MusicalTheatre SONDHEIM

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SONDHEIM, Stephen [Joshua] (b New York, 22rch!930).

Stephen Sondheim had an early connection^ with themusical theatre through a family friendship with the OscarHammersteins, and began his own contribution by writingcollege shows. He studied music, but had his first show-business work writing scripts for television's Topper beforeproviding incidental music for plays The Girls of Summer(1956) and Invitation to a March (1961).

It was, again, not as a composer that he broke throughinto the Broadway musical establishment. As a result ofArthur Laurents hearing some lyrics he had written for anon-start show called Saturday Night he jvas brought in towork on West Side Story, supplying the lyrics the now too-busy Leonard Bernstein was originally to have done. Thevigour and variety of the show's 'Something's Coming','America', 'I Feel Pretty', 'A Boy Like That', 'OfficerKrupke' and 'Tonight' gave the young writer a memor-able launch. He followed up by combining with Laurentsagain, and with composer Jule Styne, on a second assign-ment as a lyricist on Gypsy ('Everything's Coming UpRoses', 'All I Need is the Girl', 'Let Me Entertain You','If Mama Was Married', 'You Gotta Have a Gimmick',Rose's Turn), before, in 1962, offering his first score -lyrics and music - to Broadway in the classical burlesqueA Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Theshow's inherently comic nature gave endless possibilitiesfor lyric wit, if little for expansive musical writing, andthose possibilities were hilariously fulfilled in a set ofsongs which helped the piece to a position alongside thegreat classical burlesques of the past, from Orphee auxenfers to Phi-Phi: 'Comedy Tonight', 'Lovely', 'Every-body Ought to Have a Maid', 'Impossible', 'I'm MilesGloriosus' etc.

A third collaboration with Laurents on a sour, extrava-gant piece called Anyone Can Whistle proved a curiousmisfire all round, but Sondheim returned to form with avengeance in a collaboration with Richard Rodgers on thescore to Laurents's adaptation of his own The Time of theCuckoo as Do I Hear a Waltz? Composer and lyricist com-bined to produce a musically and lyrically rangy scorewhich was as good as anything they had ever or would (todate, in the case of the lyricist) ever write. 'Someone WokeUp', 'This Week Americans' 'Take the Moment', 'Moonin My Window', 'Here We Are Again', 'We're Gonna BeAll Right', 'Stay' and their fellows made up a remarkableand remarkably shapely score in the traditional Broadwaymould. But Do I Hear a Waltz?, manhandled in production,was not a success.

It was also the.J^&t time (to date) that Sondheim wouldsupply lyrics to another composer's show score. In themore than 25 years and nine shows that have followed -apart from a lyrical contribution to the 1974 revisions ofLeonard Bernstein's Candide - he has written both lyricsand music, although oddly enough never a libretto, to eachof the shows with which he has been involved.

The first of these was Company, a revusical piece which

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paraded through a sharply observed series of sketches andsongs which exposed the little pretensions, vanities andimpossibilities of a group of married, middle-class NewYorkers. 'Another Hundred People', 'Barcelona', 'GettingMarried Today', 'You Could Drive a Person Crazy', 'TheLittle Things You Do Together' and 'The Ladies WhoLunch' each sketched a story or personality to fine revusi-cal effect, and Company won its songwriter the first of whatwould become a bundle of Tony Awards in the years tocome, a good Broadway run, and the first of the ferventfollowers who would soon become legion.

Company was followed by another piece on similarlyrevusical lines. Follies, however, exchanged the everydayNew Yorkers for a parade of everyday ex-Follies girls. Onceagain, as in Company, the audience had to look hard to finda warmly drawn or sympathetic character amongst themostly foolish, egotistical folk who peopled the evening'sparade of characters, but those people gave the songwriterfine opportunities to display his talents in a number offairly friendly parodies of the song-styles of past days: thepattering of the comedian's 'The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me-Oh-You-Do-Pll-See-You-Later Blues', thecharming old Vienna 'One More Kiss', the dance routineof overgrowing-up 'Who's That Woman?', the sweetie-pieduo 'Rain on the Roof, and the creaky self-serenade of anelderly 'Broadway Baby'. Some of the burlesques ran closeenough to the real thing to be taken for the real thing, andthe blowtorch song 'Losing my Mind' went on to join theshow's catalogue of a tough life, Tm Still Here', as anightclub favourite. But the Broadway production of Fol-lies, like Do I Hear a Waltz? was not a genuine success,although it played over 500 nights on Broadway, gaveSondheim its second successive Tony award, and produ-ced several enduring numbers.

An adaptation of the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of aSummer Night was a different kind of project to the twoprevious pieces on which Sondheim had worked. For thefirst time since Do I Hear a Waltz? he was dealing with'real' people set in a story with a beginning, an end and adevelopment, characters who, for all that many of themwere again foolish folk, were without exception likeableand interesting. It was a piece which required painting indifferent colours, and this time Sondheim the composersurfaced with as many trumps as the previously superiorSondheim the lyricist. The waltzing score of A Little NightMusic was both an homogenous score, rather than a collec-tion of songs, and as melodious as it was witty, and itremains for many the most appreciable achievement ofSondheim the composer-lyricist. The score produced a hitsong in 'Send in the Clowns', but that piece was only onehigh spot of a score which mixed the wryly funny, thewordfully funny and the musically funny, but never theharshly or cruelly funny in such pieces as the three-partdilemma expressed in 'Soon', 'Now', and 'Later'; in thecharacters' horrid premonition about a 'Weekend in theCountry' which they wouldn't miss for the world; in theaged ex-plaything of a king reminiscing about the devaluedstatus of 'Liaisons'; in a husband telling his ex-mistress'You Must Meet My Wife'; or in two rivals for a lady's bedjoining (separately) in regretful wishes ('It Would HaveBeen Wonderful').

A Little Night Music found fond friends from one end ofthe world to the other as it went on to a round of continu-

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