Whether on stage or screen, Sondheim set the bar high

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This article was published 03/12/2021 (1739 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Much has been written about Stephen Sondheim since his death last week at the age of 91. He has justly been celebrated for the sophistication of his work. Both musically and lyrically, Sondheim set the bar high.

Much of the writing has taken its oxygen from the rarified air of Broadway productions such as Sunday in the Park with George, or Merrily We Roll Along. Think: Elaine Stritch singing the embittered The Ladies Who Lunch, from Company.

I have a different perspective because I came to Sondheim via movies.

I was introduced to his work at an early age: The movie soundtrack of West Side Story (1961) got a lot of play in my house when I was growing up. So while I was still in elementary school, I received higher education in songwriting via Sondheim’s lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s music, which were basically committed to memory, from the satiric splendor of Gee Officer Krupke and America, to the plaintive heartbreak of There’s a Place for Us. It would be about a decade before I saw the actual movie at a revival screening in the early ‘70s, which was a thrill. But it was remarkable how succinctly Sondheim’s lyrics so thoroughly told the story.

Also in heavy rotation in the King family playlist was Judy Collins’ interpretation of Send in the Clowns from the 1975 Sondheim musical A Little Night Music, an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night. I saw Bergman’s film in the early ‘70s at a Winnipeg Art Gallery screening, but I didn’t see Sondheim’s musical until much later, via local musical company Dry Cold’s production in 2016.

The Broadway farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) represented Sondheim’s first crack at writing words and music. Perhaps too risqué for Rainbow Stage (it didn’t play there until the ‘90s) it was more widely available via Richard Lester’s 1966 movie version. The stylist Lester’s take was often at odds with the material, but it remained a pleasure to see Zero Mostel hamming it up in his Tony-winning turn as the crafty slave Pseudolus. The musical remains a high point in the low comedy genre, which is at risk of becoming a dying art just now.

Sondheim, a lifelong lover of puzzles, co-scripted the non-musical mystery movie The Last of Sheila, released in 1973, starring the likes of Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, James Coburn and Dyan Cannon. It was a film dripping with a puzzle-maker’s delight and flavoured with piquant Hollywood-insider dish.

Sondheim’s pitch-dark humour would find other outlets, of course, in the cannibal comedy Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (with one-time Winnipegger Len Cariou handpicked by Sondheim to play the title role opposite Angela Lansbury, for which Cariou won a Tony Award for best actor in a musical ).

Again, I missed the play, but I saw the 2007 movie, directed by Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp in a performance that doubtless felt anemic next to Cariou’s full-blooded interpretation. It was, alas, the same with Into the Woods (2014), Sondheim’s take on Grimm’s fairy tales with a decidedly adult spin.

Next week comes Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited remake of West Side Story, which arrives at a time when the original film’s thin portrayal of Puerto Rican ethnicity can be addressed. Sondheim confessed at the time he wrote the lyrics for WSS, he had never met a Puerto Rican.

Nevertheless, the movie arrives in time for a renewed appreciation of Sondheim’s gifts. And if that happens in a cinema instead of a playhouse, there are some of us who will feel right at home in that venue.