Stephen Sondheim (March 1990)

Audience question After Sweeney Todd, a lot of us thought there would be an opera from you. Is that likely?
SS The problem with writing an opera is that you never get a chance to fix it. The way opera companies are run (and one understands the exigencies) you can never get enough performances to fix it. You get five, six, a dozen performances, usually not in a row. In the 19th century, and I'm sure earlier, operas were re-written over a period of time, the way shows are now. With a musical, you have a number of continuous performances whether it's out of town, before New York, or like here at the National, where you have ten previews during which to fix a play. With opera, not only do you not get enough performances, you don't get successive ones, you don't even get a successive cast quite often. So that no scene ever gets set, and as a writer you cannot judge whether what's wrong with the piece is the actors' fault or the orchestra's fault or your fault. The result, I think, is that most twentieth century operas are at best on the way to being good, and the problem is that you simply don't get enough time. Beverly Sills who runs the New York City Opera asked me a number of times to write an opera, and I said “Can I get thirty continuous performances?” There was dead silence, and I sympathise, it's not her fault but an opera audience likes repertory.

Audience Question I recently read an article in New York Newsday where you said you didn't think West Side Story could be put on today. With the resurgence of gang wars in the States do you still believe that?
SS I think you misread it slightly. Actually it was Hal Prince who said it was unlikely that money would be raised to put on that experimental and peculiar a show today, and I agree with him. That show, as some of you may know, was not a big success when it opened. It made its money back mostly because the cast was very young and they got paid very little. It became a gigantic hit when the movie came out. In the four years between 1957 when it was staged and 1961 when the movie came out, there were exactly two records made of the songs – one by Dinah Shore and one by Johnny Mathis – but once the movie was made they pushed the score and it became a set of classic songs.

Audience Question Is 'Too Many Mornings' speeded up as 'The Worst Pies in London'?
SS I will answer that by telling you that Lillian Hellman was delivering a lecture once and Paddy Chayefsky, a smart young playwright, raised his hand and said “Miss Hellman, why is it that in every single play you've written, blackmail is the central line around which the plot revolves?” There was a long pause and she said “I shall not sleep tonight, Mr Chayefsky”. So, if it's true, it's a coincidence, and I've got to think about it. It doesn't sound like it to me, and it's not intended certainly. I think one does sometimes unconsciously steal from oneself, and I ask people to tell me if anything sounds familiar.

Audience Question Have you analysed the reaction to your work compared to that of Andrew Lloyd Webber?
SS Are you talking about critical reaction or audience reaction? Critical reaction is something that's a vagary. Audience reaction I can't really determine. First of all I don't believe in comparing composers. It's a fool's game. Second, I never think about such things. I do what I do and hope that an audience will like it and that the critics will like it. If the critics like it, that helps it run. But I'm not copping out. I really have no feeling about it at all. I don't compare myself. I've talked about it a little to other composers in New York, and we don't waste time thinking about such things. We think about the show in hand and hope that we get good reviews. There's always a certain amount of professional envy when a composer sees another composer get some praise. Gore Vidal said “Every time a friend of mine has a success, I die a little”.

Audience Question What do you not like about teaching?
SS There's nothing I don't like about teaching. I love teaching. I'm very sentimental about this, so my answer is going to be sentimental. I've always believed that art is a form of teaching. It sounds somewhat pretentious but I would argue that when you write and when you paint, you are in a sense passing on feeling to a number of people and that is a form of teaching. I've always loved teaching, and I was a precocious student who, when the teachers got sick when I was in highschool, would take over classes in math and English. I loved doing it, and I'm good at it, meaning I'm intense about it and I'm enthusiastic, and that's what I think being a teacher is about: conveying enthusiasm for your subject. This is obviously a reference to the Professorship at Oxford, where I have thirteen students and I love them all and they love me and I'm having a great time.

Audience Question Could you explain your attack on Lorenz Hart?
SS I've been in trouble ever since I attacked him, in 1972 in a lecture, and it was picked up by a lot of journalists. My objection to Larry Hart is that he's sloppy, that the words usually do not sit on the music and that he changes syntax to make the rhyme. I'll tell you something odd. I was brought up, as many of you know, by Oscar Hammerstein. He was the one who defended Hart. Most people think that because I was brought up by Hammerstein, I'm anti-Hart, because there has always been the Rodgers & Hammerstein camp and the Rodgers & Hart camp. Not at all. Hammerstein pointed out something to me, which at the tender age of fourteen I didn't fully comprehend, which is that Larry Hart freed American lyrics from the stilted middle-European operetta technique, into a natural form of speech. But for natural forms of speech I prefer Dorothy Fields and Frank Loesser. When I gave this lecture in 1972 I pulled a stunt. I took a chance and brought the Rodgers & Hart song book, which has about fifty songs in it. To illustrate my point, I opened it at random three times and read a lyric of no more than fifteen or twenty words. On every page I opened up there was an example of a phrase that didn't sit on the music properly, or mis-stresses, or forced rhymes. That's what I object to. I don't think he worked very hard. Richard Rodgers told me that Hart didn't work hard. That doesn't mean he wasn't immensely talented, but as somebody who really sweats over lyrics, I resent that. Obviously the quality of his lyrics, that kind of world-weary, heart-on-sleeve and yet urban-tough flavour is something that has influenced lyric writers ever since, certainly all conversational lyricists. I just wish he were neater.

