Stephen Sondheim

This Time It's a Threefer

Stephen Sondheim died on 26 November, 2021. I keep reminding myself that he was 91 and we’re lucky to have had him as long as we did. I’m still incredibly sad he’s gone, though.

Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury

As a kid lucky enough to grow up in Queens, NY it was easy for me to get into the City. (Technically, Queens is a one of the five boroughs comprising New York City but when we said the City we meant Manhattan.) I got to see a lot of Broadway plays and musicals growing up. My dad took me to the first show I ever saw—a really chaotic production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I still know every word.

But 1979 was a banner year: within six months I got to see Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin in “Evita” and Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Over time, Sweeney Todd has become my favorite musical of all time and Stephen Sondheim my favorite Broadway composer. The original production of Sweeney Todd, in particular, was a moment of lightning striking three times: the music, the lyrics, and book, of course, but also the extraordinary performances of and astonishing chemistry between Lansbury and Cariou.

(I had a similar experience in 2008 when I saw the revival of Gypsy with Patti Lupone as Mama Rose and Laura Benanti as Gypsy Rose Lee. I’d include “Rose’s Turn” here as my must listen but, although Sondheim wrote the lyrics for Gypsy, he didn’t write the music. Lupone’s performance of “Rose’s Turn,” however, is one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in my life. I went to this production of Gypsy four times. That final song never failed to reduce me to tears. I put the link here because everybody should hear Patti Lupone sing “Rose’s Turn” at least once in their lives—or once a day for the rest of their lives.)

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It’s almost impossible to pick a favorite song from Sweeney Todd.” “The Worst Pies in London,” “Johanna (Mea Culpa),” “Pretty Women,” “Epiphany," “God, That’s Good,” “By the Sea,” and "Not While I’m Around” are all contenders. “A Little Priest,”  however, is the one I never tire of. With its black humor, clever word play, and back and forth between Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd  (the rhyming competition in which Lovett checkmates Todd with" Locksmith” is priceless), I could listen to this song all day long.

It’s also hard to pick my favorite lyrics because so many of them illustrate the kind of banter and cleverness Todd and Lovettt trade in.

Ultimately, though, Lansbury’s giddy burst of joy at the end of this verse is a glorious touch that puts it over the top. She so thoroughly catches the essence of Mrs. Lovett’s character—her feelings towards Todd and her belief in the rightness of their mission —that I believe Lansbury, better than anyone since, understood precisely who Sondheim intended Mrs. Lovett to be. She embodied the character—her simultaneous capacity for love and casual sociopathy—perfectly.

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The list of Sondheim musicals I love is long—from West Side Story through Company, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, to Assassins—and the list of songs I love is much longer. But the times are dark and my second pick is “Comedy Tonight,” the first song from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” It’s upbeat and silly and clever and immediately grounds us in the world of the musical: an incalculable bonus is that it features Zero Mostel as Pseudolus.

I could add dozens of other songs, such is the legacy of the great Stephen Sondheim. I’d love to know what your experience is with the work of this greatest of American Broadway composers.