Rich Company

Stephen Sondheim opens up to the unlikeliest of collaborators.

by Natalie Hope McDonald

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Published: Feb 17, 2009

EAST SIDE STORY: Ever since Frank Rich reviewed tryouts for Stephen Sondheim's Company and Follies in the '70s, the critic and artist (below) have built a (sometimes tumultuous) history.

When Frank Rich was 12 years old, he saw his first Stephen Sondheim musical, a touring production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, in Washington, D.C. "It got terrible reviews," recalls Rich. "But I loved it."

The experience had a profound impact on the young writer, now one of the most well-known columnists in the country and former chief theater critic for The New York Times. He has since joined Sondheim, a man he's called "the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in American musical theater," onstage in Stephen Sondheim, A Life in Theater: An Onstage Conversation with Frank Rich. For the past year, Rich and Sondheim have been touring the country, discussing Sondheim's major work — everything from Sweeney Todd, Gypsy and Sunday in the Park with George to Into the Woods, Assassins and his latest production, Road Show, at New York's Public Theater.

Rich first sat down with the Tony-, Grammy- and Academy Award-winning composer and lyricist several years ago when the Kennedy Center kicked off its Sondheim festival in D.C. "Stephen turned 70 in 2000," says Rich. "He sat for a lengthy interview with me for the Times magazine." After developing the tour last year, the two men have visited cities like Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., to discuss the nearly octogenarian's star-studded career.

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Long before this onstage conversation, however, the critic and artist have enjoyed a familiar, somewhat tumultuous history together. It started when Harvard student Rich reviewed tryouts for Company and Follies in the 1970s. His reviews eventually caught the attention of Broadway producer Harold Prince (for whom Philly's Prince Music Theater is named).

The reviews weren't always favorable.

"I liked Merrily We Roll Along," says Rich, "which was a big Broadway failure at the time." But he says overall, Sondheim, who rarely gives interviews, has been one of the most successful — and misunderstood — composers in the business.

"I championed Sunday in the Park with George as a critic," Rich says, "but it got generally hostile reviews. It ran a year or so, but was not a commercial success. Truth is, almost all of his shows in every period, dating back to West Side Story and Gypsy, had to overcome a certain amount of hostility and miscomprehension." Rich has long argued that theater reviewers don't wield nearly as heavy an ax as popular perception would like people to believe. He says shows like West Side Story set a precedent for musical theater in the 20th century, even if the productions sometimes fell flat and the reviews were lousy. "Now, we take it for granted," says Rich, who takes a retrospective look at Sondheim's career from the inside out, discussing his intellectual motivations and his famous collaborations with notables Jerome Robbins, Patti LuPone, Ethel Merman and Hal Prince.

The musical-theater landscape has changed significantly since a young Sondheim, originally a New York City native, penned his first show as a student at the private Quaker George School in Bucks County. While the show received great reviews from his peers, well-known playwright and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein told the fledging writer it was the worst show he'd ever read. That didn't stop Sondheim from becoming an apprentice to Hammerstein until his big break came penning the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story while he was still in his 20s.

"He's remarkable in terms of wanting to talk about these things," notes Rich, who says few people have heard Sondheim actually speak, even though his lyrics and music have been interpreted by some of the most famous performers of our time. "Stephen's extremely candid. But he's not a show biz person. He's very introspective, as one would expect from one of the best wordsmiths," says Rich.

Audiences have caught glimpses over the years of Sondheim's more private life in artistic tributes and biographical shows, like Elaine Stritch's Tony Award-winning one-woman-show At Liberty, which chronicles, in part, her intoxicated experience in the original cast of Company. Sondheim also launched many careers along the way, including Angela Lansbury's. Frank Sinatra, Carly Simon and Judy Collins all scored mainstream hits with songs from Sondheim's shows.

And yet, Rich says, "Most of his shows have not been huge smash hits." Rich thinks today's industry makes it harder for a future Sondheim to rise in the ranks thanks to expensive productions dominating the Great White Way. "There is a long history of movies being made into Broadway musicals," says Rich. "Even some of Sondheim's work has been based on other musicals." But as theater has become more expensive to produce and audiences show more interest in flashy productions of familiar shows (read: Mamma Mia!, Hairspray), new, risky productions seldom get the green light.

"A corporate mentality has set in. In a corporate mentality, what's safe and what's proven and what's the best-known title lowers the risk of a huge investment," admits Rich, who says experimental and regional theaters are now producing new, original works in Boston, California and Philadelphia.

The last new Sondheim musical produced on Broadway was Passion in 1994. "The material," explains Rich, "has always been too ahead of his time."

(n_mcdonald@citypaper.net)

Stephen Sondheim, A Life in Theater: An Onstage Conversation with Frank Rich, Sat., Feb. 21, 8 p.m., $25-$79, Kimmel Center, 300 S. Broad St., 215-893-1999, kimmelcenter.org.

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