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      Kiki and Herb Will Be Back Where They Belong for Christmas

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      Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman have resurrected their Christmas act for “a big, old chosen family reunion.”Kiki and Herb, the glamorous and harrowing cabaret duo created by Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman, never performed as reliably as the Radio City Rockettes. But for a while in the early 2000s, no Christmas felt complete without them — especially if you are the kind of person who prefers a belt of Canadian Club to eggnog.In those days, Bond played Kiki as an elderly “boozy chanteusie,” with Mellman as Herb, her childhood friend and put-upon accompanist. In fright drag, with age makeup crisscrossing her face, Bond’s Kiki would stalk through the crowd like a bloodthirsty elf, savaging holiday carols and performing medleys that intermixed “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” with “Suicide Is Painless.”“It seemed like a gift to an audience that wouldn’t necessarily be going home for Christmas, wouldn’t necessarily have the best relationship with their family,” Mellman said recently. Their shows wrapped that present in spilled drinks and smeared mascara.Kiki and Herb played their last holiday show, “Kiki & Herb: The Second Coming,” in 2007. Bond and Mellman dissolved their artistic partnership not long after. Mellman continued in the cabaret scene and performed with the band the Julie Ruin. Bond wrote new music and evolved as a visual artist. They didn’t speak for years. After reuniting at a memorial for their friend José Esteban Muñoz, they performed together again, in a show called “Seeking Asylum!,” at the Public Theater in 2016. And now, they have resurrected their Christmas act for what Bond calls, “a big, old chosen family reunion.”Beginning Tuesday, Mellman and Bond will debut “Kiki & Herb: SLEIGH at BAM,” for five performances. Studded with fan favorites — Tori Amos’s “Crucify,” Belle and Sebastian’s “Fox in the Snow” — the show will include new numbers, like Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke.” (During the duo’s last hiatus, Mellman built a file of 300 potential new songs.)On a recent weekday afternoon, Mellman and Bond met at a coffee shop in Brooklyn to chat about reclaiming Christmas and how their characters might spend the holiday. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.It’s been 14 years since your last holiday show. Why restart the tradition now?JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND Before the pandemic, Kenny found this footage of our 1999 show at Flamingo East. I had a meeting with David Binder [the artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music] to propose recreating it. He goes, “You should do a Kiki and Herb Christmas show.” They never take the good idea, I thought at the time. But then history happened, and I was feeling pretty sad last Christmas. As I started looking at what we could do as things opened up again, David sent me another email. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to get together with everybody for Christmas.This set list is mostly familiar material, right?KENNY MELLMAN It’s a question of when you go to see your favorite band and they play none of the songs you want to hear. We skirted that for years, but I felt it’d be nice to give people a Christmas present this year of being like, here. Have it.BOND We’re unpacking all the broken ornaments.How were Kiki and Herb birthed into the world?BOND I created the character of Kiki during the AIDS crisis. I was a young person in my 20s, a street activist. I felt like saying all the things I wanted to say as myself would sound too strident, too earnest. To have this boozed up old person who had done it all, seen it all, I could say anything as this character.MELLMAN All the glitz and craziness and insanity and surrealism lends it a gravitas that it would not have if you just said it in a very straight way.BOND I brought elements of people I really knew into Kiki — very intimidating, very smart women who had just gotten a [expletive] hand dealt, who somehow became these amazing creatures. So that was always there. Herb was based on this guy who worked in a piano bar that we performed at sometimes, this single guy who would drink tequila and had a picture of his cat on the piano.MELLMAN He would drink tequila and just start crying.How has the act changed over the years?MELLMAN We started this as a kind of street theater inside a bar [in San Francisco]. We were both super young, going to queer clubs, protesting every night. Coming to New York — a different atmosphere, a different queer scene — it became less like, Oh, we have to be screaming at the end of the world.BOND We started performing Kiki and Herb here in January of ’95, and ’95 was the year that the cocktail [the antiretroviral therapy for H.I.V.] came and started making lives last longer. So, it became different.MELLMAN We stopped doing mushrooms. So that changed it.BOND It’s New York, we’d better raise our game, we’d better stop doing mushrooms.What was it like to move through adulthood performing these characters?BOND That’s part of why I had to stop. I just felt like I didn’t know fully who I was. I always feel like I’m a disappointment. Because I know that people love that character so much. And I’m not that character. I remember, I thought, maybe if I just did a reality show, and I just lived as that character, people would like me more and I wouldn’t be so lonely.MELLMAN Back in the day, we were doing late-night shows, and then going out even later because we wanted to hang out with all these amazing people. There was no balance.BOND Last year when I was doing streaming performances from my house, I discovered that after 30 years in the business, that I never did a show where I didn’t go out and greet the public afterward. That’s probably why I don’t have any intimacy in my life.But as wild as the act could be, as grotesque as it could be, it was also about love.MELLMAN Like no matter what Kiki does Herb will be there. I find that really lovely and something to aspire to in a weird way. As much as a real psychological expose of that relationship would probably be horrifying, at the base of it is this incredible love for each other that transcends everything.It’s the idea that what if someone saw you at you’re just absolutely worst —MELLMAN And would still be there.So do the shows reach for a kind of emotional truth?MELLMAN Oh, for sure. There was always an emotional center to the act, because it came from a place of survival. I was recently just picturing what San Francisco was like when we created this. I wrote a poem that had the line, “The freshly dead are walking the streets.” That’s what it felt like.BOND Also it goes back to the people that I based the character on, who I had so much love for and who I felt were judged so harshly. My whole drive was to be this very unlovable character, whom people could not help but just love.How do you think Kiki and Herb would be spending this holiday?BOND Probably like us when we were young — meeting at some dive bar and playing pinball and drinking all day. Which sounds nice to me actually.MELLMAN They’d be like, I heard there’s a free buffet.BOND Right? Bottomless cocktails and free buffet at Christmas.MELLMAN Perfect. More

