Sondheim: From “Side by Side” to Zoom
If content is king, then Stephen Sondheim was the emperor of content.
Stephen Sondheim in NYC -Bernard Gotfryd Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)
The death of the composer-lyrist Stephen Sondheim on November 26, 2021, at the age of 91 was universally lamented. That’s because Sondheim revolutionized the American musical theater, his work gracefully making the transition from analog to digital media.
As Jesse Green, chief theater critic for The New York Times, reminisced, when he was 11, his parents returned with an audio cassette from a production of Company which had debuted on Broadway in 1970. Green listened and copied everyone of Sondheim’s words on a legal pad.
Not only was Sondheim a genius, but he also inspired perfectionism in others. Stream the new tick, tick...BOOM! musical-movie-bio about Rent creator Jonathan Larson, and you’ll discover that Sondheim (played by Bradley Whitford) provided Larson with the critical feedback he needed to keep trying in the face of apparent failure.
Back in 1957 when West Side Story debuted on Broadway, in which Sondheim provided the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s score, the original cast recording was in the form of an LP. Sixty-four years later, when you do a search for best sellers in musicals on Amazon, the Blu-ray/DVD versions of the movie starring Natalie Wood occupy the second and third rankings behind Holiday Inn and ahead of The Sound of Music. A remake of West Side Story directed by Steven Spielberg was set to open in theaters on December 10, 2021.
Trailer to the remake of West Side Story directed by Steven Spielberg
In terms of live theater currently in New York, you can choose Assassins or a gender-bending version of Bobby to Bobbie in Company. The latter, my favorite Sondheim creation, has been staged many times. The 2011 production with the New York Philharmonic is available on disc from Netflix. Yet, the PBS Great Performances’ version from 2006 can be streamed in its entirety on YouTube.
The pandemic failed in 2020 to stop the 90th birthday celebration for Sondheim. Put all of Zoom’s snooze-inducing meetings aside, and the standout session was provided by Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald who joined remotely to perform “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company. We only wish the ladies could again toast Stephen on his 100th in 2030.
Then there is Broadway: The American Musical (PBS Home Video) which contains the climatic scene from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. When broadcast in the early 2000s, it was the first time that theatrical content was televised in stunning high definition. What better way to showcase digital TV than the bitmap artistry (a.k.a. pointillism) of George Seurat as interpreted by Sondheim? But of course, Sondheim was always ahead of his time. Given the treasure chest of records, cassettes, TV shows, movies, discs and streams—and, of course, live theater—all associated with Sondheim, he was truly a man who transcended technology.