Opinion

A good thing going: Remembering Stephen Sondheim

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Many years ago, I saw Stephen Sondheim in person. Granted, my view was from the very last row of the Westport Country Playhouse, in Westport, Connecticut. He was a tiny figure who briefly waved into the spotlight. I don’t remember him making a curtain speech, or saying anything at all, really. But for those brief seconds, I observed the mythic Broadway composer with my own eyes, and that fact alone made me giddy.

All of this was an accident of fate. The concert was “The Ladies Who Sing Sondheim,” a one-night fundraiser gala in support of the playhouse. As a 26-year-old freelance writer, I could never have afforded a ticket. But a friend of mine worked for the playhouse, and he invited me to volunteer as an usher; in exchange, I could watch the show for free.

I knew nothing about the concert, much less that Sondheim himself would be in attendance. As it happens, the playhouse had personal significance to him: Sondheim had interned in that very theater back in 1950.

I grew up in a theatrical household. My parents began their courtship in their high school auditorium. My childhood was peppered with plays and musicals, from amateur revues to the Broadway revival of “She Loves Me.”

One year, my whole family auditioned for a community production of Sondheim’s “Follies,” and we all landed parts. This experience helped shape the years to come: My brother studied acting at a respected conservatory, and I have authored more than a dozen stage plays (so far).

Such childhoods are rare, I know. My parents know almost nothing about Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, but they have an encyclopedic knowledge of classic show tunes. Critical to that canon, of course, is Stephen Sondheim, the lyricist and composer who radically expanded the possibilities of musical storytelling, and who died on Nov. 26, 2021, at the age of 91.

For every chapter of my life, there was a corresponding Sondheim creation. On childhood road trips, we listened to “Into the Woods” over and over, until the audiocassette started to warp. In adolescence, I relished the raging nihilism of “Sweeney Todd.” In college, I unearthed “Pacific Overtures” and “Sunday in the Park with George,” experimental works that helped enrich my own writing.

To me, Sondheim’s work was poetry, clever and mind-bending and wise.

These days, I barely follow musical theater. But hardly a day goes by that I don’t find myself humming “Being Alive” or “Send in the Clowns.” Or, as I drive around Providence, a Mandy Patinkin album will pop up on my Pandora playlist, and I’ll lose myself in Sondheim’s layered rhymes, his rule-damning melodies.

I love the existential pondering of his characters, like Fay Apple singing “Anyone Can Whistle,” or George Seurat belting out “Finishing the Hat.” It’s hard to believe that so many iconic ballads poured out of one man.

For such an expressive artist, Sondheim led a private life, and he was particularly quiet about his Judaism. None of his best-known characters are overtly Jewish. Musicals that are overtly Jewish, like “Fiddler on the Roof,” or “The Rothschilds,” were created by other people. For all his satirical numbers, Sondheim never had fun with Jewish references, as one finds in “Spamalot” or “The Producers.”

Still, Sondheim’s community was filled with Jewish creatives: mentor Oscar Hammerstein II, director Hal Prince, playwright James Goldman, composer Jules Styne, actor Zero Mostel, dramatist James Lapine, and so on. These are some of the most influential names in modern theatrical history, who took the torch from Vaudeville – a vital safe space for Jewish-American immigrants – and helped it burn all the brighter.

On that very special night years ago when I attended “The Ladies Who Sing Sondheim,” I had several other celebrity encounters as well. The lineup included Patti LuPone and Kristin Chenoweth, among other Broadway legends. And, as I stumbled through my ushering duties, I accidentally stepped on Christopher Plummer’s foot.

But the crowning moment was spotting Sondheim, occupying the same room, and spending 90 minutes listening to the same music.

The man is gone now. The curtain has closed on his life. But his work lives on, and it will merrily roll along.

ROBERT ISENBERG (risenberg@jewishallianceri.org) is the multimedia producer for the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and a writer for Jewish Rhode Island.

Stephen Sondheim, Op Ed