Either via cast recordings, amazing books, or classic documentaries of their own. In one way or another, all of Stephen Sondheim’s shows can be revisited. (The Tim Burton film is a problem all of its own.) Lovett and Sweeney Todd, but we can listen to the cast recording and still gasp at the pause at the end of “Epiphany” that leads directly into the opening lines and first notes of “A Little Priest.” Or watch the inferior, though still amazing, production of the show with George Hearn taking over as the demon barber of Fleet Street. We may not be able to see Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou as Mrs. With Sondheim’s death, his acolytes (me included) have been thrown down the rabbit hole of the work all over again. Stephen Sondheim and Bernadette Peters signing my copy of Follies (Photo by Christine Evans, used with permission) But the art was universal and will be eternal. It is a small niche, thriving on commercial appeal and Stephen Sondheim’s shows were never all that successful, even inside that tiny niche. The show itself is replicated over and over, by revivals and high schools and cabarets and movies, but the essence of each show, the heart of it, has to lie in the material itself. While a movie debuts around the world and can be played and replayed forever, the pinnacle of exposure for a musical is a limited production on one street in New York or one street in London. It is both insular and specific and universal. He did that, of course, and so much more. Sondheim always said, all the way up to the week before his death, that he was just trying to honor the legacy Oscar Hammerstein II left by being his mentor. Rather than disdain, these up-and-coming heirs to the throne would be met with genuine care, compassion, and advocacy. New composers from Jonathan Larson to Lin-Manuel Miranda and many many more would go to sit at the altar of “Sondheim.” Inundating the master with their shows and ideas. Sondheim.”) This legend of the stage, a genius who in death is being unironically compared (justifiably) to Shakespeare, was also a person you could (and many many would) sit down and have a drink with. People that knew him called him “Steve.” (Whereas I will only ever call him “Mr. Long ago Stephen Sondheim moved on from being a man to being a legend. And yet, as the accolades, obituaries, and acts of mourning have poured in from all over, the sadness of his passing threatens to overwhelm us. ( Though he was working on a final show up until the day he died.) The man lived a great life and created some of the greatest art that will ever exist. He was 91 years old and it had been many years since his last new musical opened on Broadway.
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