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      Dominique Morisseau Pulls Play From L.A. Theater, Citing ‘Harm’

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      The playwright ended a run of “Paradise Blue” a week after it opened at the Geffen Playhouse. The theater acknowledged “missteps.”The playwright Dominique Morisseau has ended the run of her play “Paradise Blue” just a week after it opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, saying that Black women who worked on the show had been “verbally abused and diminished.”Morisseau did not specifically describe what happened. But in a 1,100-word Facebook post on Wednesday, she said that members of the creative team had been “allowed to behave disrespectfully,” that she had demanded an apology from one member of the team and that “instead of staunchly backing this, the Geffen continued to enable more abuse.”“Harm was allowed to fester,” Morisseau said in the Facebook post.“I gave the theater an ultimatum,” she added. “Respect the Black womxn artists working on my show, or I will pull my play.”In a statement about the cancellation, the Geffen Playhouse said that officials had “apologized to everyone involved” and acknowledged having “fallen short” in its commitment to artists.“An incident between members of the production was brought to our attention and we did not respond decisively in addressing it,” the theater’s statement, released on Wednesday, said. “As a result of these missteps, some members of the production felt unsafe and not fully supported.”“Paradise Blue,” which is set in 1949, is part of Morisseau’s trilogy of Detroit plays, which have been widely produced at theaters around the country. It played Off Broadway in 2018; the Geffen production had opened to strong reviews on Nov. 18, and had been set to run through Dec. 12.“Skeleton Crew,” another play in the trilogy, is scheduled to begin Broadway performances on Dec. 21.The theater declined to comment beyond its written statements. Morisseau did not respond to a request for additional comment.Morisseau’s decision to pull the play over what she described as the mistreatment of Black artists and the dismissal of their complaints comes as theater continues to grapple with how to reform itself and improve its culture.The protests over the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 ignited a nationwide reckoning over racism and inequality in America that resonated in the theater world. As artists prepared to return from the long pandemic shutdown, some have grown more outspoken about what they say are pervasive problems in the industry.This summer Broadway power brokers signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices as theaters were preparing to reopen.In her Facebook post, Morisseau — who earned a Tony Award nomination as the book writer for “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations”— said she had been “gutted” by what had transpired with “Paradise Blue.”She urged the theater industry to “look inward and acknowledge a pervasive culture of anti-blackness, anti-womxness, and anti-black-womxnness.” More

