Dunkirk NY – We were in the midst of rehearsing our high school production of Guys and Dolls, in which I was playing Nathan Detroit. Somewhere in the month of May 1970, our director took me and the kid playing Sky Masterson to New York City for dinner and a show. The show was Company, which had just opened. The role of Bobby was being played by Dean Jones, so that’s how I know it was sometime between the show’s opening on April 26, 1970, and when Jones left the production on May 28, 1970, to be replaced by Larry Kert.
I was, at the time, unaware that Stephen Sondheim had written the lyrics for West Side Story, so for me, this felt like a show from a brand new composer. I was in awe of the show. When you consider the moments in life that influence you in a profound and lasting way, this was one of those moments. I can still see and hear most of the show in my head, and I think that may be the reason why it remains my favorite of all his shows. It was also the first experience I had with the idea that two opposite ideas can be simultaneously true at the same time – “Sorry-Grateful.”
I am just slightly too young to have experienced the musicals of the late 40s-mid-60s, but I grew up listening to their sound tracks. With the arrival of Andrew Lloyd Weber in the late 70s, musicals for me became superficial and largely uninteresting (exceptions are there, of course). Sondheim came along just at the right time for me, an 18-year-old intellectual wanna-be who was just heading off to college to become a high school English teacher. Sondheim, to me, wrote musicals for intellectuals; people and artists who understood that the deepest emotions and the most soaring philosophical questions are best captured with the most profound words and the most poignant music. A little dissonance goes a long way as well.
Sondheim is his own theatrical era. From 1970-1990, no one mattered more in the musical theatre realm than Stephen Sondheim. As musicals in the 80s and beyond grew to nothing more than entertainment and spectacles for tourists, Sondheim was the last man standing who wrote musicals that had something to say about the holistic nature of the human experience. Instinctively, at 18, I understood that. As with Shakespeare, Sondheim was interested in the depths of human experience, something I’ve always searched for in my own journey through the theatre as well. Sondheim gained fame, not as a popular composer whose tunes were hummable, but as an artist of incredible nuance, complexity, and depth.
Over time I developed a reputation for disliking musicals. Truth be told, I probably cultivated that a bit. I could sing fairly well as a youth, but I never took singing lessons, and so never pursued musicals as a career choice (much to the disapointment of my mother). I was pretty vocal about my dislike of musicals while in college. When people would ask me if I liked musicals, I would often answer “no – except Sondheim.” The truth really stands in the middle, though. I do not dislike the musical form. I dislike bad musicals as I dislike bad plays. It always seemed, however, that people wanted to talk about bad musicals more than good plays.
I became obsessed with Shakespeare, and doing his plays became my life’s artistic work. Shakespeare and Sondheim are, to me, kindred spirits, working at a level that no one else could possibly match. When I had to direct a musical, I always looked to a Sondheim title first. Often those titles were turned down because they had no dancing, or they wouldn’t draw enough of an audience. There were always more reason not to do Sondheim than to do him. But his work was always my first choice.
My one appearance in a Sondheim musical was as Fredrik Egerman in A Little Night Music. I was cast primarily because the director felt the role required an actor who could sing, not vice-versa. It was challenging, to say the least, and I am sure that my performance lacked the high level of musical deftness the role required. The music did not come naturally; nothing about it was like singing a folk song or a Rogers and Hammerstein composition. I had to work at it and pay attention to it, which no doubt took away any easiness in the performance. When the production closed, I came away with a new, deeper appreciation for Sondheim as a theatrical talent. I also came away knowing I could never do that again, that it takes a certain type of talent to perform in a Sondheim musical.
I also had one opportunity to direct a Sondheim musical after years of trying – Into the Woods (I’ve directed three productions of West Side Story, but I don’t count them as Sondheim works, as he “only” wrote the lyrics). I was better at directing Sondheim than acting in his work, because I understood the work at an intellectual level and had enough ability to get my ideas across to the cast (I had a marvelous cast for that production as well). The cast pressed me to write to Sondheim and invite him to the college to see the show and maybe do a master class. I thought this was a fruitless exercise, but I managed to get his NYC address, and did write the letter. To my astonishment, he wrote back, using a little monogrammed notecard. Apparently he was famous for answering every single card or note he received. He expressed his regret at not being able to attend. I had written a gushing little “fanboy” sentence or two about how I saw Dean Jones as an 18-year-old in Company, and how taken I was with Ann Reinking’s performance of the Tick-Tock Dance. He politely corrected me, letting me know it was Donna McKechnie, not Ann Reinking. The card is one of my most cherished possessions.
Not surprisingly, he stands in his own world as an outsider. His work never achieved “popular” acclaim, being deemed “too deep” or “too intellectual.” You had to think when you saw a Sondheim musical. He was introverted and solitary. He never caused a scandal, was never known to berate other artists, had a reputation as a tough but gentle teacher. He never flaunted his fame, nor does it appear he ever did anything in his artistic career to attract attention to himself. If he supported any causes at all, he did so quietly and without attention. He accepted his accolades with generosity and humility. If he was in a room he was always the most prominent person there, but he had an apparent knack for disappearing into the background as the event took place. It was never, ever about him – it was always about the work, the art, the questions about living.
Stephen Sondheim’s work, like Shakespeare’s, will stand the test of time because it delves into the timeless questions that haunt life itself. His death brings the curtain down definitively on an era; there will be no more curtain calls. And in my opinion, no one is there to pick up the hat. -twl