In an interview, Peters said that Sondheim had " proposed the idea to her this spring and urged the producers of the revival to cast her.

Sondheim said: " As for the three songs ... going together well, I might as well confess.

" Bernadette Peters quoted Sondheim on the character of " Sally ": " He said early on that is off balance, to put it mildly.

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.

Sondheim said, " When my father left her, she substituted me for him.

" Sondheim then said of Babbitt, " I am his maverick, his one student who went into the popular arts with all his serious artillery.

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

Sondheim said of the project, " I was ashamed of the whole project.

" In December 2007, however, Sondheim said that, along with continued work on Bounce, he was " nibbling at a couple of things with John Weidman and James Lapine.

Sondheim has said that he has " about 20 – 30 minutes of the musical completed.

The Cleveland Jewish News reported on the Oberlin event, writing: " Sondheim said: ' Movies are photographs ; the stage is larger than life.

Sondheim also wrote some new songs for a proposed Into the Woods film, including one entitled Rainbows, which Sondheim said will be in his second book ( to be published in October 2011 ).

Sondheim said " It's going to be long.

In an interview in 2008, Sondheim said " There is a move afoot to do Follies movie with a well-known director and a well-known star, and I'm not going to tell you who they are.

Sondheim said of the naming, " I'm deeply embarrassed.

In an interview with Frank Rich, Sondheim said that " the outsider feeling – somebody who people want to both kiss and kill – occurred quite early in my life.

In August 2003, Stephen Sondheim responded to a question about his next project that he was interested in something like a theme and variations — possibly a musical adaptation of Groundhog Day ; however, in a 2008 live chat said that " to make a musical of Groundhog Day would be to gild the lily.

Sondheim has said of Peters, " Like very few others, she sings and acts at the same time ," he says.

Sondheim said of Tunick's work: " ' I think he's tops '..." and further noted that " Tunick is a standout in his field not only because of his musicianship and imagination, but primarily because of ' his great sensitivity to theatrical atmosphere.

Brown paraphrased what Sondheim said:

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.

In the late nineties, Sondheim reunited with Hal Prince for the musical comedy Wise Guys, a project that took a long time to complete that follows brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner.

Sondheim stated that Goldman wrote one or two drafts of the script and Sondheim wrote six and a half songs, only to have director Rob Reiner lose interest in the project.

The songs " Dawn " and " Sand " from the project were recorded for the albums Sondheim at the Movies and Unsung Sondheim.

Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein wrote The Race to Urga, scheduled to play at the Lincoln Center in 1969, but when Jerome Robbins left the project, it went unproduced.

By the time the project began to jell, however, Hammerstein had died, and Stephen Sondheim was asked by Laurents and Mary Rodgers, Richard Rodgers ' daughter, to write the lyrics.

Rodgers ' mistreatment of Sondheim left the composer feeling apathetic if not outright sour about the project, but he maintained his professionalism.

A chance encounter with Billy Wilder at a cocktail party gave Sondheim the opportunity to introduce himself and ask the original film's co-screenwriter and director his opinion of the project ( which was to star Jeanette MacDonald ).

Two songs were dropped from the show, and two new Sondheim songs were added.

The two known songs that had Sondheim contributions are " In There " from the adaption of The Exception and the Rule ( which would later be named The Race to Urga ) and a cut song from West Side Story " Kids Ain't ( Like Everybody Else )".

Sondheim wrote two new song / scenes, " Delighted, I'm Sure " and " Montana Chem ".

His early London productions included Anything Goes ( which closed after only two weeks ), Side by Side by Sondheim, The Card, My Fair Lady and Tom Foolery.

* In the Stephen Sondheim musical ' A Little Night Music ', the two Night Waltzes deal specifically with the phenomenon of Midnight Sun.

On December 9, 2008, Kozelek and Caldo Verde Records issued The Finally LP, a CD collection of 10 unreleased tracks, including covers of songs by Stephen Sondheim, Will Oldham, Hüsker Dü, and Low among others, as well as two previously unreleased instrumentals.

The AP reviewer of the musical ( with the two new leads ) wrote " Devotees of Stritch, who earned her Sondheim stripes singing, memorably, " The Ladies Who Lunch " in Company 40 years ago, will revel in how the actress, who earned a huge ovation before her very first line at a recent preview, brings her famously salty, acerbic style to the role of Madame Armfeldt.

These were followed by two Stephen Sondheim productions, Company and Follies co-directed with Hal Prince.

In his review of Sondheim's Follies, he wrote " ' Follies ' " is intermissionless and exhausting, an extravaganza that becomes tedious for two simple reasons: Its extravagances have nothing to do with its pebble of a plot ; and the plot, which could be wrapped up in approximately two songs, dawdles through 22 before it declares itself done ... Mr. Sondheim may be too much a man of the seventies, too present-tense sophisticated ... The effort to bind it up inhibits the crackling, open-ended, restlessly varied surges of sound he devised with such distinction for " Company '.

Otherwise, the award has gone to the composer and lyricist for their combined contributions, except for 1971 when the two awards were split ( although Stephen Sondheim won both, for Company ).

At Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre, he performed leading roles in two Stephen Sondheim musicals: Bobby in Company, and George in Sunday In The Park With George ( the later a recreation of the Menier Chocolate Factory production, directed by Sam Buntrock ).

Cant's theatre credits include Still Playing Away, The Railway Children, Present Laughter, An Ideal Husband, Habeas Corpus, Gaslight, Side by Side by Sondheim, The Canterbury Tales ( in which he memorably ad-libbed a reference to his work on Play School ), Oh Coward, There's No Place Like a Home and many more, as well as thirty two pantomimes, including an adaptation of " Aladdin " at the Wolverhampton Grand written by Ian Billings.

Their recent releases include two volumes of the Sondheim Sings series, a collection of demo recordings by composer Stephen Sondheim which highlight some of his early, lesser-known work.

His concert engagements in 2007 included Good Thing Going, a celebration of the music of Stephen Sondheim at Cadogan Hall, and The Best of Broadway ; two concerts at The Royal Albert Hall, both with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.