Stephen Sondheim is a master of wordsmithing, and that made him a great candidate to write crossword puzzles [Blog post with links]. But not just any sort of crossword puzzles. [How To Do A Real Crossword Puzzle, NY Mag. Archive link] His cryptic cros…
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Steven Sondheim had dominated the 1970s on Broadway. As the decade closed out, he turned to a modern adaptation of a Victorian melodrama for source material. With Hugh Wheeler, adapting Christopher Bond, 1979’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet S…
Sunday In The Park With George
Stephen Sondheim was ready to quit Broadway. The failure of Merrily We Roll Along, his first real flop in nearly 20 years, left him cold toward creating more art. Until James Lapine showed him one particular painting, which became a topic of conversati…
The Frogs
Stephen Sondheim was riding high on a wave of his own creation. After the artistic success of Company, Follies, and A Little Night Music, he chose as a follow-up to reunite with Burt Shevelove, with whom he had visited Ancient Rome, this time Ancient …
Marry Me A Little
Stephen Sondheim writes more songs than he uses, many cut from shows during development. An aspiring Sweeney Todd chorus member (Craig Lucas, who later wrote Prelude To A Kiss amongst other things) approached him about developing a show from this disca…
Into The Woods
Stephen Sondheim wanted to something funny. After the intensity of Sunday In The Park With George, he decided to turn, again with James Lapine, to classic art. In this case, fairy tales. The resulting show, Into The Woods, is one of those truly magical…
Assassins
Stephen Sondheim was being stymied by historical events. After the truly massive success of Into The Woods, he delved into darker subjects for his next show, 1990’s Assassins. An exploration of the American Dream and the broken people it fails, the sho…
Sondheim’s Six Ladies In Red
Patti LuPone, Marin Mazzie, Audra McDonald, Donna Murphy, Bernadette Peters, and Elaine Stritch all take the stage and take a turn singing some Sondheim. Thirty minutes of diva delight, with David Hyde Pierce to introduce them.
A Little Night Music
Stephen Sondheim was riding pretty high in 1973. His previous two shows, Company and Follies, were both gigantic artistic successes, and everyone was waiting with baited breath for his new show, A Little Night Music. A period country house drama set m…
Passion
Stephen Sondheim had not been on Broadway for nearly five years. Assassins had been an off-Broadway production, and so when Passion opened in 1994, after a very labored preview process (and still not widely lauded in reviews), it received a lot of atte…