| Sondheim: A man of letters | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 05:46 pm EDT 07/09/24 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 05:39 pm EDT 07/09/24 | |
| In reply to: Did any of YOU get SS letters? - DistantDrumming 03:40 pm EDT 07/09/24 | |
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| I've got a treasured stack of about 2 dozen letters from Sondheim, from the early '80s until a month before his passing in 2021. After Steve passed, I wrote the following tribute (below) for Talkin' Broadway about how our correspondence and friendship evolved. Among the letters was one from 1991, in which he wisecracked: ''I've begun a new weird musical with James Lapine, the commercial appeal of which will make 'Assassins' look like 'My Fair Lady.' '' [Which, I'm assuming, would later become his ''Passion'' project.] In 2002, I wrote to him, raving about the ''Merrily'' reunion concert, and his reply included: ''The toast in 'Merrily' is from Robert Burns. The complete toast, which I did not use for fear of depressing both the characters and the audience, is: ''Here's to us. Who's like us? Damn few - and the rest are dead.'' But the longest letter I ever got from Sondheim was a 2-page missive in 1993 when I asked if it was true that he once considered turning ''Sunset Boulevard'' into a musical: ''In the early '60s, right after 'Forum,' Burt Shevelove and I decided to do a musical of 'Sunset Boulevard.' We'd actually gone so far as to outline it.'' Then Sondheim says he ran into Billy Wilder at a cocktail party and told him about it. And Wilder said, ''It can't be a musical. It must be an opera. It's about a dethroned queen.'' ''Recognizing the truth of this insight,'' Sondheim and Shevelove dropped the project, but it wasn't the end. Sondheim adds: ''It is now 1980, ''Sweeney Todd'' has opened, and Hugh Wheeler asks me to join him and Hal Prince and Angela Lansbury in doing a musical of 'Sunset Boulevard.' ... When I told Hal [about my Wilder anecdote], he said he would be delighted to do it as an opera, since Beverly Sills was pushing him to do one anyway. I said I didn't want to do an opera. ... And there it was left, to dry up like a raisin in the sun (wouldn't that make a terrible title for a play?). ... I can't imagine going into detail about such trivia with anybody else. I guess you can take that as a compliment. Best, Steve.'' |
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| Link | Talkin' Broadway: Side by Side With Sondheim (Dec. 2, 2021) |
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