Stephen Sondheim: an unfathomable talent and a titan of human creativity

Still in his mid-twenties in 1957 he was unsure whether to take on a project for which he was employed to write only the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s music.  He knew he was a fully formed theatrical force able to supply both music and words even though he must have had little or no idea what his talent was destined to create – the a roll call of idiosyncratic shows that may not have become money making machines of the kind created by Andrew Lloyd Webber, but will always be  indispensable examples of what a musical can be:  Company (1970) Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981) Sunday in the Park With George (1984) and Into The Woods (1987) -  all with lyrics and  music written by Sondheim. 

But back in the 1950s his mentor Oscar Hammerstein convinced him that it may not be a bad idea to work with rising talents such as composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins for West Side Story.  Nor was it such a bad thing for his lyrics to be attached to Jule Styne’s music and sung by Ethel Merman inn Gypsy. 

It was after those shows that Sondheim rose to the pinnacle of that relatively rare group of creatives, the composer/lyricist. His reputation would stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Cole Porter, Frank Loesser and Irving Berlin.  For many it rises above them, although often without achieving what every theatre practitioner wants for their work, to become a popular hit. 

Even where a Sondheim show found an audience in New York there was no guarantee it would would fill theatres elsewhere. When the Sweden-set, Ingmar Bergman-inspired A Little Night Music, which follows the romantic lives of several couples and features the eternally heartrending number Send in the Clowns opened in the culturally and geographically distant playhouse in Houston, Texas, the show did not do well. In fact when the city’s 3,000 seat Theatre Under The Stars venue hosted the musical there would be nights when barely ten percent of the seats were taken.  Or as Frank Young who ran the theatre put it, “You could have shot deer in there.” 

Yet it if it were not for Sondheim it would be far more difficult to say to the still high number of people who declare their dislike of the musical, that they know not of what they talk. Their opinion is usually formed by the understandably irritating idea that even with the best singing and dancing shows generally amount to nothing more than frivolous optimism and sentimentality.   Thanks to Sondheim fans of musical theatre can send them to shows about mass murder (Sweeney Todd) or how in real life cynicism overcomes innocence (Merrily We Roll Along), or the process of creation (Sunday in the Park with George). 

For me, I can still feel the thrilling revelation when I saw my first Company - about living in a city and being single -  that musicals could be about people like me. And then later at my first Pacific Overtures - about the geopolitics of western culture meeting its eastern counterpart -  that there was no limit to what a musical could be about.  

This high-minded ambition of Sondheim’s chosen subjects fostered the false idea that his work was emotionally distant - an accusation that has been levelled at another genius of the stage Tom Stoppard, for whom by the way t is equally untrue. 

His understanding of relationships and the fears and hopes bound up in the human condition are nowhere better represented than in his songs.  And although he had no children, parents in his audiences can marvel at his insight into their offspring with the number from Into The Woods, Children Will Listen. 

That Sondheim did this with unmatchable invention in his melodies and with lyrics that are, yes Stoppardian in their wit, speaks of an unfathomable talent.