway debut in 1981 it closed after a few weeks, savaged by the critics.  Its hit revival at the Donmar, directed by Michael Grandage, was a vindication of its merits.

            Acclaimed as the greatest living American theater composer, Stephen Sondheim was honored on his seventieth birthday in 2000 with celebrations in New York, London, and elsewhere in the world. At New York’s 92^nd Street YMHA,  Mr. Sondheim discussed his work and special guests  performed his music.  Calling himself “a Broadway Baby” (the title of a song in “Follies”), Sondheim refused to make a distinction between opera and his work for Broadway, which he terms “musical theater.”    

A festival of Sondheim’s work on television, presented by the Museum of Television and Radio, extended from the composer’s early efforts, like his song for the puppet show Kukla, Fran and Ollie, called “The Two of You” (turned down by the producer) to selections from “Follies,” “Pacific Overtures,” and the Donmar Warehouse production of “Company.”

Life and Works

            Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born March 22, 1930, in New York City.  His talent for music was revealed at an early age, as he studied piano and organ, and wrote a musical at the age of fifteen.  Family friend Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist for composers Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, served as young Stephen’s mentor in musical theater.  Sondheim attended Williams College, where he wrote school shows and upon graduation in 1950, received a fellowship for further study in New York.

            His first professional dramatic work was as a scriptwriter for the “Topper” television series.  He made his Broadway debut as the lyricist for Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” in 1957 and two years later supplied the lyrics for Jule Styne’s music for “Gypsy.”  Both works had books by playwright Arthur Laurents.  “Gypsy” is scheduled for revival on Broadway in 2003, with Bernadette Peters in the title role of Rose, the mother of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

  Sondheim’s Broadway debut as both composer and lyricist was “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” a 1962 musical farce based on the Latin comedies of  Plautus, starring Zero Mostel as the clever servant.  A surprise hit, it ran for 964 performances.  Originally the veteran director George Abbot attempted to stage it.  When the work received unfavorable reviews in its out of town tryout, Abbot told an interviewer, “I think we could save the sucker if we threw out all the songs.”  Jerome Robbins, who originally had been asked to direct, was by then free to do so, and repeated the magic he had brought to his staging of “West Side Story.”

  It was Robbins who encouraged Sondheim to replace the light, romantic original opening number Abbot had insisted on --  “something the audience can hum” -- with the rousing “Comedy Tonight,” which set the tone for the smash hit that “Forum” became.  Mostel repeats his role in the 1966 film, which also includes Jack Gilford, Phil Silvers, and Buster Keaton.

            From “Forum” to the present, Sondheim has achieved acclaim as both lyricist and composer of many shows.  His 1970 “Company” treats love and marriage, as demonstrated by five couples, married, once married, or to-be-married.  Their mutual friend Robert, a bachelor, views the relationships as less than ideal but necessary to “Being Alive.” “Follies”(1971), demonstrates the past of the Follies performers by one type of music, while the score for their present life of disillusionment is an ironic comment on their earlier “follies.”  The  romantic dream they bought in their youth is exemplified by  the production number “Loveland.”   Songs include “Losing My Mind” and “I’m Still Here.”

            What are generally regarded as Sondheim’s two best musicals followed: “A Little Night Music,” in 1973, based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film ”Smiles of a Summer Night,” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” in 1979.  “A Little Night Music,” with a book by Hugh Wheeler, concerns three mismatched couples, one of the recurring triads in the story, which Sondheim reflects with a score in triple time.   As Leonard Bernstein did in “Candide,” Sondheim’s score incorporates musical forms of the era in which the action takes place, here the nineteenth century.  There are waltzes, mazurkas, a polonaise – “In Praise of Women” – and etudes like “Now.”  Often the characters express their emotions in songs that are interior monologues rather than expressions of emotion directed to another, as in the older musicals. 

As mentioned, Sondheim’s lyrics and music combine to create character, and this is especially true in “Night Music.”  Especially fitting for aging actress Desiree, who sings it, “Send in the Clowns” is based on a circus expression later extended to the theater: whenever a mishap occurs, like an acrobat’s fall – or a dead spot in a play – bring on the clowns or comedians.  The tragedy in Desiree’s life is that when Frederik wanted her, she was too busy with her career; now that she is ready, he has married a young girl.  At the song’s end, “they’re here,” refers to herself and Frederik as the clowns because of their foolishness.