Audience Question In Sunday in the Park, George says “I'm trying to get through to something new, something that is my own”. Is that you speaking too?
SS First of all that's a line written by James Lapine, who wrote the libretto, and I think it's something he picked up from looking at Seurat's work. The fact is that Seurat was a pariah and was treated very badly by most of the Impressionists who tried to prevent him from being exhibited, and when he was exhibited, withdrew their work. He was already ahead of them and they thought they were the cutting edge and in fact he was. It doesn't mean he was better, just different, and they resented the difference. His defence is that he's trying to get through to something that is his own, not Renoir's or Sisley's or Degas'. It turned out to be such a weird animal that it aroused hostility and the resistance there always is to the shock of the new. He paid a price for it.

Audience Question Do you feel you've paid a price?
SS It's possible. The difference is that my profession depends so much on the immediate reaction of journalists and audiences, as opposed to a painting which hangs on a wall and has a chance, over a period of time, to find its audience. One of the problems of writing a show which is not a big success or doesn't run a long time is that not enough people get a chance to see it. That's the miracle of the recording industry. Every single show I've written, including Anyone Can Whistle and Merrily We Roll Along, neither of which ran for long, was recorded, so people who want to can get familiar with it, get a chance to listen to it, and perhaps even get excited enough to want to do it again. The shows are revivable. I think that's perhaps the price, but I've never felt it very strongly because I've never yet written a show that didn't get on. If I had, I might be embittered.

Audience Question Will the National production of Sunday in the Park be different from the Broadway one?
SS Entirely different. Not in the writing but in Steven Pimlott, the director, and Tom Cairns, the designer's, view of it. One of the reasons that I wanted to do the Oxford class in conjunction with Sunday in the Park was not just to give the students a taste of what it is to put on a show as opposed to dealing with art, but also to show how the theatre is entirely different from movies and television in one way – it's always re-interpretable. As an author, sometimes it's like someone coming in with a different hair-do. You may be taken aback by it, but it's another way of looking at things. The National's is entirely different from that of James Lapine (who wrote it and directed the first production), and it's what keeps the theatre alive.

Audience Question What happened to Sunset Boulevard?
SS That was a rumour – never a fact. What happened was that Angela Lansbury and Hal Prince and Hugh Wheeler wanted to do a musical of Sunset Boulevard and actually, long before they were interested, Burt Shevelove (who wrote A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and I had decided we would do a musical of it. I went to a cocktail party, where I met Billy Wilder, who had written and directed the movie. I was kind of shy and shuffling and I said, “A friend of mine and I are thinking of doing a musical of Sunset Boulevard”, and he looked at me as if I were out of my mind. He said “But you can't do a musical about that. It's got to be an opera. It's about a de-throned queen”. And as soon as he said that I realised it had to be huge, that you couldn't have song, dialogue, song. Something as melodramatic and over-ripe as that requires operatic treatment. I said to Hal, “If I wanted to do an opera, that's a good idea. But I don't want to do an opera”.

Audience Question Congratulations on the Washington revival of Merrily We Roll Along. If someone wanted to revive Anyone Can Whistle, would you approve?
SS No. Anyone Can Whistle was a show of its period, 1964. It's a real early sixties musical. It's a satire in the Swiftian sense, about subjects that are now passé and I think would not hold up except as a period piece. Merrily We Roll Along is about values that I think are perennial, and I think it's relevant to all times even though it deals with a specific period, starting in 1957 and going on for twenty-five years from then.

Audience Question Can straight theatre survive in New York?
SS You're referring to a controversy that happened this year in which David Hare's play, The Secret Rapture, was given an extremely bad review by our leading critic, Frank Rich of the New York Times, and as most of you probably know, the New York commercial theatre is influenced primarily by one newspaper. It is possible that a show will survive a bad review in the New York Times, particularly if it's a musical. But it's almost impossible – I can't think of an example off-hand – where a straight play has survived a bad review by Frank Rich. This question of whether the theatre can survive has to do with non-musical theatre. There isn't a lot of straight theatre going on on Broadway. There's a great deal going on off-Broadway, many good plays being done, and I think that's where the future of the non-musical theatre is. Broadway is in somewhat dire straits because the costs are so great. Also a whole generation has grown up in which the theatre-going habit has been lost, which is not true in Britain, at least not yet. So people in New York go to shows once a year, and generally what they go to see are spectacles, either musical or non-musical, and it becomes a special treat. There's no continuity to theatre going, which there is still in London.