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      Get to Know Sondheim’s Best in These 10 Videos

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      Jake Gyllenhaal, Patti LuPone, Judi Dench and an all-star Zoom trio find the wit, pathos and heartbreak in a remarkable songbook.Songs are there to serve the story and the show, Stephen Sondheim insisted. That’s not to say that his poignant duets, skittery patter songs and ambivalent tributes to old Broadway can’t deliver thrills even out of context. Here are 10 videos that show why, in mourning his loss, performers and writers are expressing thanks for his genius.‘Finishing the Hat’Jake Gyllenhaal’s turn in the title role of “Sunday in the Park With George” was meant to last three concert performances, but the response was so glowing that what started as a 2016 Encores! fund-raiser was retooled for Broadway. This backstage rendition of “Finishing the Hat,” a lament for the artistic struggle, shows why.‘Loving You’Judy Kuhn starred as the lovesick Fosca in the Classic Stage Company’s 2013 revival of “Passion,” one of Sondheim’s most austere, yet romantic scores. Among those who have covered this aching ballad are Barbra Streisand and Barbara Cook; Kuhn is onstage now at the same theater, playing Sara Jane Moore in Sondheim’s “Assassins.”Judy Kuhn, accompanied by Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf on cello, sings “Loving You” from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical “Passion,” now in revival at the Classic Stage Company.‘The Ladies Who Lunch’Sondheim’s 80th birthday was marked in an all-star tribute with the New York Philharmonic, in which Patti LuPone ripped into “The Ladies Who Lunch,” the boozy “Company” showstopper she is performing on Broadway in the revival now in previews. (Elaine Stritch, who introduced the song in the original production, was there, watchfully watching; she gave her all to “I’m Still Here” from “Follies.”)‘The Ladies Who Lunch’While the composer’s 90th birthday fell in the middle of the pandemic, a Zoom tribute still managed to hit the heights, no higher than when Audra McDonald, Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski knocked back the vodka stingers to “drink to that.”‘Giants in the Sky’A spate of stripped-down revivals have brought new life and young fans to the Sondheim songbook. Here Patrick Mulryan, playing Jack (of Beanstalk fame) in the Fiasco Theater’s 2014 “Into the Woods,” sings the plaintive “Giants in the Sky.”Mr. Mulryan sings “Giants in the Sky” from the Fiasco Theater’s production of the musical “Into the Woods,” with Matt Castle on piano. The show is at the Laura Pels Theater through April 12.‘I’m Still Here’Yvonne DeCarlo originated this showbiz survivor’s anthem in “Follies” on Broadway 50 years ago, and Ann Miller, Polly Bergen and Shirley MacLaine (onscreen in “Postcards From the Edge”) have done it, too. Tracie Bennett got the plum assignment in the National Theater’s lush 2017 revival; its director, Dominic Cooke, is on tap to make the very-long-awaited movie.‘Losing My Mind’The middle-aged former showgirl Sally Durant sings this “Follies” classic, but Jeremy Jordan proves this ballad of obsessive love and lifelong regret is truly universal.‘Send in the Clowns’Sondheim’s one true pop hit, thanks to Judy Collins, has become a full-fledged American songbook standard, thanks to Judi Dench and other performers who’ve gotten under the skin of the rueful actress Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music.”‘Not While I’m Around’This duet between the murderous Mrs. Lovett and her young charge Tobias offers the rare glimpse of unadulterated affection in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” though it turns out to be short-lived. Melissa Errico keeps things uplifting in this lilting track from her much-praised “Sondheim Sublime” album.‘Move On’Singing from home, earbuds and all, can’t dampen the emotion of this unforgettable “Sunday in the Park With George” duet between the artist Georges Seurat and his mistress (and model) Dot, played on Broadway by Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. More

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      Impromptu Stephen Sondheim Wakes Fill Piano Bars With Tears and Tunes

