Stephen Sondheim – författare

“Priceless and peerless…a thrilling work of theatricality.” —Wayman Wong, San Francisco Examiner

For over three decades, Stephen Sondheim has been the foremost composer and lyricist writing regularly for Broadway. His substantial body of work now stands as one of the most sustained achievements of the American stage.

Pacific Overtures, originally produced in 1976, combines an unsurpassed mastery of the American musical with such arts as Kabuki theatre, haiku, dance, and masks to recount Commander Matthew Perry’s 1835 opening of Japan and its consequences right up to the present.

This new edition of Pacific Overtures incorporates substantial revisions made by the authors for the successful 1984 revival.

Stephen Sondheim was a multi award-winning American composer, whose works garnered over 60 Tony Awards, as well as an Oscar for Best Song and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Here he discusses his life and achievements in a series of interviews from the BBC radio and TV archive: PM, BBC Radio, 21 July 1973 (featuring Pete Myers); The Lively Arts, BBC Television, 2 January 1977 (featuring André Previn); The Levin Interviews, BBC Television, 24 May 1980 (featuring Bernard Levin); Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio, 16 August 1980 (featuring Roy Plomley); Face To Face, BBC Television, 9 January 1995 (featuring Jeremy Isaacs) and Front Row, BBC Radio, 19 October 2010 (featuring Mark Lawson).Due to the age and nature of this archive material, the sound quality may vary.©2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

“Nothing quite prepares you for the disturbing brilliance of Assassins.” –David Richards, The New York Times

“Dark, demented humor, as horrifying as it is hilarious.” –Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press

“Intelligent and thrilling musical theatre. Dazzling in its originality.” –Ken Mandelbaum, Theaterweek

Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking achievements in musical theatre attain a new level of audacity and accomplishment in his latest creation, Assassins. Evoking a fraternity of Presidential assassins and would-be assassins across a hundred years of our history (including John Wilkes Booth, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, John Hinckley and Lee Harvey Oswald), he and collaborator John Weidman examine success, failure and the questionable drive for power and celebrity in American society. The result is an unusually imaginative and utterly idiosyncratic entertainment compounded equally of insight, pleasure, and provocation. Assassins is an important and permanent addition to the American stage.

“Addison Mizner and Wilson Mizner were brothers who, although they played only a minor role in the cultural history of this country, might well be seen to represent two divergent aspects of American energy: the builder and the squanderer.”—Stephen Sondheim

“The score is full of delights, intelligence and tension . . . with a tight, funny book.”—New York Daily News

Road Show, Stephen Sondheim’s first musical since his 1994 Tony Award–winner Passion, is making its highly anticipated New York premiere this season at the Public Theater. The show—with the book by John Weidman, Sondheim’s collaborator from Pacific Overtures and Assassins—has been in development for several years with productions in Chicago and Washington, DC, and grew from an idea that germinated in Sondheim’s mind some fifty years ago. The show dramatizes the real-life Mizner brothers, following their fortunes from the 1890s Alaskan gold rush to the 1920s Florida land boom: Addison as an architect and Wilson as a con man, each brother seeking his own American dream.

Stephen Sondheim’s career spans from his work as lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy, to composer/lyricist on such masterpieces as Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George.

John Weidman wrote the books for Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures and Assassins, and he co-authored the books for America’s Sweetheart and the revival of Anything Goes. He also co-created, with Susan Stroman, the Tony Award–winning Contact.