As far back as “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the 1962 musical that earned him his first Broadway credit as both composer and lyricist, he wrote, If you start to feel a tingle / And you like remaining single/ Stay home, don’t take a breath / You could catch your death / ‘Cause love is around.
Sondheimia, love always is a double-edged sword.Ī drama critic, reporter and editor, I've engaged with every Sondheim show since "Company" upended Broadway norms in 1970, and with the man himself on many occasions as well. You may keep, for example, your sentimental Sigmund Rombergian paeans to love, your Ira Gershwin predilection for mush in Sondheimia, love always is a double-edged sword. Within that truism is the ambivalence (to use one of his favorite words) - of fearlessness urged along by fear - that drove him to greatness. Yet one essential clue to the genius, to the man who blew up Broadway and put it back together in his own image, is that Sondheim never did anything twice.
(Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Ĭall me heretic, but I couldn’t resist starting this valedictory to Stephen Joshua Sondheim, who died on November 26 at 91, with a lyric not from one of his legendary musicals, but from a song he wrote for the film “ The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.” There are, in the Sondheim canon, plenty of sharper lyrics, lyrics that cut more acutely, draw blood more swiftly or, conversely, send the listener into paroxysms of amazement - The child is so sweet, and the girls are so rapturous / Isn’t it lovely how artists can capture us? - to choose from. Stephen Sondheim, songwriter/lyricist, listening to music in the recording control room during the original cast recording of the Broadway musical "Into The Woods", New York, 1987.