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      Lines of Stephen Sondheim fans formed outside Marie’s Crisis Cafe in Greenwich Village as news of his death spread. Inside, it was all-Sondheim on the piano.LaShonda Katrice Barnett had just finished a nice rooibos at a tea salon when she overheard some people at a nearby table.“They were all on their mobile phones and someone said, ‘Stephen Sondheim passed away just now,’ and I screamed ‘Oh no!’ very loudly,” Ms. Barnett, 47, said. “I jumped up, went into the bathroom, cried a lot for a while. Threw up.”She immediately knew her next move. “I thought, ‘I need to be with people in grief,’” she said. “So I came here two hours ago, and I’ve been here, singing and crying.”After hearing the news of Mr. Sondheim’s death, LaShonda Katrice Barnett headed to Marie’s Crisis Cafe. “I came here two hours ago, and I’ve been here, singing and crying,” she said.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“Here” was the Greenwich Village piano bar Marie’s Crisis Cafe, where a line formed in the late afternoon and never let up for hours as fans gathered to commune, aware that they would be surrounded by people who not only perfectly understood their feelings, but who also knew Sondheim deep cuts and could nail tongue-twisters like the “Bobby baby, Bobby bubi, Bobby” line from “You Could Drive a Person Crazy.”“I had other plans tonight,” said Mark Valdez, 28. “My family’s busy for the Thanksgiving holiday, but then we found out that Mr. Sondheim died.” Asked if he had ditched them to go to Marie’s, he laughed and then choked up a little: “Oh no, I just brought them. It’s a family here and I want to be with family.”Jim Merillat, 63, was at the piano from 5:30 p.m. until 10 p.m., playing Sondheim tunes the entire time. “This was a place to process the news and celebrate his life and his work,” he said, chatting with friends an hour after his shift had ended.“I found that phrases or even fragments of phrases in songs would catch me in a different way because now it was about him,” he continued. “I found myself a little choked up several times through the evening.”It was a crowd that knew its Sondheim tunes.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAcross the street from Marie’s, the mood was decidedly more raucous at the Duplex, where an ad hoc reunion of “Mostly Sondheim,” an open mic that ended a 12-year run in 2016, was underway. Inside, musical-theater insider jokes freely mixed with raunchy profanity and references to “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” The appreciative room fell into a hush at all the right moments, though, as when the music director Brian Nash teared up during the spoken opening of “Sunday in the Park With George.”“See, I’m crying so hard, ” he said. Then he and hosts Emily McNamara and Marty Thomas went straight into the upbeat “Comedy Tonight.”Shortly after hearing the day’s news, Mr. Nash decided to bring back “Mostly Sondheim.” Luckily, the upstairs cabaret at the Duplex, a few doors down from the Stonewall Inn, was available. “It seemed important to hold a space for folks to feel whatever they needed to, to sing and cry and laugh and be with people who understood what a loss this was to those who love theater,” he said in an email sent near dawn.He had no problem rallying the troops.“I was so ready to go home and go to bed,” said Ms. McNamara, who had been at a big family gathering in New Jersey. “But when Brian called me I was like, ‘I’ll chug some caffeine, put on some lashes, and let’s go!’ ”There was trivia: “Now we’re going to find if there are actual nerds in the room: On what song did Sondheim write the lyrics under the pen name Esteban Río Nido?”(Answer: “The Boy From …” with music by Mary Rodgers.) And there were reminiscences about first encounters with Sondheim, and of high school performances.And even those stuck at home could join in when Telly Leung (who was once in a Broadway revival of “Pacific Overtures”) encouraged the crowd to sing along to “Not a Day Goes By” — the event was livestreamed on Facebook. (A commenter rejoiced: “I am trapped in Delaware with no access to a piano bar. Thank you Brian and all for bringing the tribe to me.”)Others mourned and celebrated Mr. Sondheim at the theater: he had shows running on Broadway and off when he died, and Friday night’s performances were exceptionally emotional.The cast of the new revival of “Company” took a moment before the show to mark his loss, with Patti LuPone center.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAt the Classic Stage Company, which is presenting “Assassins,” Daniel Jay Park was there to celebrate his 40th birthday, but also to honor a master, whom he had worked with when he appeared in the 2004 revival of his musical “Pacific Overtures.”“Whenever any one of us would mess up, his head would just lift up from the newspaper and we would all know,” he recalled before the Friday evening performance. “Before any note was given, we would all know that something was wrong and we had to go back home and study, fix it.”Eric Anderson Jr., 38, a voice teacher and music director who lives just outside of Boston, was visiting New York for the holiday when he saw the news about Mr. Sondheim. Almost immediately, he told his husband he needed to go for a walk.He ended up gravitating toward Times Square — and decided on a whim to go on something of a pilgrimage to Mr. Sondheim, visiting the Broadway theater named after him and then the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on 45th Street, where the new revival of “Company” was set to begin at 8 p.m.He saw people standing in line hoping for a last-minute ticket, and decided to get one too.“Our industry and our art form owes everything to him,” Mr. Anderson said. “I teach him to all of my students, of course. He is the history of American musical theater in one person.”Matt Stevens and Sadiba Hasan contributed reporting. More