For those who love language, Sondheim’s stylish lyrics are a joy.  He will use inner rhyme as well as end rhyme as when Frederik is trying to choose a book for his young wife to read:

DeMaupassant’s candor would cause her dismay;
The Brontes are grander but not very gay.

He is a master at following Hamlet’s advice to “suit the words to the action.”  Sondheim will use counterpoint in his music and in his lyrics for his multidimensional characters.  His countermelodies remind the audience of the work’s themes and motifs, and his repetition of words and rhymes serves the same purpose, both techniques creating depth of character.

            In 1979 “Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” struck another new note for musical theater.  A dark work performed by opera as well as by theater companies, it is based on legends and ballads about a nineteenth-century barber who wreaks revenge on those who have wronged him by slashing their throats when they are in his barber’s chair; then his friend Mrs. Lovett bakes them in her pies, popular for their delicious taste. Mrs. Lovett offers Todd some of her creations:

It’s fop.
Finest in the shop,
Or we have some shepherd’s pie peppered
With actual shepherd
On top.

As Todd darkly comments:

The history of the world, my sweet,
Is who gets eaten and who get to eat.

Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury originated the principal roles; George Hearn and Dennis Quilley also played the demon barber.  The harshness of life for the poor on the streets of London’s is reflected in the dissonance of the music as the work opens with “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” In contrast is the melodious “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” sung by Sweeney’s daughter Johanna.

            “Sunday in the Park with George” (1984) and “Into the Woods” imaginatively contrast past or legend with present reality.  Pulitzer-prize-winning “Sunday” in its first half deals with artist Georges Serat and his famous pointillist painting “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”  The painting is recreated in a stage tableau, and the various characters depicted in it come to life and act out their stories.  Part two brings the events up to modern times, with its stresses and conflicts.  The original stars were Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin, as both love interests and both Georges.

Around the world, “Into the Woods” is Sondheim’s most frequently performed work.  It appeals to children as well as to adults, even though the second half presents the darker side of well loved stories. In the first act, characters like Jack in the Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood enact their traditional roles; act two questions the assumption that the principals live happily ever after.

            Two revues that were compilations of Sondheim’s works were “Side by Side by Sondheim” and “Putting it Together.”  The first began as a benefit in 1975, and was so successful that it moved to the West End and to Broadway.  With material written up to and including “Pacific Overtures,”  “Side by Side” became a favorite with regional theater companies, and Sondheim’s name became famous beyond Broadway and the West End.  One issue of The Sondheim Review lists Sondheim productions in the regions of the U.S. and Canada: 80 plus productions of “West Side Story” in regional and educational theaters, over 100 of “Into the Woods” and 90 of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” 

“Putting it Together” (1992) is an update of “Side by Side,” and includes works from the later shows.  There is a framework of a dinner party, in which couples pair with each other, dissolve their relationships and then reconnect.  The highlights of course are the musical numbers. 

             “Saturday Night,” which appeared for a short run off Broadway, is based on a play by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein, “Front Porch in Flatbush,”about their third brother and his friends in Brooklyn in 1929.  They hope to make a fortune in the stock market, but their plans fail, as does the stock market, and they must return to their earlier life, sadder but wiser.   Some forty years ago, this was the first work for which Sondheim, then a writer for the tv sitcom “Topper,” composed the score and the lyrics.  But the work was shelved when the producer, Lemuel Ayres, died suddenly at the age of forty.               

Late works by Sondheim include “Passion,” and “Assassins,” neither of which earned critical approval on their first appearance.  Yet “Passion” (1994) was awarded a “best-musical” Tony, a revival was successful at the Donmar Warehouse in London, and it is one of the six offerings at the Kennedy Center in Washington.  It deals with  the passions of Giorgio, a young lieutenant in 19^th-century Italy, who must choose between his beautiful mistress Clara, and  terminally-ill, obsessive, homely Fosca.  “Assassins” is based on actual and attempted assassinations of American presidents, and is scheduled for a production in 2003.

 Mr. Sondheim is also a dramatist, having written, in addition to the “Topper,” series, a motion picture mystery, “The Last of Sheila” (1973), with actor Anthony Perkins.  He also collaborated on the book of “Sunday in the Park With George” with playwright-director James Lapine.  Sondheim was President of the Dramatists’ Guild from 1973-1981, and in 1983 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  He served as the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University, was awarded Kennedy Center Honors in 1993, and in 1997 received the National Medal of Arts Award from President Clinton.