The Master

I would be remiss if I didn't note Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday.

Sondheim grew up next door to his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein. He said he learned more in a day with Hammerstein than he could learn in a year on his own. I remember years ago reading an essay (which I can't find on the internet) Sondheim wrote about lyric-writing that taught me more in a sitting than I could have learned in a year on my own.

I'd like him to write two books. First, an instruction book telling us everything he knows about creating musicals. He put so much into a short essay that a full-length work would be astonishing. Second, an autobiography--it'd be great to hear his take on a career that starts in the heyday of the integrated musical and comes up to, well, the age of Sondheim (or Andrew Lloyd Weber--you call it).

Sondheim started out (first as a lyricist, then full composer) with three classics, West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959) and A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To The Forum (1962). (I think it was Larry Gelbart who said "he's not one of us yet--he hasn't had a flop.") Then, after a number of failures and false starts, he came into his own in the 70s, with Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976) and Sweeney Todd (1979). By the end of the decade, he was the unquestioned master.

He continued strong into the 80s with Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday In The Park With George (1984) and Into The Woods (1987). However, it was becoming clear that a Sondheim show on Broadway often didn't return the investment, and never paid off big. While he had a solid cult, and always turned in interesting work, his musicals were thought to be challenging (a bad thing on Broadway) and his tunes not hummable. Broadway's always been hit or miss, but shows are so costly today that we've reached a place where its greatest living composer is too rarefied to open a show.

My advice. Finish those two books. Then get a good Broadway "book" writer (honestly, Stephen, have you ever had a book as good as you got with Gypsy or Forum?) and shock everyone with your biggest blockbuster yet.