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      Stream These 7 Productions That Celebrate Stephen Sondheim’s Work

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      Here’s a guide to films, documentaries and other productions that provide insight into the composer-lyricist’s sly wit and melodic acumen.Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist who died on Friday at age 91, had an unparalleled influence on contemporary theater. Revivals of two of his shows are currently onstage in New York — the gender-swapped version of “Company” on Broadway and the starry production of “Assassins” Off Broadway at the Classic Stage Company — and Steven Spielberg’s new film adaptation of “West Side Story” will be released on Dec. 10.But there are a few dozen ways to encounter Sondheim’s sly wit, melodic acumen and astonishing moral complexity from the comfort of your sofa. Not that he ever lets you get too comfortable. Unlike many of his peers, Sondheim has been served fairly well by film and video. Here are some of the best ways to watch the work of the man who gave us more to see.‘Original Cast Album: Company’Sondheim’s penetrating study of modern love and even more modern ambivalence is a classic. For a rich encounter with the material, try D.A. Pennebaker’s 1970 documentary, which details the contentious attempts to record the original cast album at the Church, a Columbia Records studio in Midtown Manhattan. A pleasure throughout and a useful insight into a communal creative process, the movie turns electric when the camera captures Elaine Stritch trying and failing to lay down the devastating track “The Ladies Who Lunch.”Stream it on the Criterion Channel.‘Gypsy’Though dinged at the time for casting Rosalind Russell as the stage monster Mama Rose — rather than Ethel Merman, who had created the role — Mervyn LeRoy’s 1962 movie offers a backstage pass to bygone forms of American entertainment: vaudeville and burlesque. Moving nimbly among moods and styles, Sondheim’s lyrics range from utterly innocent (“Little Lamb”) to tastily racy (“You Gotta Get a Gimmick”), with at least one number, “Rose’s Turn,” that suggests the radical revision of the musical that he would later attempt.Stream it on HBO Max; rent it on Vudu, YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and Google Play.‘Into the Woods’Bernadette Peters rehearsing with Sondheim in 1987 during the original cast recording of the Broadway musical “Into the Woods.”Oliver Morris/Getty ImagesEnjoy, if you must, Rob Marshall’s overblown 2014 adaptation of this fairy tale concatenation. But the 1987 version, recorded for PBS’s “American Playhouse” and available on Apple TV, is a superb example of pre-“Hamilton” performance capture, preserving the indelible performances of Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleeson and Chip Zien. Children will listen, so watch it with yours. The first act, anyway. Or for a more modern take, try the 2010 version, recorded live in London’s Regent’s Park and streamable on Broadway HD, with Hannah Waddingham, of “Ted Lasso,” as the witch.Rent the 1987 version from Apple TV and Amazon Prime.Stream the 2010 version from Broadway HD.‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’A work of impeccable silliness and absolute froth, the 1966 film version of this meringue-like musical, stitched together from a handful of Plautus comedies, stars Zero Mostel as a scheming servant and Jack Gilford as a gentler one, with the future Phantom Michael Crawford as the love-struck master. It’s available on several platforms. The songs are flimsy when compared with Sondheim’s later work, but they delight — from the assertiveness of “Comedy Tonight” to the cheekiness of “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid” and the breezy whimsy of “Lovely.”Stream it on Pluto TV and Tubi; rent it on YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play and Vudu.‘Sunday in the Park With George’An incomparable study of the profit and cost of artistic creation, this 1984 musical, loosely based on the life of Georges Seurat, was captured in 1986 with Mandy Patinkin as the pointillist painter and Peters as his muse, Dot. The filmic shades are muddied — a shame for an artist so obsessed with color and light. But Sondheim’s rigor and originality sound clear in songs like “Finishing the Hat,” “Children and Art” and “Move On.”Stream it on Apple TV.‘Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration’Audra McDonald, Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski celebrating Sondheim’s 90th birthday in April 2020.Broadway.comIf your preferred form of tribute involves a generous pour, a good cry and an invitation to sing along, lift your voice to this online offering, assembled last year and available in full on YouTube. Hosted by Raúl Esparza, its quality is uneven, a consequence of first-wave Zoom theater. But it still moves deftly across and through his six-decade career and offers performances by unmatched interpreters, including Patinkin (“Lesson #8” from “Sunday in the Park With George”), Donna Murphy (“Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music”), Patti LuPone (“Anyone Can Whistle”), Bernadette Peters (“No One Is Alone” from “Into the Woods”) and the peerless triad of Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski and Meryl Streep (“The Ladies Who Lunch” from “Company”). Everybody rise? Why not?Stream it on YouTube. More

