Sondheim, Stephen
‘West Side Story’ Review: In Love and War, 1957 Might Be Tonight
The Jets and the Sharks, a white teenage gang and their Puerto Rican antagonists, aren’t mirror images of each other. Ostensibly contending for control over a few battered blocks in the West 60s, they collide like taxis speeding toward each other on a one-way street. The Sharks are children of an upwardly striving, migrant working […]
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Stephen Sondheim, as Great a Composer as He Was a Lyricist
In the early ’90s, at several memorial services for friends who had died of AIDS, I played “Good Thing Going,” a wistful song about recalling imperfect but cherished relationships. “Marry Me a Little,” cut from the original production of “Company” but beloved in later revivals as the protagonist’s statement of determination and despair, was another […]
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Stephen Sondheim Reflected on ‘Company’ and ‘West Side Story’ in Final Interview
ROXBURY, Conn. — Stephen Sondheim stood by the gleaming piano in his study, surrounded by posters of international productions of his many famous musicals, and smiled as he inquired whether a visitor might be interested in hearing songs from a show he had been working on for years, but hadn’t finished yet. “And now would […]
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Stephen Sondheim, Titan of the American Musical, Is Dead at 91
An afternoon-long tutorial followed, teaching him, by Mr. Sondheim’s account, more about the craft than most songwriters learn in a lifetime. Hammerstein laid out a path of writing exercises for him: Adapt a good play into a musical; adapt a flawed play into a musical; adapt a story from another medium into a musical; and, […]
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