In 1997, Stephen Sondheim sat down with Library of Congress Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz for three days, pouring over the manuscripts of many of his shows. He had agreed to bequeath his manuscripts to the library and Horowitz stood in for future researchers who might have questions about minute details revealed on those pages […]
Read MoreEverything We Know (and Don’t Know) about Sondheim’s Surrealist Collaboration with David Ives
Editor’s note: Since the printing of this article, Sondheim is reportedly no longer collaborating with David Ives on the project. Back in the summer of 2016 a report that Stephen Sondheim’s new musical had received a secret reading at The Public Theater generated speculation in the theater community that we could be witnessing a new […]
Read MoreThe Ups and Downs of ‘Send in the Clowns’
Isn’t it rich? His career arc stretches from writing the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy when he was in his late twenties to mentoring Jonathan Larson and Lin-Manuel Miranda in his seventies and eighties. His oeuvre encompasses the very best of modern musical theater: Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Merrily […]
Read MoreA Gender-Bending Company
Stephen Sondheim and Company director Marianne Elliott discuss the new production. Since the original 1970 Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company won six Tony Awards, the musical comedy about life, love and marriage has been staged as written time after time through the years. Director Marianne Elliott’s revival is a game changer. […]
Read MoreNicely Done, Schmuck
The following article first appeared in The Sondheim Review in Summer 2010 as part of the Following Sondheim series which focused on Sondheim’s impact on the next generation of musical writers. Since the dawn of time, Man has told tales of horror and devastation. Perhaps they serve as a warning. Perhaps they draw a community […]
Read More“Some Kind of Obsession”
At 11 years old and in the wake of his parents’ bitter divorce, Manhattan native Stephen Sondheim was shuffled off to live with his mother in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. This dark period in the burgeoning musician’s life changed course when he befriended Jimmy Hammerstein, the son of the legendary Broadway composer (and soon-to-be mentor to Sondheim), […]
Read MoreSondheim’s Emotional Striptease
The orchestra plays as the lights slowly rise. The music is military, heavy with marching drums. Two figures are in a bed making love; they are nude. The music builds to a crescendo matching the lovemaking. The couple is attractive, as are their voices—his baritone to her soprano. Thus starts the musical Passion. The two […]
Read MoreSend in the Clones
The following article first appeared in The Sondheim Review in Spring 2010 as part of the Following Sondheim series which focused on Sondheim’s impact on the next generation of musical writers. Click here to read Stephen Flaherty’s companion piece, More to Hear. I suspect that if you swabbed the inside of most theatrical lyricists’ mouths […]
Read MoreMore to Hear
The following article first appeared in The Sondheim Review in Spring 2010 as part of the Following Sondheim series which focused on Sondheim’s impact on the next generation of musical writers. Click here to read Lynn Ahrens’s companion piece, Send in the Clones. I moved to New York City on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 1982, with […]
Read MoreChurch had a real good time in GYPSY
See a full gallery of Gypsy photographs here. At age 22, Sandra Church originated the role of Louise in Jule Styne, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy staged by Jerome Robbins. She retired from the theater in the 1960s to pursue a career in the visual arts. She now lives in California. She sat down […]
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