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      Praise for Stephen Sondheim at ‘Company’ and ‘Assassins'

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      “I would ask you to sit back and luxuriate in his extraordinary words and music,” the director John Doyle said before Friday’s performance of the “Assassins” revival.Hours after Stephen Sondheim’s death, the director of the Broadway revival of “Company” walked onstage before the curtain rose on Friday to acknowledge the news that many in the audience already knew but that some — judging by the murmurs that followed — had not yet heard.“Stephen Sondheim, so sadly, passed away in the early hours of this morning,” said the director, Marianne Elliott. “He was truly the greatest artist that we, in our lifetime, possibly will ever know.”Around the same time, 32 blocks downtown, the director of the Off Broadway musical, “Assassins,” walked onstage before the show with a similar mournful speech.“Today is a sad day for the American theater,” said the director, John Doyle. “Stephen Sondheim changed the face of the American musical, and we feel very blessed to be in this space at this time.”It was evidence of Sondheim’s long-lasting popularity that, on the day of his death, audience members lined up to see revivals for two of his musicals: “Company,” a Broadway production starring Patti LuPone and Katrina Lenk, and “Assassins,” about the people who killed or tried to kill American presidents. Both had been delayed by the pandemic.With the cast of “Company” standing onstage behind her at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, arms around one another’s shoulders, Elliott said that Sondheim’s death had been a shock to the production, whose members had gotten to know the composer and lyricist during the preparation for the revival. Even at 91 years old and with more than six decades of writing music and lyrics for Broadway behind him, Sondheim had taken an active role in the new run of the musical, which first premiered in 1970 and won six Tony Awards. The current production was a hit with critics when it debuted in London in 2019.“He didn’t need to do that,” Elliott said. “But he became the greatest enthusiast for it, and every single line of George Furth’s and every single lyric we talked about, we debated, we argued, we chatted, we laughed,” Elliott added, referring to the playwright.In this version, the central character, a bachelor with commitment issues, is played by a woman (Lenk). He had been supportive of the changes to the musical, Elliott said. “He really understood about art,” she said, “and he really understood about the now and why art should speak to the now.”Right up until his death, Sondheim was both a fairly active writer and theatergoer. Earlier this month, Sondheim had traveled to Manhattan from his home in Connecticut to see these productions himself, attending the opening night of “Assassins” at the Classic Stage Company on Nov. 14 and a preview of “Company” the next day. This week, Sondheim discussed his current project — his final musical — with The New York Times, saying, “What else would I do with my time but write?”Speaking to the audience at “Assassins,” Doyle urged the theatergoers to celebrate Sondheim’s work rather than grieve.“He would be curious if you sat here sadly tonight,” he said. “I would ask you to sit back, to luxuriate in his extraordinary words and music.” More

