There was a significant buzz around the New York City Center’s Gala in October 2016 when movie star Jake Gyllenhaal took on the leading role of Georges Seurat in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George. He had performed as Seymour for City Center’s Encores! presentation of Little Shop of Horrors […]
Read MoreFORUM: Energy and Anarchy in Philadelphia
Burt Shevelove informally referred to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the 1962 Stephen Sondheim musical he co-authored with Larry Gelbart, as “A Scenario for Vaudevillians.” It’s only fitting that an internationally known impersonator of legendary vaudevillian Groucho Marx, Frank Ferrante, would essay the role of Pseudolus for Walnut Street Theatre […]
Read MoreLondon’s MERRILY came to Boston
In keeping with the reverse-chronology concept of Merrily We Roll Along, let’s start with the ending. It was gorgeous in Maria Friedman’s production at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston (Sept. 8-Oct. 15, 2017). A sky just this side of black was studded with stars, but even brighter were the ones in the eyes of […]
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 […]
Read MoreMaria & Lenny & Steve
Does Maria Friedman remind you a little of Barbara Cook? Though her blond hair is a short bob rather than a flowing mane, Friedman seems to be reinventing herself in mid-career just as Cook did in her 50s, and Stephen Sondheim’s music is playing a big part. From Sept. 19 to 23, 2017, she brought […]
Read More(Hal) Prince of Broadway
Stephen Sondheim once joked that an album of his chart-topping songs would have to be titled Sondheim’s Greatest Hit, since he had only one, “Send In the Clowns.” Hal Prince, the legendary producer and director, has had a few more. Prince of Broadway, the revue that finally had its Broadway opening (Aug. 24, 2017) after […]
Read MoreThe Aussie Assassin
“He was a superstar. He was a pin-up,” David Campbell says enthusiastically when asked about John Wilkes Booth. “As a Confederate, he hated the Civil War and was very much a dissenter of Lincoln’s presidency. He wasn’t a crazy man, and the funny thing is, the rhetoric he styles himself in is scarily very much […]
Read MoreChilling Images for ASSASSINS at Encores!
Both New York City Center’s Encores! series and its near contemporary, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, have appreciated in value and estimation since their premieres in the early 1990s. The mission of Encores! was to give obscure or overlooked musicals new life in one-week runs of semi-staged concert versions. In the early days, that meant actors on […]
Read More“Sondheim on Sondheim” at Tanglewood
“God” wasn’t there, though Stephen Sondheim was. Neither were “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” “Now You Know,” “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs” and other staples of the Roundabout Theater Company’s 2010 Sondheim on Sondheim on Broadway. In fact, the concert version presented on July 8, 2018, at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony […]
Read MoreThe End of Pretend, Chapter 2
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a series of visits and conversations chronicling the late Elaine Stritch’s final acts. The first appeared in the April/May 2017 print edition of Everything Sondheim. After Elaine’s visit to DeSales University’s campus in January 2009, I sent flowers to her at The Carlyle. She called to thank me. […]
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