Also, according to Sondheim, " Lansbury was so insecure onstage, and unhappy with her performance, that we considered replacing her.

history, and Stephen Sondheim was present at the post-matinee talkback on April 10.

Another draft of the opening number, " Invocation and Instructions to the Audience ," has been used in subsequent revues of Sondheim songs and was sung by Nathan Lane in the musical The Frogs.

He had agreed to work on The Girls Upstairs if Sondheim would agree to work on Company ; Michael Bennett, the young choreographer of Company, was also brought onto the project.

The show, which lasted for 871 performances during its initial run, featured sketches written by Mad regulars Stan Hart and Larry Siegel interspersed with comedic songs ( one of which was written by an uncredited Stephen Sondheim ).

According to Stephen Sondheim, " What few people understand is that Oscar's big contribution to the theater was as a theoretician, as a Peter Brook, as an innovator.

But if Pacific Overtures is never going to be anyone's favorite Sondheim musical, it is a far more forceful and enjoyable evening at the Promenade than it was eight years ago at the Winter Garden ... Many of the songs are brilliant, self-contained playlets.

In celebration of his 80th birthday, the Henry Miller's Theatre was renamed the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on September 15, 2010, and the The BBC Proms staged a concert in his honor.

Sondheim was born to a Jewish family in New York City, Etta Janet " Foxy " ( née Fox ) and Herbert Sondheim.

When Sondheim was ten, his father, a distant figure, abandoned him and his mother.

In his interview with Meryle Secrest, Sondheim explained that he was “ what they call an institutionalized child, meaning one who has no contact with any kind of family.

Sondheim famously hated his mother ; he once wrote a thank-you note to close friend Mary Rodgers that read, " Dear Mary and Hank, Thanks for the plate, but where was my mother's head?

It was at the opening of South Pacific, the musical Hammerstein wrote with Richard Rodgers, that Sondheim met Harold Prince, who would later direct many of Sondheim's shows.

" The rest of the day was spent going over the musical, and Sondheim would later say that " in that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime.

His first teacher at Williams was Robert Barrow, and according to Sondheim

In 1954, Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics for Saturday Night, which was never produced on Broadway and was shelved until a 1997 production at London's Bridewell Theatre.

When he was 25, Sondheim was introduced to Bernstein, who had heard Saturday Night and quickly hired him to write the lyrics to West Side Story.

It has been rumored that while Bernstein was off trying to fix the musical Candide, Sondheim wrote some of the music for West Side Story, and that Bernstein ’ s co-lyricist billing credit mysteriously disappeared from the credits of West Side Story during the tryout, presumably as a trade-off.

Sondheim was invited to Robbins ' house, who unbeknownst to him, was trying to be convinced to write the lyrics to a musical adaption of The Exception and the Rule.

Guare was asked to convince Sondheim to do the lyrics.

Guare said working with Sondheim was like being with an old college roommate, they just talked and talked.

Guare heavily depended on Sondheim to help him " decode and decipher their crazy way of working.

( There was a rumor that Sleuth was given the working title Who's Afraid of Stephen Sondheim ?, but in a New York Times interview on March 10, 1996, Shaffer denied ever using the title.

Sondheim discusses his working methods, the genesis of the show, and names " Someone in a Tree " his favorite song to date.

Lapine wrote a couple of scenes and Sondheim had just started working on the opening number when he began to feel that his musical style was unsuitable for Muscle.

The production, with book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, and songs by Stephen Sondheim, was not working.

A few months later, while he was working for Esquire in an advertising show, Stephen Sondheim approached him after seeing him perform and set up an audition for the part of Tony.

Nevertheless, in 1977, he wrote of Sondheim " I needn't tell you that Stephen Sondheim is, both musically and lyrically, the most sophisticated composer now working for the Broadway theater.

A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler.

Anyone Can Whistle is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Eager to work with both Laurents and Sondheim, Angela Lansbury accepted the lead role as Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, despite her strong misgivings about the script and her ability to handle the score.

Steven Suskin wrote: The " fascinating extended musical scenes, with extended choral work, ... immediately marked Sondheim as the most distinctive theatre composer of his time.

Most biographers blame Lerner's professional decline on the lack of a strong director with whom Lerner could collaborate, as Neil Simon did with Mike Nichols or Stephen Sondheim with Harold Prince ( Moss Hart, who had directed My Fair Lady, died shortly after Camelot opened ).

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart.

Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman.

These plans also did not work out, and finally Harold Prince, who had worked previously with Sondheim, became the producer and director.

He continues to appear in live stage shows, including Barbra Streisand's memorable birthday party for Stephen Sondheim at the Hollywood Bowl, in which he appeared with Angela Lansbury, performing selections from Sweeney Todd.

In 1983 he performed on the demo of the Stephen Sondheim – James Lapine production Sunday in the Park with George, starring Mandy Patinkin.

He is a noted interpreter of the musical works of Stephen Sondheim, and is best known for his work in musical theatre, originating iconic roles such as Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George and Che in the original Broadway production of Evita.

The New York Times review of the original 1976 production said " The lyrics are totally Western and — as is the custom with Mr. Sondheim — devilish, wittily and delightfully clever.

Mr. Sondheim is the most remarkable man in the Broadway musical today — and here he shows it victoriously ... Mr. Prince's staging uses all the familiar Kabuki tricks — often with voices screeching in the air like lonely sea birds — and stylizations with screens and things, and stagehands all masked in black to make them invisible to the audience.

In Four Black Dragons various peasants describe the arrival of the American ships with escalating panic, until finally the nightmarish event does seem to be, as claimed, the end of the world .... Someone in a Tree, is a compact Rashomon-and as fine as anything Mr. Sondheim has written ... The single Act II triumph, Bowler Hat, could well be a V. S. Naipaul tale set to music and illustrated with spare Japanese brushstrokes ... Bowler Hat delivers the point of Pacific Overtures so artfully that the rest of Act II seems superfluous.

At about the age of ten, around the time of his parents ' divorce, Sondheim became friends with James Hammerstein, son of the lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II.

This training primarily involved having Sondheim write four musicals, each with one of the following preconditions: