The Tao of Steve

Why is it that Stephen Sondheim inflames the passions of musical theater fans more than any other composer?



Side by side by Sondheim: The composer looms large because he made people rethink musical theater.

There are musicals, and there are Sondheim musicals. There are composers and lyricists (and composer-lyricists), and there’s Steve.

In theater circles, Stephen Sondheim has special status. Even people who disdain Broadway musicals put his in a different category.

"It’s the intellect, the level of craft, the unexpectedness," says Sean Patrick Flahaven, musical director for the Wilma Theater’s upcoming production of Sondheim’s Passion. "And each show is different from the one before."

But there’s something else about Sondheim — something that inspires a level of fandom surpassing that for any Broadway composer. For these enthusiasts, the works are revelatory, often life-altering experiences.

There are fans, and there are Sondheim fans.

Of course, the source of much of the support is the fact that Sondheim is extremely good at what he does. Perfectly respectable, not-at-all-rabid aficionados respond, simply, to quality.

"I find the music haunting, moving and melodic," says Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge Phyllis W. Beck, chair of the Independence Foundation. "The lyrics are enormously insightful about the human condition."

"Amazing — a brilliant, brilliant man," says Joanne Harmelin. She’s a local media executive and board member of Arden Theater Company, which has done several Sondheim productions. "There’s no one in the musical theater to match his eloquence and wit."

But at the other end of the spectrum is the kind of response that greeted the recent Broadway revival of the 1971 musical Follies.

Critics were tepid, but their reaction was nothing compared to the outrage from the show’s fans. For them, Sondheim is not just a mere songsmith — he’s the last, best hope to save the Broadway musical. And the revival of Follies, a meditation on the decline of Broadway, is the vehicle that was supposed to lead the way.

It’s true that for many theater people, the reason Sondheim looms so large is that he made them rethink their conception of musicals.

Many remember the precise moment of conversion. For myself it was Company in 1970. For Arden’s Producing Artistic Director Terrence J. Nolen, it was 1979’s Sweeney Todd, which he must have seen "about 20 times. It was one of the top theater experiences of my life… Most of the musicals I knew had clear lines, but Sondheim has so much ambiguity, such complexity. He takes unbelievable artistic risks."

For Flahaven, the discovery was Assassins, which he saw for the first time in college in the early ’90s.

"I was mesmerized. I bought the cast album and everything else I could find. I gorged myself out of sheer pleasure, but soon it became an academic interest." (He’s now associate editor of The Sondheim Review, and has a working relationship with Sondheim.)

Note the generational references: Sondheim has now been in the game for nearly 45 years (his first Broadway credit was as lyricist on West Side Story) — a very long time by musical theater standards. For many, the glory years are 1970 to 1981, when Sondheim and director Harold Prince collaborated on Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along. These shows were an extraordinary convergence of talent (also involved were orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, scenic artist Boris Aronson and many more). They were resplendently produced, and in a sense brought together the best of old Broadway (Prince had been a disciple of legendary director George Abbott) and new.

Few of them were major commercial hits. Even critical response was mixed.



	Marry me a little: Maree Johnson and Christopher Innvar in Sondheim’s Passion at the Wilma.

This has, of course, not discouraged Sondheim followers. Quite the contrary. That’s another fundamental element of the mystique: True believers hold that his work may simply be too good for the average man. They get tired, for instance, of the old canard that Sondheim can’t write melodies — haven’t they listened to A Little Night Music, for God’s sake? And even though Sondheim has received eight Tony Awards — more than any other Broadway composer — fans are just as likely to remember those he lost (see "He Wuz Robbed"). Sondheim musicals with particularly short runs acquire the cachet of something rare and precious. After all, nearly everyone in the world saw Cats— but who caught Anyone Can Whistle? (See "I Was There, You Weren’t.")

1981 brought a professional rupture with Prince. Sondheim continued to write for the theater, including three collaborations with writer/director James Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion). These shows are more intimately scaled than those with Prince, and may be even more musically challenging. And they seem more emotionally open.

Consider Passion. It’s a story of obsessive love, featuring a physically plain heroine whose desperate sexual neediness is a focal point. The moody, impressionistic score allows few breaks for applause. Wilma director Jiri Zizka is particularly drawn to it, because "Sondheim breaks new ground. I like that it’s dark and unpredictable. It’s a very brave, personal piece."

In fact, Sondheim has acknowledged a particular connection to Passion, even though in general he bluntly discourages the impression that his shows are in any way autobiographical. Famously guarded about his private life, it wasn’t until 1998, in Meryle Secrest’s biography, that he dealt openly with issues of his homosexuality and his difficult relationship with his mother.

It may be a necessary level of self-protection, because many followers want fervently to "know" Sondheim, and believe the key is to be found in his works. But ironically, Passion has never stirred their passions the way Folllies has.

A modern existential piece, but full of old showbiz tricks, Follies may be the most complex and ambivalent of all Sondheim’s musicals. Fans find it almost unbearably poignant. It is both a living tribute to old musicals and an acknowledgment that their time is over. And it employs a cast of seasoned actors whose careers resonate with history (and who, for at least a moment, find gainful employment).

Is it any wonder that the piece elicits almost evangelical support, or that the current revival was so hungrily anticipated? That a favorite party game among fans is creating fantasy cast lists for productions (see "Cast Your Own Follies")? In some sense, each list is a hope: another opportunity to see favorite performers again, to fan the flicker of a dying form.

For many, the desperation is palpable: with each passing year, with each inadequate revival, we’re further away from a living connection to the world Follies invokes.

Nowadays, there’s a certain elegiac quality around every Sondheim production. The composer/lyricist is 71. To date, his last Broadway show was Passion, seven years ago. But there’s always hope. Flahaven firmly believes we’ll see the finished Wise Guys (a show that had a difficult workshop production last year) within a season or two. And, he says, "there will be more after that." Certainly words to soothe a loyal community who guard the flame: ever faithful, ever hopeful, ever vigilant.

Passion, May 16-June 24, $7-$45, Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce Sts., 215-546-7824, www.wilmatheater.org.