Good Deeds: Sondheim Seduces Audiences

It is not surprising that Stephen Sondheim, arguably the most influential living Broadway composer and lyricist, knows how to work an audience. Last Saturday night, he received a standing ovation as he walked into a packed Sanders Theatre to present “An Evening with Stephen Sondheim: An Onstage Conversation with Frank Rich,” an event organized by the Celebrity Series of Boston.

Frank H. Rich ’71, currently a New York Times columnist and formerly their chief theater critic, first met Sondheim after writing a Harvard Crimson review of “Follies,” a Boston production for which Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics.

Upon reading the review, Sondheim contacted him requesting a meeting. Sondheim was impressed by the article, not because of its positive assessment, but because of how adeptly Rich had understood the play. During Saturday night’s onstage conversation, Sondheim stressed that in theater it is supremely important that the audience understand and connect with the material.

“The audience is your collaborator. There is another character in the room, and you have to consider that. It’s not about pandering, it’s about clarity,” he said. “If they’re not liking it because they don’t understand it, that is a theatrical sin.”

Despite his extraordinarily successful career, the composer has still received his fair share of hostile reviews. Rich recalled attending a Washington production of Sondheim’s musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” that had garnered such bad press that, he said, “My parents almost considered not letting me use my ticket.”

Sondheim’s mentor Oscar Hammerstein II, believed that the first musical number is the most important of a production, as it sets up the plot and informs the audience of what to expect from the rest of the show; the major flaw with “Forum,” according to Sondheim, was the mood set by the opening number, a song called “Love is in the Air.”

At the time, “Forum” director Jerome Robbins, a frequent collaborator, offered a reason for the negative responses to the musical. “When Robbins came in, he said ‘You’re not telling the audience that this is a low comedy; you’re telling them that it’s a charming show,’” Sondheim recalled. When Sondheim replaced “Love is in the Air” with a new song, “Comedy Tonight,” there was an almost instant change in the show’s reception. “Comedy Tonight” is a farcical number that prepares the audience for what Sondheim described as “low comedy presented in an elegant way.”

What sets the mood for a theater audience, however, does not necessarily translate to film. A self-professed “film buff,” Sondheim said that the only onscreen version of a musical he has ever enjoyed as a film in its own right is Tim Burton’s 2007 “Sweeney Todd,” for which he wrote the music. Although some Sondheim fans were disappointed that Burton cut the recurring chorus, “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” the composer said he approved of the choice; in his opinion, choruses in musicals, during which nonessential background characters suddenly join the leads in song, have a “peasant on the green mentality”; his technique is ineffective in films, where the focus lies more on dramatizing interior emotions than creating theatrical spectacle.

In particular, Sondheim is known for writing songs for characters in the midst of a personal crisis. “I love to write nervous breakdown songs,” he said. “I understand them so well.” The number “Epiphany” in “Sweeney Todd,” for example, marks the turning point of the show, when Todd transforms from a tragic hero into a man thirsty for blood and vengeance. The success of this particular number is crucial, because it has to justify this character’s transformation.

A notoriously bloody tale about cannibalism, “Sweeney Todd” ran to overwhelming success in the United States, where it first opened. “I used to watch the audience’s faces as they were watching Sweeney Todd singing this lovely little love song and slitting people’s throats,” Sondheim said. “They were mesmerized. They weren’t turned off. They were turned on.”

But as what works for theater may not work for film, what works for one particular audience may not work for another; a version of “Sweeney Todd” identical to the original US production flopped in England.

“I wouldn’t say they hated it,” Sondheim said. “They just thought we were idiots.” In England, the character of Sweeney Todd is often thrown around as an empty threat to scare disobedient children. Consequently, English audiences viewed Sondheim’s play as seriously as Americans might regard a musical about the Boogie Man. Nevertheless, the hostile reception still stung.

“It was a double hurt to me because I’d become an Anglophile, and this was my love letter to England,” Sondheim said.

Even through the challenges brought on by negative reviews, Sondheim has maintained his love of the creative process. In “Sunday in the Park with George,” the song “Finishing the Hat” is his ode to the delight of creation; he writes, “However you live / there’s a part of you always standing by / mapping out the sky / finishing a hat... Look, I made a hat / where there never was a hat.”

“It is such a privilege to be a creative artist and to get yourself into a country that not many people are able to get into,” Sondheim said, referring to the creative domain exclusive to artists. “I wanted the song to show the vulnerability of someone who is making his own world.”

—Staff writer Rachel A. Burns can be reached at rburns@fas.harvard.edu.