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      Stephen Sondheim Reflected on 'Company' and 'West Side Story' in Final Interview

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      In an interview on Sunday, the revered composer and lyricist, 91, contentedly discussed his shows running on Broadway and off, as well as a new movie about to be released.ROXBURY, Conn. — Stephen Sondheim stood by the gleaming piano in his study, surrounded by posters of international productions of his many famous musicals, and smiled as he inquired whether a visitor might be interested in hearing songs from a show he had been working on for years, but hadn’t finished yet.“And now would you like to hear the score?” he asked. Of course, the answer was yes. “You got some time?” he asked, before laughing, loudly, with a sense of mischief: “It’s from a show called ‘Fat Chance’!”That was Sunday afternoon, five days ago, when Mr. Sondheim, 91, had welcomed me to his longtime country house for a 90-minute interview with him and the theater director Marianne Elliott about a revival of “Company” that is now in previews on Broadway. It would turn out to be his final major interview.There was little indication that Mr. Sondheim, one of the greatest songwriters in the history of musical theater, was unwell. He was engaged and lucid, with strong opinions and playfully pugnacious, as with the tease about his long-gestating, unfinished final musical. At one moment he complained that his memory wasn’t as strong as it had been, but he was also telling anecdotes from a half-century earlier with ease.He was having a little trouble getting around — using a cane, seeking assistance to get in and out of chairs, and in obvious pain when walking — which he attributed to an injury. Asked about the state of his health, he answered by knocking on a wood table and saying, “Outside of my sprained ankle, OK.”Mr. Sondheim was applauded earlier this month at the first preview of a Broadway revival of his musical “Company,” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesHe was busy right until the end. On Nov. 14 he attended the opening of an Off Broadway revival of his musical “Assassins,” directed by John Doyle at Classic Stage Company. The next night he went to the first post-shutdown preview for the Broadway revival of “Company” — a reimagined production, opening Dec. 9, in which the protagonist, who has traditionally been played by a man, is now played by a woman. And just this week, two days before he died, he did a doubleheader, seeing a Wednesday matinee of “Is This a Room” and an evening performance of “Dana H.,” two short documentary plays on Broadway.“I can’t wait,” he said as he anticipated seeing those shows. “I can smell both of those and how much I’m going to love them.”He was not inclined to make any grand pronouncements on the state of Broadway. “I don’t take overviews — I never have taken overviews,” he said. “Whither Broadway? I don’t answer the question. Who knows. I don’t really care. That’s the future. Whatever happens will happen.”One thing he was hoping would happen: one more musical. For years he had been collaborating with the playwright David Ives and the director Joe Mantello on a new musical, most recently titled “Square One,” adapted from two movies directed by Luis Buñuel.“The first act is based on ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,’ and the second act is based on ‘The Exterminating Angel,’ ” he explained during the interview. “I don’t know if I should give the so-called plot away, but the first act is a group of people trying to find a place to have dinner, and they run into all kinds of strange and surreal things, and in the second act, they find a place to have dinner, but they can’t get out.”Asked if he had any sense when it might be finished, Mr. Sondheim said, “No.”Why did he hope to keep working when he could just bask in appreciation?“What else am I going to do?” he asked. “I’m too old now to do a lot of traveling, I’m sorry to say. What else would I do with my time but write?”And did he write daily in his final weeks? “No, I’m a procrastinator,” he said. “I need a collaborator who pushes me, who gets impatient.”When it was pointed out that he had been a procrastinator throughout his career, and that it had seemed to work for him, he said, “Yes, I have. Yeah, I think forever. Not when I was a hungry teenager — when I wanted so much to have a show done, I don’t think I was a procrastinator then. But once I had a show done, I think part of me got lazy.”But with his shows running on Broadway and off, and a major film adaptation of “West Side Story” about to be released, Mr. Sondheim was clearly feeling good about the current reception of his work.In the new production of “Company,” the protagonist, who has traditionally been played by a man, is played by a woman, Katrina Lenk, center. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHe confirmed his longstanding lack of interest in movie musicals, saying, “Growing up, I was a huge fan of movies, and the only genre that I wasn’t a fan of was musicals — I loved the songs, but not the musicals.”But he was obviously delighted about the Steven Spielberg-directed film adaptation of “West Side Story,” a musical for which Mr. Sondheim wrote the lyrics, that is scheduled to be released next month. “I think it’s just great,” he said. He added, “The great thing about it is people who think they know the musical are going to have surprises.”He was looking forward to even more in the months to come: a new production of “Into the Woods,” for which Mr. Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics, is scheduled to be staged by the Encores! program at New York City Center next May. Also, Mr. Sondheim revealed, New York Theater Workshop is hoping to stage an Off Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” for which he wrote the music and lyrics, directed by Maria Friedman, who has previously directed well received productions in London and Boston.Asked which of his shows he’d most like to see revived next, he appeared stumped. “What would I like to see again that I haven’t seen in a while? I’d have to think about it, because an awful lot of the shows I’ve been a writer of have been done in the last few years.” He added, “I’ve been lucky. I’ve had good revivals of the shows that I like.” More

