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BIBLIOGRAPHYBabinski, Hubert F. The Mazeppa Legend in Euro-

pean Romanticism. New York: Columbia Univer-sity Press, 1974. The Mazeppa legend as it ap-peared in the works of Slowacki and others isanalyzed.

Dernalowicz, Maria. Juliusz Siowacki. Warsaw: Inter-press, 1987. This biography of the Polish writer

Critical Survey of Drama

covers both his life and his works. Index.Krzyzanowski, Julian. A History of Polish Literature.

Warszawa: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers,1978. A study of Polish literature that includescoverage of Slowacki. Bibliography and index.

Milosz, Czeslaw. The History of Polish Literature. 2ded. Berkeley: University of California Press,1983. A scholarly study of Polish literature thatincludes a discussion of the role of Stowacki. Bib-liography and index.

Victor Anthony Rudowski

STEPHEN SONDHEIM

Born: New York, New York; March 22, 1930

^PRINCIPAL DRAMA •~" West~Side"sioiy, pr. 1957, pb. 1958 (lyrics; music

by Leonard Bernstein; book by ArthurLaurents)

Gypsy, pr. 1959, pb. 1960 (lyrics; music by JuleStyne; book by Laurents)

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,pr., pb. 1962 (lyrics and music; book by LarryGelbart and Burt Shevelove)

Anyone Can Whistle, pr. 1964, pb. 1965 (lyrics andmusic; book by Laurents)

Do I Hear a Waltz?, pr. 1965, pb. 1966 (lyrics;music by Richard Rodgers; book by Laurents)

Candide, pr. 1974, pb. 1976 (lyrics with RichardWilbur and John Latouche; music by Bernstein;book by Hugh Wheeler)

Company, pr., pb. 1970 (lyrics and music; book byGeorge Furth)

Follies, pr, pb. 1971 (lyrics and music; book byJames Goldman)

The Frogs, pr. 1974, pb. 1975 (lyrics and music;book by Shevelove)

A Little Night Music, pr., pb. 1973 (lyrics andmusic; book by Wheeler)

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Pacific Overtures, pr. 1976, pb. 1977 (lyrics andmusic; book by John Weidman)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,pr., pb. 1979 (lyrics and music; book byWheeler)

Marry Me a Little, pr. 1980 (lyrics and music;book by Craig Lucas and Norman Rene)

Merrily We Roll Along, pr. 1981, pb. 1982 (lyricsand music; book by Furth)

Sunday in the Park with George, pr. 1983, pb. 1986(lyrics and music; book by James Lapine)

Into the Woods, pr. 1987, pb. 1988 (lyrics andmusic; book by Lapine)

Assassins, pr. 1990, pb. 1991 (lyrics and music;book by Weidman)

Passion, pr., pb. 1994 (lyrics and music; book byLapine)

Getting Away with Murder, pr. 1995, pb. 1997(with George Furth)

Gold!, pr. 2002 (lyrics and music; book byWeidman; originally pr. 1999 as Wise Guys)

OTHER LITERARY FORMSStephen Sondheim wrote a film script, The Last of

Sheila (1973), with Anthony Perkins. He has com-posed music for films as well. He wrote the scores for

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Stavisky (1974) and Reds (1981) and songs for DickTracy (1990) and The Birdcage (1996). However,Sondheim's reputation is based primarily on his mu-sic and lyrics for Broadway-style musicals.

ACHIEVEMENTS ;~~"'—Stephen Sondheim was the most critically ac-

claimed figure in American musical theater during thelast three decades of the twentieth century. Sondheimhas won the Tony Award for Best Original Score fivetimes, more than any other individual. These awardswere for Follies (1972), A Little Night Music (1973),Sweeney Todd (1979), Into the Woods (1988), andPassion (1994). In 1971 only, separate Tonys wereawarded for score and lyrics, and Sondheim won bothfor Company. Numerous plays on which Sondheimhas collaborated have won Tony Awards and NewYork Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best Musi-cal; these awards were not presented specifically toSondheim. Sunday in the Park with George won the1985 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Sondheim turned down the National Medal ofArts in 1992 in protest because the National Endow-ment for the Arts, the granting agency, had canceledsome of its more controversial grants. He acceptedthat award in 1997.

BIOGRAPHY _^Stephen Joshua Sondheim was bom on March 22,

1930, in New York City, the only child of Herbert andJanet Fox Sondheim. His parents owned a clothingcompany and were both very involved in the busi- (ness. The Sondheims separated when Stephen wasten, and he attended military school for two years andthen attended the George School, a prep school. Hewas an exceptional student who had skipped twogrades and who showed an early talent for music.

In the early 1940's, Sondheim and his motherbecame close friends with the family of OscarHammerstein II, one of the leading figures in musicaltheater at the time. Sondheim and the Hammersteins'son were close in age, and Sondheim even spenta summer with the family at their home in BucksCounty, Pennsylvania. Janet Sondheim bought a housenear the Hammersteins' home where her son lived

SONDHEIM, STEPHEN

during his adolescence. Stephen Sondheim askedHammerstein to read a musical he wrote as a teenagerat the George School; Hammerstein critiqued thepiece, giving Sondheim valuable training in writingfor musical theater. He also hired Sondheim to workon the set of one of his plays.

Sondheim attended Williams College; initially, hemajored in English but changed to music. During hiscollege years, he pursued a training program devisedby Hammerstein to learn musical theater; the plan in-volved writing four plays. The first step was to set aplay he liked to music, the second was to fix the flawsin a play and set it to music, the third was to write amusical based upon a nondramatic source, and thefourth was to write an original work. After gradua-tion, Sondheim studied music in New York City withMilton Babbitt, an avant-garde composer. As part ofhis studies, he performed in-depth analyses of classi-cal works; his seriousness about music would be ap-parent in the complexity of his later compositions.

Sondheim's first big break was as a lyricist forWest Side Story; he followed by writing lyrics forGypsy. He finally got to write both music and lyricsfor A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Fo-rum, which opened in 1962. Sondheim's reputationand success continued to grow such that he became acentral figure in musical theater.

Sondheim's most serious romantic involvementhas been with Peter Jones, with whom he exchangedwedding rings in 1994.

/ rtJ^ALIMS )

^ The most critically acclaimed writer of music andlyrics for Broadway-style musicals in the late twenti-eth century, Stephen Sondheim has advanced the so-phistication of the musical form through his experi-mentation with content and musical style. One ofAmerican musical theater's contributions to drama isthe integration of spoken words and music within aproduction. The majority of Sondheim's lyrics makesense only when sung by the character for whom theyare written. Much popular American music earlier inthe century came from musical theater. With the ex-ception of "Send in the Clowns" from A Little NightMusic, Sondheim's songs have not enjoyed popular-

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framed as a play-within-a-play, a theatrical devicethat allows a play to be self-conscious about itself andits intentions. Beginning with the chorus of Greekdrama, a tradition has long existed in the theater ofvoices external to the drama offering commentary onthe events. However, most twentieth century dramapresents characters going about their business as ifunaware of the audience. The framing of Sondheim'sdrama both ties the play to its classical sources andinvites the audience to adopt, despite the lightheartedsubject matter, a critical attitude toward the work, asthe play offers an explanation of itself as comedywith details about what that means.

A LITTLE NIGHT MusicA Little Night Music is a romantic comedy that

draws on the conventional comedic topic of mis-matched lovers trying to find their true loves. Theidea originally began with a desire by Sondheim andothers to make a musical from Jean Anouilh's playL'Invitation au chateau (pr. 1947; Ring Round theMoon, 1950). When Anouilh declined an adaptationof his play, Sondheim viewed films with similar plotsincluding Jean Renoir's 1939 Rules of the Game andIngmar Bergman's 1956 Smiles of a Summer Night.

The themes and mood of the play draw from along theatrical tradition, evoking, for example, Wil-liam Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (pr.c. 1595-1596), which also portrays mismatched lov-ers seeking their true loves on a magical evening. Inproper comedic form, A Little Night Music ends withthe lovers properly matched.

Beyond the follies and maneuvering of the lovers,the theme of youth and age is important to both theplay's meaning and its structure. Most of the actiontakes place at the country house of an old womanwho, with her young granddaughter, watches the ac-tion. The grandmother teaches her young charge thata summer night smiles three times: at the young whoknow nothing, the fools who know too little, and theold who know too much. The primary plot could oc-cur without the older and younger characters, butthey deepen the drama's scope by showing the lovers'plots as part of a stage of life between youth and age.

The musical opens with a quintet of characterswho are not part of the main story but who perform

SONDHEIM, STEPHEN

lyrics both at the beginning and later in the show thatcomment on the play's main action. This use ofchoruslike characters serves to distance the audiencefrom identification with the main characters becauseof the obvious artifice involved. This distancingevokes an intellectual or critical response from theaudjence^— ^^(̂ SWEENEY TODD >

Sweeney Todd blurs the boundaries between musi-cal theater and opera and has, in fact, been performedby various opera companies. The play retells a storyabout a mass murderer originally written for the stagein the nineteenth century, rewritten by contemporaryBritish playwright Christopher Bond, and finally set tomusic by Sondheim. The play presents the challengesof portraying murders onstage without disgusting theaudience or resorting to slapstick. Further, althoughthe nineteenth century sources were not notable fortheir psychological subtlety, Sondheim's version seeksto offer insight into the mind of the deranged killer.Beyond the psychological intrigue, the musical ex-plores the themes of revenge and justice. Despitethese serious themes, the drama contains significant,albeit black, humor. Todd's accomplice, Mrs. Lovett,bakes the meat from the corpses into pies that shesells in her shop.

The play's significant accomplishment is its abil-ity to interweave tragedy and comedy as well as so-phistication and base humor within a musical scorethat draws on sources ranging from Gregorian chantto contemporary, popular music.

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGEInspired by the life and work of Georges Seurat,

especially the painting Un Dimanche, Apres-Midi aI'lle de la Grande Jane (A Sunday Afternoon on theIsland of La Grande Jatte), Sunday in the Park withGeorge explores what it means to be an artist and therelationship between life and art. In the musical'sfirst act, the people in the painting go about their livesas George sketches them. For example, his pregnantgirlfriend Dot decides to marry the baker Louis, andtwo young women pursue an attractive soldier. At theend of the act, as the characters argue among them-selves, the painter stops them and arranges them intothe poses and positions for his picture. The dual state-

SONDHEIM, STEPHEN

ment is that the piece of art hides the tensions of life,and at the same time, the artwork turns ordinary lifeinto something beautiful.

The second act continues to explore the meaningsof art as Seurat's daughter and her grandson Georgeattend an opening for the grandson's artwork. In con-trast to his grandfather, who was focused solely onhis artistic vision and never sold a painting, the youn-ger George works the crowd of art patrons and critics,seeking funding for his work. As the play ends, hehas decided to move on to new projects rather thanrepeating variations of his current work. His great-grandmother practiced writing in a book that hasbeen passed down, and George reads from it some ofhis grandfather's favorite words about art, includingorder, design, and tension. The grandfather is able,through this medium, to instruct his grandson on theimportance of following his own artistic vision.

OTHER MAJOR WORKSSCREENPLAY: The Last of Sheila, 1973 (with An-

thony Perkins)TELEPLAY: Evening Primrose, 1966 (lyrics and

music)

BIBLIOGRAPHYJanfield,"Stephen. Sondheim's Broadway Musicals.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.A very thorough study of Sondheim's work, thisbook is particularly useful in its discussions of hismusic. Although perhaps at times too technical forthe typical reader, this book provides much valu-able information on Sondheim's life and his musi-cals. Sondheim himself reviewed the manuscriptbefore publication.

Block, Geoffrey. "Happily Ever After: West SideStory with Sondheim." In Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from "Show Boat" toSondheim. New York: Oxford University Press,1997. This chapter places Sondheim in the context

Critical Survey of Drama

of the musical theater, arguing that his work is theculmination of the form's development since thelate 1920's. The earlier chapters provide a usefulhistory of musical theater.

Goodhart, Sandor, ed. Reading Stephen Sondheim: ACollection of Critical Essays. New York: Garland,2000. The essays in this volume, written by liter-ary critics, treat Sondheim with the seriousness af-forded other twentieth century playwrights. Theessays range from general treatments to explora-tions of specific features of the plays.

Gordon, Joanne. Art Ain't Easy: The Achievement ofStephen Sondheim. Carbondale: Southern IllinoisUniversity Press, 1990. Gordon argues for the rec-ognition of Sondheim and musical theater as artrather than merely as escapist entertainment. Thisstudy notes many connections between Sond-heim's works and works considered high art.Gordon's analysis of the musical qualities of Sond-heim's numbers is thorough.

Secrest, Meryle. Stephen Sondheim: A Life. NewYork: Delta, 1998. This full-length biography isbased primarily on interviews with Sondheim'sfriends and associates. It describes not only theevents of Sondheim's life but also the history ofeach of the musicals on which Sondheim worked,including the inspiration for the story, the processthe collaborators went through to see the projectto production, and the critical and audience re-sponse to the play.

Zadan, Craig. Sondheim and Company. 2d ed. NewYork: Da Capo, 1994. This book provides analysisand history of each of Sondheim's musicals. Itsmany photographs offer a good sense of the styleof the productions as well as the process of theirpreparation. A useful appendix lists who workedon the various productions, provides Broadwayperformance histories, and lists nonmusical proj-ects in which Sondheim participated.

Joan Hope

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