Stephen Sondheim Dead at 91 — Page 5

Forgive my scramble of a post, it was typed from my phone.

I've considered writing Sondheim many times, but I never felt I had anything worth saying. I didn't want to ask for advice as an aspiring theatre maker because he and others have already provided so much guidance that most of my questions have already been answered at this point in time. I didn't want to write him a praise letter because he'd surely already heard anything and everything I could've said but put better. Finally, I had no interesting questions about his work, so I wouldn't write a letter for that either. I never did send a letter, and I'm so glad to say that I don't regret it. He knows how much he was loved, and that's enough. I may have never met him, but his dedication to new artists provides a connection.

I would like to share how comforted I am by how many people seem to have gone through a similar experience when hearing the news. There's no words to describe what he and his work meant to me, and just like most other people, I don't know what to say. When I heard the news, I felt sick and confused. I wanted the world to stop for a moment so I could process what I had just heard. How is Stephen Sondheim gone? He's always been there. I'm a little better now, but it was too much to process. After almost two years of loss, isolation, and termoile, it was just too much.

With his passing, I hope people will still remember that he always insisted people he'd met or wrote call him Steve; and that even as an old man, saw himself as an 18 year old boy excited to work in the theatre. I hate to think that it might be forgotten what a delightful and wickedly funny man he was. He gave us so much profound and moving work, but he also gave us some of the funniest lyrics ever written. "So please, don't fart/There's very little air and this is art". It will be a sad day when he is known only as Stephen.

Goodbye Mr. Sondheim, thanks for all of it.

He opened up my eyes. Taught me how to see.

I thank you Mr. Sondheim.

I can't help but feel Sondheim would not agree with Lin-Manuel's description of his work because he was always one to point out that it was his collaborators who wrote these characters: Arthur Laurents wrote Tony & Maria, Hugh Wheeler wrote Sweeney Todd, George Furth wrote Bobby, James Lapine wrote George, Dot & Fosca. Sondheim is clear that his collaborators gave the canvas that allowed him to write the most incredible music for these characters. He was always so humble and keen to acknowledge the work of his collaborators, which is part of why he seemed like such a nice person!

Updated On: 11/27/21 at 02:24 PM

Variety interviewed Christine Baranski on her relationship with Sondheim. It’s always a treat to hear Christine speak at length because she also has such beautiful word choice. 

Christine shared that “He had a great Thanksgiving meal [with friends who included veteran stage director Jack O’Brien], and the next morning he checked out of the hotel.”

She spoke to Audra McDonald. Together they “realized that [they’re] not sad for Steve. He was 91. We should be happy he didn’t suffer, he didn’t decline or wind up in a hospital with a long-term illness.”

 

Updated On: 11/27/21 at 06:24 PM

Today at Freestyle Love Supreme, they mentioned in the beginning about how the Booth was the home of “Sunday”, referenced Bernadette Peters as Dot, and held a moment of silence for Sondheim. It was very touching.

Major event tomorrow.  Times Square.  Noon.

 

I contrast the overwhelming reaction to the death of Stephen Sondheim with the death of Richard Rodgers, who inconveniently died on the night before New Year's Eve, 1979. I'm not discussing the reaction of the theater community, but of the national media in general. The announcement of Rodgers's death was greeted with the same fervor as had the death of Soupy Sales.

Particularly annoying was the column of Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Ellen Goodman, who wrote for the Boston Globe. She showed a mastery of the art of damning by faint praise.

 He could and would write a song to fit a scene. if Woody Allen is right in saying that 'Eighty percent of life is showing up, well, Richard Rodgers showed up."

"Some Enchanted Evening" will never go into the annals of great classics. The King and I is not Aida. But Rodgers was very useful to provide a hard-working man in the blouse business with a method of expressing himself. If he likes a tune, he can whistle it and it will make his life happier."

As a child of the Rodgers' era, I can never quite understand the deep mentor relationship that Sondheim had with Oscar Hammerstein. Did Sondheim ever venture over into the world of Hammerstein's sentiment? Here is a description of the last meeting of the two:

[Sondheim] remembered that shortly before Hammerstein's death, Hammerstein had given him a portrait of himself. Sondheim asked him to inscribe it, and said later about the request that it was "weird ... it's like asking your father to inscribe something". Reading the inscription ("For Stevie, My Friend and Teacher" choked up the composer, who said: "That describes Oscar better than anything I could say."

When he walked away from the house that evening, Sondheim remembered a sad, sinking feeling that they had said their final goodbye. He never saw his mentor again; three days later, Hammerstein died of stomach cancer and Hammerstein's protégé eulogized him at his funeral.

OlBlueEyes said: "I contrast the overwhelming reaction to the death of Stephen Sondheim with the death of Richard Rodgers, who inconveniently died on the night before New Year's Eve, 1979. I'm not discussing the reaction of the theater community, but of the national media in general. The announcement of Rodgers's death was greeted with the same fervor as had the death of Soupy Sales."

I think it has to do with someone who worked in the theater world telling me that the worst person in the theater world she'd ever met was Richard Rodgers, and she met Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins.

 

Not every production/iteration recorded a cast album, and not all are available on Apple Music. If you notice something I missed, please let me know. But wanted to share this playlist of nearly 1300 of Stephen Sondheim's songs, running <73 hours. https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/stephen-sondheim/pl.u-8GolcomR1xA

JSquared2 said: "Major event tomorrow. Times Square. Noon.

"

If Broadway's best all come together in the middle of Times Square to sing "Sunday" like they did in the middle of the shutdown, I feel I will cry much harder this time if any video surfaces.

Sunday at noon will be a glorious moment in NYC. I plan to go to the one in the park. Anyone else going?

I’m in London right now and gutted that I can’t attend any of these events on Sunday. I’d be very appreciative of any links to videos of them.