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      Stephen Sondheim Tributes Pour In From Stars

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      Audra McDonald, Bernadette Peters, Andrew Lloyd Webber and others mourned and celebrated the essential composer and lyricist, who died at 91.Passionate tributes to Stephen Sondheim came quickly as the news of his death reached the theater world and beyond on Friday. Comparisons to Shakespeare were invoked more than once; so was appreciation for his tough-love feedback to those who interpreted his songs.Because the Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer of such beloved shows as “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Sweeney Todd” was known for his wit and wordplay, writers who stick to the page, not the stage, weighed in with admiration as well. (The pop tunesmith Jack Antonoff did, too.) And, given how often Sondheim songs traded in wistfulness and melancholy, the composer’s own lyrics were used to celebrate and remember him, too. Here is a sampling of responses.InterpretersI’m weirdly numb and super-emotional all at the same time. I can’t quite process what the world (especially the theatrical world) looks like without him. He was a giant, he was a genius, he was a legend, he was wickedly funny, he was wildly supportive but bluntly honest, and he was one of the wisest, toughest, most profound mentor/teachers I’ve ever known. I will miss him terribly. AUDRA McDONALDEven in a time so full of loss, this news feels like a unique punch to the heart. Which is appropriate, I guess, given that is exactly how his music always affected me. What do you say when the ocean goes away, or when a mountain disappears? Steve was that elemental and irreplaceable a part of my career and my understanding of art and life. And I’m surely not alone in that feeling. I don’t really have the words. Steve would. MICHAEL CERVERISHe was like Shakespeare, and what a privilege to be able to say, “Steve, what did you mean when you wrote that?” You could get it right from the horse’s mouth. I always say, he gave me so much to sing about. BERNADETTE PETERSTake a walk in the words and music that he left us. Walk in privacy, walk with a friend, put it on at different times in your life. Listen to it, sometimes listen more than once because the simplicity with which he expresses the most complicated human emotions — he’s able to do it in a way that once you hear it, it’s unforgettable. He was simply one of our greatest teachers. MANDY PATINKINHow I cherished his ambivalences! Once, after the final dress rehearsal for “Do I Hear a Waltz?” Sondheim stood in front of the entire company and crew. He suddenly noticed me, and I said “Hello!” and he burst out, “Oh, hello! You were wonderful, most of the time.” That comma, that breadth of affirmation and doubt, is what makes him so astounding, and so wonderful to sing — most of the time. No, all of the time. MELISSA ERRICOThere is no way to overestimate Steve’s impact on my life and work. He was like my second father. I honestly can’t imagine a life without him in it. LONNY PRICEAdmirersFellow theater writersWriters from all cornersPaying tribute with his own wordsThe theater has lost one of its greatest geniuses and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly, there is now a giant in the sky. CAMERON MACKINTOSH More