Stephen Sondheim was riding pretty high in 1971. His show Company was a year into its strong Broadway run when he opened a second show on Broadway, the ambitious Follies. Directed by Hal Prince and Michael Bennett, the show ran for over 500 performance…
Merrily We Roll Along
Stephen Sondheim was a hot property in 1981. Riding the momentum of Sweeney Todd, his next musical would be Merrily We Roll Along [Wikipedia], and that would be a gigantic flop, closing after over 50 previews, dozens of rewrites, and only 16 performanc…
Evening Primrose
Stephen Sondheim is mostly known as a musical theater composer, but he did do one project for television — Evening Primrose [Wikipedia]. A musical Twilight Zone-is story in which Norman Bates falls in love with Liesl Von Trapp while living in a depart…
A bit of Company for the weekend
Stephen Sondheim had been successful (and not) on Broadway for over a decade before Company [Wikipedia]. In a lot of ways, it redefined “musical”, being less about a straightforward plot and more about emotional honesty and development. One major (and …
Anyone Can Whistle
Stephen Sondheim’s 1964 musical Anyone Can Whistle [Wikipedia] was a genuine flop. It’s rarely produced, and the original production was never filmed. But in 1995, a concert version was mounted at Carnegie Hall as an AIDS fundraiser, starring Bernadett…
Pacific Overtures
Stephen Sondheim’s least-performed (and perhaps most ambitious) musical Pacific Overtures [Wikipedia] premiered on Broadway in 1976 and ran for 109 performance and won two of the two Tony awards it was nominated for. The original production and cast wa…