Read On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide for Free Online

before, that of philosopher-king of the American musical, mainly because there was so much content in his shows. Even Oscar Hammerstein was not so exclusively eminent.
    So it had to be Sondheim to denounce the American Repertory Theatre’s proposal, in 2011, to stage Porgy and Bess in a substantial revision. In a letter to the New York Times , Sondheim ripped the ART’s plan to shreds, basing his objections on comments made by the director, Diane Paulus, and the dramaturg, Suzan Lori-Parks. Sondheim’s first criticism was aimed at the billing of the production as “ The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess ,” because it made no mention of co-lyricist Du Bose Heyward, who thought up the novel Porgy and then, with his wife, Dorothy, wrote the play Porgy that served Gershwin as his matrix. Heyward’s was an essential Porgy and Bess credit; to leave him out was to leave George Bernard Shaw out of the credit for My Fair Lady .
    In fact, the Gershwin estates have been demanding billing that eliminates Du Bose Heyward for a generation. But Sondheim’s more important objection concerned the planned changes to the work itself. “I wanted to flesh out the two main characters,” said Parks. “I think that’s what George Gershwin wanted.” Said Sondheim, “It’s reassuring that Ms. Parks has a direct pipeline to Gershwin and is just carrying out his work for him.” Sondheim’s basic point was that, in an acknowledged masterpiece like Porgy and Bess , changes of emphasis (in the staging) are acceptable, but changes of kind (in the text) are not.
    This is entirely appropriate behavior for someone who spent most of the 1970s as president of the Dramatists Guild of America, which protects the rights of authors in their dealings with producers and directors. But more: this is loyalty, one of Sondheim’s salient personal qualities. Loyalty to his colleagues, to Hammerstein, to integrity of text, and to Porgy and Bess , which Sondheim regards as one of the greatest of all Broadway offerings (and which is, again, a work written for the popular stage along classical lines). And, while we’re at it, do not praise Agnes de Mille to Sondheim, because he recalls a dinner party many years ago in California at which de Mille deliberately spoke ill of Oscar Hammerstein, knowing how important he had been in Steve’s life. We should note, too, that it took Sondheim forever to break with the notoriously obnoxious Arthur Laurents, simply because they had worked together on shows that helped define Sondheim as an artist. And, despite his difficulties with Leonard Bernstein, Sondheim remained close to him on the personal level. Sharing the creation of West Side Story made the two more than colleagues: lovers, in the metaphorical sense.
    Now in his eighties, Sondheim enjoys an unusual celebrity based entirely on his work, safe from tabloid gotcha!s. Many of his friends were not aware that in the 1990s, he met a young songwriter from Colorado, Peter Jones, and embarked on a romantic liaison. It was not Sondheim’s first such involvement, but his first serious one, succeeded by a second affair, with Jeff Romley.
    Before that, Sondheim’s most important relationships were those with his collaborators, liaisons of art—those whom he has learned from and, himself, instructed. Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne, Hal Prince, James Lapine, and above all Oscar Hammerstein. Shortly before he died, Hammerstein gave his photograph to Sondheim, inscribing it, “For Stevie, my friend and teacher.”
    * Beggar on Horseback made it to Broadway as a semi-musical in 1970, at Lincoln Center. The original text was retained, but Stanley Silverman and John Lahr musicalized the central dream sequence as a Ziegfeldian pageant that anticipated parts of Sondheim’s Follies .
    * Only very elaborate musicals of the 1950s cost that much. My Fair Lady , the most lavish production of the 1950s before West Side Story , cost $360,000, and Saratoga ,