Sondheim's Letter to the NY TIMES Editor Regarding Company — Page 2

He seems to be a very classy man. Someone referred to him as a gentleman before. I agree.

Updated On: 12/10/06 at 12:52 PM

In all of my brushes with the man he has been nothing but a perfect gentleman, even when he was literally running from rabid fans (at the SWEENEY stagedoor in previews). He doesn't like crowds so if you try to talk to him at the stagedoor of a show or something chances are he will avoid it like the plague and get out as soon as he can, but don't take it personally. It's one thing to be a prick, it's another to prefer to stay away from crowds (which is completely respectable for a writer, for actors who refuse to sign or talk to fans I have much less tolerance). I have never felt more in the prescense of God than when I finally got to speak to him...

"Gentleman" is a very appropriate term for this amazing man... though I, like many of us, prefer "God".

A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely,
P genre

A gentleman is exactly what he is. I have never met anybody so fundamentally ungregarious (he has friends, like everybody else, but I don't think he's really that much of a "people person") so generous with his time to total strangers. It's my impression that he has an enormous sense of responsibility to the world at large and the artistic community, to give back what he has been given. Remember that he had Oscar Hammerstein as a mentor and an expensive education and tons of contacts and opportunities in his youth. I think he just forces himself to get out there and show up for things and lend himself to things and meet people. Like a lot of intellectually brilliant people, he lives in the mind and doesn't generate a lot of warmth in public. But warmth and generosity are different things. He is a GENEROUS man, to a fault. I think he also wants to be an influence. Not to be worshipped, but to uphold the traditions of theatre he believes in. He doesn't like everything that's out there, and if you are going to work in a style or a tradition, he'd like it to be something he doesn't despise. That said, he's not an ultra-traditionalist. He likes a lot of stuff that wouldn't attract him as a writer. He'd love to be more popular, he really would. He'd love to have more smashes and sellouts, and it frustrates him that the things he does to make the work interesting to himself don't always make it more interesting to the man in the street. He's so beyond most of us that it must be very lonely at times in his own head.

I'm glad Sondheim acknowledges others who work on shows with him... it is a team effort after all...

---

Hoorah to the class act that is Mr. Sondheim. Yawn to the idea that Andrew Lloyd Webber has to be randomly bitched out every time Sondheim does something praiseworthy. Still, people?

---

Updated On: 6/18/20 at 06:43 PM

Updated On: 6/18/20 at 07:10 PM

Wait, if ALW is the anti-Christ, then...what does that say about JCS? My head is going to explode from the imminent paradox.

Sondheim is a genius and totally classy. I'm impressed.

---

Good for him. Mr. Furth's book deserves all the press it can get. It's more brilliant now than ever.

This just proves that he truly is God AND Jesus

"I disagree, I think it has saved shows. Mack & Mabel, Merrily We Roll Along, and Candide are still preformed and revived due to their strong scores."

Let's clarify. "Mack & Mabel" is revived once in awhile (NEVER without a lot of book tinkering) by people who keep hoping to put that beautiful score into play. It hasn't ever worked so far. "Candide" finally got a workable book from Hugh Wheeler, but since the marvelous Chelsea production Prince directed, every other production keeps trying to shoehorn songs back into it, so it's never worked as well. "Merrily We Roll Along" never did have that bad a book. It's not the greatest show in the world, but it wouldn't have been the utter disaster it was without Hal Prince's terrible production. So I stand by my original statement. Every one on those shows had the same wonderful score when they first opened that they have had in any subsequent production, and it did NOT save them.

Andrew Lloyd Webber has the same thing happen. Other than Tim Rice, most people can't name any of his lyricists or book writers. It's an Andrew Lloyd Webber show, period... whenever his name is attached to it. Yet he writes the music... not the book or the lyrics.

Yes, but..ALW did not want the show's to be known as anything other than "Andrew Lloyd Webbers..."

Why do you think he purposely chooses inferior lyricists and librettists?

Or maybe he really thinks "Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendour" is a brilliant lyric.

---