Audience Question Do you prefer big spectacles or intimate productions?
SS It depends. I'm a firm believer in content dictating form, both in writing and in production. I think Sunday in the Park, which is done with an eleven piece orchestra and a very spectacular, although intimate-spectacular, set, is exactly right. Sweeney Todd was a big romantic piece and was originally done with a 25-piece orchestra. I meant it to be done as a small piece because I wanted to just scare people, but Hal Prince, who directed it, who is very much influenced by Meyerhold and Piscator, is into opera and large effects and he wanted to make it epic. He said “I know what you want, and you'll lose some of the scariness but I'll give it a large, epic feeling. Perhaps that will serve the piece in a different way”. I thought, “It can always be done small, but things can't always be done big, so let's try it”. And it was wonderful. I still like it small, and I like it big. I think it varies. I don't like spectacular sets for their own sake any more than I like over-blown music for its own sake.

Audience Question Have you ever thought about doing your own orchestrations?
SS Nobody does their own orchestrations. It's impractical. If you did, it means you'd have to do it before rehearsal starts. You don't have time to do it during rehearsals because of constant re-writing. Leonard Bernstein didn't do his own orchestrations for West Side Story or Candide. The last person who did it was Kurt Weill. You'd have to do the orchestrations and then cast for the key ranges and the key relationships and range relationships of the orchestration, as in opera. What happens in musicals is that an orchestrator doesn't start work until the second week of rehearsals when all the keys have been set and the piece has been cast. That's why often in opera there's such inappropriate casting, because you can't get the soprano who looks 25 to sing in that range. You get the soprano who's 50 and a hundred pounds overweight.

Audience Question Silly question: out of all the songs you have ever written, which is your favourite?1
SS It's not a silly question. It's an impossible one. I like different songs the way I like different shows, for different reasons. I'm particularly fond in Sunday in the Park of 'Finishing the Hat', but it's generally the one in the show I've seen most recently.

Audience Question Did the original production of Merrily We Roll Along fail because of the plot running backwards, and should the Kennedy number not be cut because it's dated?
SS The whole idea is that it takes place at a certain post-war period and so it's dated, but it's not dated old-fashioned. It's set then because that was the last moment of idealism in the United States, and the Kennedy Song reflects the idealism of the young people who've written the number. As far as the failure of the original goes, it had nothing to do with the running backwards. The criticism never said it was complicated at all. The reviews were excellent. The cast comprised 92 people and it was done at a small theatre, the Music Box. There's an opening night party scene in the second act, and my friend Burt Shevelove said it was one of the most vivid experiences he'd had in the theatre – of the stage filling up till people literally could not move. There was nothing but cigarette smoke. The heroine is trying to fight her way out of the party because she realises her husband is having an affair with the leading actress, and she can't get out of the room because it's so jammed. It ran a whole season, which in those days was enough to make its money back.

Audience Question What have you left to do?
SS As a friend of mine said when I was complaining about some bad criticism or something, “Just write a show and put it on, write one and put it on, write one and put it on...”

Audience Question Have you considered writing an original film musical, or do you think that form is dead?
SS I've had an idea for a number of years. It's always interested me because I'm an old movie buff, and musicals never worked for me, except the presentational musicals like the Astaire-Rogers ones, but the kind of musical where you try to integrate the songs into the storyline doesn't seem to me to work on film. It works on the stage because of the convention. It doesn't work on screen because screen time is different from stage time. I have an idea of a tricky way to make songs work on screen.

Audience Question In the Pacific Overtures score there's a part for a recorder. On the American recording, it would seem to be played on the shakuhachi. Which do you want it played on?
SS In the opening I used the Japanese wooden flute called a shakuhachi. There is then a place where I wanted the shakuhachi used for a song called 'There Is No Other Way'. The problem with it, as with all Japanese instruments, is that the tuning is not Western tuning. For a Western voice to sing with a Japanese instrument is virtually impossible because it sounds like somebody is out of tune. Therefore we traded it in the orchestra pit for a recorder for that one number so that the tenor could get in tune with the piece.

Audience Question When you're writing a piece, do you have a picture in your mind of what it should look like?
SS The visualisation of a show, that's the director's area. Both Hal Prince and James Lapine attack a show visually first. I wrote the opening of Company, as a matter of fact, after having seen a sketch that Boris Aaronson, the set designer, did of the set. It showed me what I was writing for. When it comes to writing a song, however, that's my staging. I stage it meticulously and in minute detail in my own mind, to give the director a blueprint from which he can totally vary if he wishes. I learned this from Jerome Robbins when we did West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein was away on a concert tour, and I had to play the first numbers to Jerry. I played him “Maria, I've just met a girl named Maria and suddenly that name will never be the same to me – pause.” and he said “What do you want him to do during that pause?” I said “Well he just stands there”. He said “You try and stage that. Give me something to do – stage it for me.” And I've taken that advice to heart ever since, and I stage everything, including pauses in songs, whether it's just a cross or a look out to the audience, it gives the director something to go from. And it's a great help writing, to know that something is going to happen. As I say, the director need not follow this all the time, but sometimes does.

Audience Question Which classical music to you listen to for your own pleasure?
SS I'm a plebeian in my taste. My taste is from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, starting with Brahms. I'm a Brahms fan, a big fan of the Russians, Rachmaninov in particular, and Ravel is the father of us all. Benjamin Britten, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Prokoviev, Copland – it's the usual list. Most popular music and most show music owes its origins to Ravel.