Stephen Sondheim, 91, passed away at his home in Connecticut. Sorry about the Times paywall.
His lawyer and friend, F. Richard Pappas, announced the death. He said he did not know the cause but added that Mr. Sondheim had not been known to be ill and that the death was sudden. The day before, Mr. Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with a dinner with friends in Roxbury, Mr. Pappas said.
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The first Broadway show for which Mr. Sondheim wrote both the words and music, the farcical 1962 comedy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” won a Tony Award for best musical and went on to run for more than two years.
In the 1970s and 1980s, his most productive period, he turned out a series of strikingly original and varied works, including “Company” (1970), “Follies” (1971), “A Little Night Music” (1973), “Pacific Overtures” (1976), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Merrily We Roll Along” (1981), “Sunday in the Park With George” (1984) and “Into the Woods” (1987).
www.nytimes.com/...
We will look at his work in a moment.
Mr. [Hal] Prince would direct five Sondheim musicals in the 1970s — “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures” and “Sweeney Todd’’ — and though not all were commercially successful, they were all innovative, the product of two supremely talented artists whose individually authoritative visions were, for the most part, complementary. As Mr. Prince naturally saw a show’s big picture, its look and its pace, Mr. Sondheim, who had inherited the Rodgers and Hammerstein belief that the songs are critical elements of the play, pushed the idea further — not merely integrating the words and music but imbuing the songs with the concerns of a playwright; that is, providing singers with the material to deepen their character portrayals, and in rehearsals concentrating on their delivery and diction.
www.nytimes.com/...
Accompanying Bernadette Peters on what is probably his best-known song, “Send In the Clowns” from A Little Night Music:
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is the first show for which Sondheim was both composer and lyricist. Here’s Whoopi Goldberg — the video is a bit rocky at first but turns out to be really pretty good. And the sound’s great:
And that’s the song that saved the show. It was a disaster in New Haven, but the team called in Jerome Robbins, who spotted the difficulty: the opening number was sweet and didn’t set up the audience for the madness to follow. Robbins also staged the new opening.
“Another Hundred People” is the quintessential New York song. It’s interspersed with examples of why Robert isn’t married yet, in Company:
His next show with Hal Prince was Follies, about the last reunion of Ziegfeld-type former showgirls, 40 years later. “Too Many Mornings”:
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A Little Night Music was based on Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night and includes this jaunty ending to Act I:
Here’s the original Broadway cast of Pacific Overtures in “Please Hello.” The scenario is self-explanatory:
Sweeney Todd was Sondheim’s last artistically successful collaboration with Hal Prince. I just love this comic number, “A Little Priest”:
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His next collaborator was James Lapine, beginning with Sunday in the Park with George. At the 1984 Tony Awards:
Into the Woods is a wild romp through a bunch of fairy tales. From the 1988 Tony Awards:
Assassins is about the various people who’ve assassinated presidents. Here’s “The Ballad of Booth”:
In Passion, Sondheim explores love and obsession. “Loving You”:
And finally, Road Show, which tells the tale...
of Addison Mizner and his brother Wilson Mizner's adventures across America from the beginning of the twentieth century during the Klondike gold rush to the Florida real estate boom of the 1920s. The musical takes considerable liberties with the facts of the brothers' lives.
en.wikipedia.org/...
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Before Forum, Sondheim was the lyricist for two major projects: Gypsy and West Side Story. Can’t ignore those two!
Patti LuPone as Mama Rose in the 2008 revival (Tony Awards):
And from West Side Story, “Something’s Coming” (from Sondheim’s 80th Birthday concert:
