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“To a musical theatre writer, studying with Stephen Sondheim is like a Christian meeting Jesus. And I measure my life in before and after.” Leslie Arden
“This is not just about musicals. He changed our lives. He changed the direction and scent of our lives.” Ed Hardy
Made by Steve's friends, with Steve friends.
In 1996, Jonathan Larson's musical Rent won the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. But during the late nineteen eighties, Larson had developed an unproduced show named Superbia. Throughout the entire workshop process, Stephen Sondheim was Larson's greatest mentor and champion. Teaching and mentorship meant everything to Steve. And across decades, his support, both professional and personal, proved life changing, not just for Larson, but all Steve's students. In 2021, another Sondheim protege, Lin Manuel Miranda, told the late Jonathan Larson's life story in the movie Tick Tick Boom, and Lynn discovered just how deeply Steve's mentorship had touched Jonathan's life.
Lin-Manuel Miranda:He was really supportive of John's career and his writing, and really, like, in our research, we found out how much he encouraged him. There's an amazing letter. He goes, this is Jonathan Larson. He deserves every support the industry can give him. That was one of his letters on his behalf for a grant request. In the original workshop for Superbia, there's an invite list, and Sondheim's name is on it five times. Now whether that's Jonathan Larson's exuberance that Sondheim is coming or those are Sondheim guests that Sondheim has sent this many people to the reading. I'm not sure that's lost time, but that was an amazing discovery. Steve's name listed like three times typed and two handwritten.
Martin Milnes:Welcome to Loving You: The Untold Sondheim. A podcast made by Steve's friends with Steve's friends. Hosted by me, Martin Milnes.
Peter E. Jones:And me, Peter e Jones.
Martin Milnes:PJ, Steve often said teaching is the sacred profession. In fact, following his parents' bitter divorce and Steve's traumatic youth with his mother, Steve even claimed my life was saved by teachers. And while it's well known that Steve's mentor was Oscar Hammerstein, whose effect on his life was profound, we know there were others too. At school, Steve had a formative Latin teacher whose passion inspired him. And there was Milton Babbitt, the composer with whom Steve studied music. Later, as a teacher himself, Steve mentored legions of young writers, including Adam Guettel, Lin Manuel Miranda, and indeed yourself. So, PJ, ask one of Steve's proteges, why do you think teaching was so important to him?
Peter E. Jones:The importance of teaching to Steve was such that it was ubiquitous in his life. It was woven through everything he did. Just about in all ways he expressed himself like a teacher, I think. Not necessarily wagging his finger at you, although he could do that. I think he approached most everything as a learning experience because whatever the experience was that you might be having with him, he might on a dime turn and show you the learning in that or show you what's to be learned in that or reading between the lines that there's more than black and white. There are endless examples of where he was a teacher and of course the most permanent examples are his work itself. His work is full of things that teach people. That's part of the reason his music and lyrics are so poignant, because they teach at the same time as entertain.
Martin Milnes:In his final years, Steve's love of teaching and mentorship became widely celebrated. But Steve's mentorship did not just take place in later life. Steve always championed the work of writers he believed in, even during his thirties. Earlier in this series, we chatted to songwriting team Richard Maltby Junior and David Shire. During the nineteen sixties, they shared evenings together at Steve's house, playing him what they'd written. And equally, Steve played to Richard and David what he'd written. Steve truly believed in Richard and David's work, and they were among the earliest recipients of Steve's unwavering support.
Peter E. Jones:A lot of people think of Maltby and Shire as proteges of Steve. I think they were really more contemporaries. But because Steve had just that little bit of time ahead, I think he was an example for them more than anything else. And he championed them because he appreciated their talents.
Barbra Streisand [Sings]:The morning after, we ask for right questions. The morning after.
Peter E. Jones:Maltby and Shire were probably the first, and I'll use this word again, contemporaries that Steve championed because they were unknown. So I would say that Steve's support of people as a teacher was also as a champion because he was not lukewarm about his feelings. He was passionate about what he believed in. So if he loved something, he championed it. And Steve certainly did that with Richard and David.
David Shire:He was so generous with his time to musical theater writers that he was interested in and respected. How would you describe his criticism? He did not waste words. He would tell you exactly what he felt about the music or the lyrics where it was failing dramatically. And these little gems would pop up.
George Dvorsky [Sings]:What he loved, he taught me. Now music's what I do. And often when I'm writing, in my hands, Dad's there too.
Richard Maltby Jr.:He would rarely say something specific, but occasionally, he would say, perhaps if the joke went this way or if the stanza were constructed about that idea instead of this idea, he would occasionally do that. And I would write it down and run home. Not once was I ever actually able to take one of his pieces of advice and actually change something. I would try to, but it didn't ever feel right. And it was a kind of a changing point for me because I thought, how do you go up against Steve? How do you write lyrics in a world in which Steve Sondheim exists? I thought this is a sign of my inadequacy that I can't take advice. And then it finally occurred to me, the only thing I could say that puts me at an equal level with Steve is there's only one thing in the world Steve can never be, and that's me. And if I write me, it will not be Steve. That's the only thing available in a world in which Steve Sondheim exists. And, of course, even Steve has eventually written the description of this. Anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new. And he wrote it in three lines, and it took me a decade to understand it. But but, yes, that's exactly true. Every writer eventually goes through a moment when you discover that the only thing you have, the only currency you have in the exchange is you. And if you write truthfully to that, it'll be you, and it'll be different. It'll be fresh. It'll be yours. And it will be something that no one else has ever thought of or ever written.
Martin Milnes:PJ, Richard mentioned the truth in Steve's lines, anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new. And I think this comes from Steve's mentor, Oscar Hammerstein, who told Steve not to imitate him. Write for yourself, Hammerstein said, and you'll be 90% ahead of everyone else. But to be an original, to let it come from you, then it will be new, applies to absolutely all artists, no matter their specialism. My friend Bill Deamer choreographed Follies at the National Theatre, and Bill discovered that even in dance, Steve championed interpreting art your way.
Bill Deamer:He would never ever suggest to you what the style should be or or anything like that. He knew that I was very on the Hollywood scene. I discussed people like Annie Miller and Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. And I said to Steve, "I'm doing my own version of it". And he said, "Always do your own version of it - because that's you."
Peter E. Jones:To be an original was everything Steve championed when he taught. But even though teaching was that important to Steve, I don't think he ever really wanted to formally be a teacher. It was just everything to him in terms of his life. It was just woven into his fabric of being. And so there was only one time where he took a, shall we say, an official post as a teacher, and it was a temporary one, the 1990 Oxford Masterclass.
Martin Milnes:Yes. And this master class is a fascinating piece of Sondheim history, which up to now has never been fully explored. Being a teacher in Oxford was a seminal moment in Steve's life, but very few people even know the Masterclass happened. For six months in 1990, Steve was a visiting professor at Oxford University. Theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh had inaugurated a chair of contemporary theater at Saint Catherine's College. And Steve, in a classroom setting, personally mentored 13 handpicked young composer-lyricists. Now, with hindsight, this opportunity to study personally with Sondheim was unprecedented, but the master class received just 92 applications worldwide.
Peter E. Jones:Which shows how things have changed. Musical Theater was more of a cottage industry, really. A limited reach, I think.
Martin Milnes:During the Masterclass, Steve's 13 students gave occasional quotes to the press. But in the thirty five years since, they've never been officially asked to speak about it. And sadly, three of Steve's Oxford proteges, Stephen Clark, Kit Hesketh-Harvey and Andrew Peggie, have now passed away. But in this episode, PJ and I are proud to reunite for the first time all 10 of Steve's remaining students preserving the untold history of Sondheim's Oxford Masterclass. And it's our honor to do so because for the proteges, knowing Steve was far more than just a professional experience. Steve offered his students life changing love and friendship right up to his death thirty one years later.
Peter E. Jones:He impacted the lives of those students, not only because of what he was teaching, but how he was as a teacher. He is the best of what you can get from a teacher. He doesn't just teach. He's like a loving parent when he teaches. And I think that's what all those students got in the Oxford class. They got a person, a unique person, a person who cared about what they were working with. Wasn't just showing he was smart and can pass on information. There was a true care for another person's enlightenment on either the level of information being discussed or as another person. That's what made him special as a teacher.
Martin Milnes:This episode came about because when Steve died in 2021, I met his Oxford protege, Ed Hardy. In Steve's honor, the lights of London's Theaterland were about to dim. A crowd spontaneously gathered outside the Sondheim Theater when a man stepped forward handing out plastic cups of champagne. And he announced, "I'd like to propose a toast". This turned out to be Ed, whose poignant initiative made the light dimming a terrific celebration. On the chilly pavement of Shaftesbury Avenue, complete strangers bonded, drinking from plastic cups and toasting Steve. Ed and I really hit it off, so a few years later, he leapt at the chance to chat about Steve on this podcast. He found talking about the Masterclass on record for the first time to be a very emotional experience. So Ed then wanted the other Oxford students to share their stories too. Little by little, we tracked down all 10 proteges, now scattered across the globe, for their first ever interviews about Steve. Several told me, "Martin, you're 'Someone in a Tree'", because I was observing the same story from so many different perspectives. And while that's true, I discovered one consistent theme, how much the proteges valued Steve's personal friendship. And perhaps more than any other, this untold story reveals not just the importance of teaching to Steve, but his impact on the lives of everyone he taught. The memories of these 10 Oxford students were collected separately, both online and in person, over a period of several months. But now, at last, it's time to fill the blank page or canvas. Let's bring order to the whole. Preserving the story of the Oxford Masterclass forever. One of the most passionate advocates of the Masterclass, both then and now, was my friend, composer lyricist, Ed Hardy.
Ed Hardy:Stephen Sondheim, Steve has played and will continue to play an enormous part in my life and also in the lives of the students who gathered together under his direction many, many years ago. It was a group of us who got to know him so well in the nineteen nineties, and he completely changed our lives. And this is aside from musicals. I think that's a very important point to make. This is not just about musicals. He changed our lives. He changed the direction and the scent of our lives. And I haven't stopped thinking about him and discussing him and referring to him for so many years. But outside my circle of friends, I've never actually sat down and talked officially about him.
Martin Milnes:Ed, how did the Masterclass come about for you?
Ed Hardy:Well, what happened was that Cameron Mackintosh decided to set up a Chair of Contemporary Theatre at St. Catherine's Oxford. And as he and Steve had a very close relationship, he asked Steve to be the first incumbent. They put out an ad amongst the Oxford University community. The young people who came forward were not at a level that they'd hoped. So I think quite quickly they realized that they'd have to spread the nets much wider to the whole country and ask for people to send in demo tapes. And I was a a hopeless former Oxford student who left university thinking, oh, I'm gonna write the next great musical. Gone to London to seek my fortune, you know, like Dick Whittington, and failed dismally to do that. And it was my sister who saw an ad in the newspaper. I think it was in The Guardian.
The Guardian Voiceover:Oxford University. Cameron Mackintosh, Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre. Stephen Sondheim will conduct workshop sessions starting in mid January nineteen ninety for students to create and develop their own work. Preference will be given to members of Oxford University, although applications from non members will be considered. Those interested should submit samples of their own work consisting of no fewer than three songs, music, lyrics or both, on audio tape by December 16. Librettists may also apply, providing that they are collaborating with eligible songwriters. Applications to Stephen Sondheim, care of Master's Secretary, St Catherine's College, Oxford.
Martin Milnes:In addition to applications, students were headhunted globally. In Toronto, Leslie Arden, a Canadian composer lyricist, had no idea that a colleague had given Cameron Macintosh a demo tape of her songs. In fact, Leslie didn't even know anything about the Masterclass.
Leslie Arden:I wasn't getting anywhere in my career. I decided to put together a showcase of my material, and so I got some fabulous performers, put the show together, rehearsed it myself. I played the piano, music directed it, and we booked a theater. And there was a blizzard, and no one showed up. The streets were you couldn't get to the theater. So the next morning, I was sitting on the edge of my bed and just thinking, I give up. I I just give up. There was a record player beside my bed. And so without looking, I just lifted up the needle and put it down in the middle of the record, not even looking at what was on the turntable. And it went ---
Bernadette Peters:Are you working on something new? No. That is not like you, George.
Mandy Patinkin:I've nothing to say.
Bernadette Peters:You have many things.
Mandy Patinkin:Well, nothing that's not been said.
Bernadette Peters:Said by you, George.
Leslie Arden:Well, I burst into tears, and I thought, oh, Bernadette Peters is singing to me. "Move On!" Oh, it's you know, and the phone rang, and it was my agent saying ---
Leslie Arden's Agent:How fast can you get to England? Stephen Sondheim wants to work with you!
Martin Milnes:Ed, how did it feel to be accepted onto the course?
Ed Hardy:I had no notion that I would be successful in this application. It came as a complete shock. And so suddenly, we were just all requested to sort of turn up at Oxford to study under Stephen Sondheim. And what did that mean? I don't think any of us had any idea what that would entail. Steve himself had a pretty clear idea, but we didn't.
Stephen Sondheim:I became a teacher at Oxford this year because Cameron Mackintosh founded a Visiting Professorship of Theatre up there. And I love teaching, and I've always thought that all art is a form of teaching. I think painting is a form of teaching. Any kind of communication is a form of teaching. And, an artist, a visual artist, shows us ways of looking at the world, and a novelist shows us ways that people behave. Composer teaches us ways to listen. So it was natural. I've always enjoyed teaching.
Martin Milnes:January 1990. The Masterclass begins. Ed, tell me about the first day. What happened?
Ed Hardy:We were sitting in this room and suddenly came in. There was this silence and I I was just the annoying one in the group. I just said, "Don't you think we should clap?" And there was this kind of rather awkward sort of applause. I just like, I thought this is a this is a historical moment or at least in in my own personal history. It's gotta be marked somehow. He sat us all down and what I remember of his little kind of spiel when we started, he he he was very concerned just to gather us all together as a group. A group who weren't gonna compete against each other. It's like he wanted to communicate to us that we were all in this together. And that was a very great thing. It was really all for one and one for all. We were his musketeers for that period and we felt very special. We were like his kids. And of course, he considered us friends until the end of his life.
Martin Milnes:Several students, like Stephen Keeling and Paul Leigh, were already Sondheim experts.
Stephen Keeling:I'd been musically directing since 1988, so I had been working at the Library Theatre in Manchester where they had the European premieres of Follies and Pacific Overtures. So I'd been working in a theatre which was steeped in Sondheim.
Paul Leigh:When I was a medical student, I got a holiday job working on the Wyndham Theatre Stage Door. They were had Side By Side By Sondheim on at the time, and I thought, wow. This guy is just amazing. And I was into writing lyrics at the time, so I was a huge fan of his and listened to all of the recordings.
Martin Milnes:But lyricist Paul James came from a rock-pop background.
Paul James:In walks Cameron Mackintosh and Stephen Sondheim, and I didn't know which one was which. That's how little of a Sondheim devotee I was.
Martin Milnes:Paul, to this day, you still collaborate with composer Ben Mason. And Ben, on the first day of the master class, every student presented Steve with a song they'd written. Your song with lyrics by Paul was first, a number called "Intelligent Beautiful Person".
Ben Mason:It starts in a a sort of rock thing and then suddenly stops. Big heart glissando and then goes into this seductive begin jingle. And he played it and it got a big laugh. But as he said, you know, as soon as he started to deconstruct it, and and of course, was absolutely right. It it didn't really go anywhere from there. You know. It was just the one joke and then it was sort of the same joke.
Paul James:So it was a Yeah. It was a perfect teaching opportunity. So we'd all sit round. Steve would be almost horizontal, wouldn't he? His feet up on a stool.
Ben Mason:Yeah. Well, he put another chair, didn't he? I mean, his legs were absolutely horizontal every time.
Paul James:He usually had the same green sweatshirt, like t shirt, polo shirt thing on.
Ben Mason:Or jumpers with holes in it.
Paul James:Sometimes wore a cap.
Ben Mason:It was yet one of those flat Yorkshire "Ee by gum!", you know.
Paul James:And he just sit there and "Right. Well, this is what we're talking about today". He took his turn as we went round, says, "Here's my latest song from my new musical, which is called Assassins". And during his time in Oxford, he had a suite at the Randolph Hotel. He'd had a Steinway.
Ben Mason:Yeah, especially installed. I mean, must have put it through a window or something.
Paul James:So he spent the day teaching us, then afterwards we might go for a few drinks. And then he'd go back and work on Assassins and come back the next day and says, "What do you think of this?"
Ben Mason:It was the Lamentation. "Oh, oh, I deserve a fucking prize". And I remember Ed saying, "You seem to use the word 'fuck' quite a lot in this musical". I remember you you went up to him and said, "I think that's got some really interesting ideas." And he said, "Oh, you did? I mean, I thought everybody hated it." I mean, really quite insecure.
Paul James:Anyone who meets anyone really famous is surprised that they're real human beings. Yeah. What else are they gonna be? The other thing which certainly struck me growing up from a sort of very traditional working class North East part of England is his willingness to talk about "Art", you know, in inverted commas, and how important Art was, and to be a creator of that, and to drop in all sorts of references and say we're on a continuum and we are a civilising influence in the world. And it's partly because he was a great artist, but it's also, I mean, demonstrative of the difference between, say, British attitudes, and we all mumble along, we're a bit embarrassed to talk about "Art", whereas he's American. And no, it's very much upfront. There's less of a sense of irony or the sense of perhaps sounding a bit ridiculous and up yourself.
Ben Mason:At the end of the first week, we did this little presentation, and I mean, it was just nothing. It was a card and
Paul James:A sort of thank you card.
Ben Mason:Yeah. But we all sort of clustered round and and gave it to him. He just stood there holding it and shaking. I mean, like not just his hands. It was his whole body shaking and tears streaming down his face.
Martin Milnes:Over the next few weeks, Steve fully immersed the students in his dedicated teaching, just him and 13 young writers in a classroom. But for Leslie Arden and Ed Hardy, what was that experience like?
Ed Hardy:I've heard him in interviews saying that to him teaching was a kind of sacred profession. Right? He took it very seriously. He was an excellent teacher. He had a curriculum that he was able to share with us. He was clear in his own mind about how songs, musicals should be written, structured, conceived, and he wanted to convey all of that to us. He was absolutely draconian about rhyme. You could not get away with anything close, anything, any half rhymes. It was not allowed. The rhyming had to be perfect. The scanning had to be perfect. And the reason it had to be perfect was because he said that on a sort of subliminal level, the audience would know. It's not like they'd go home and say, oh, well, some of those rhymes were only half rhymes or whatever. It wasn't that. He said, if you really wanted to sing, if you really wanted to gleam, it has to be perfect. There's no question about it. Anything else, just not as good, not as effective.
Leslie Arden:He taught us never underestimate the audience. He said "The audience is more discerning, more intelligent, more educated than most writers give them credit for. And if you don't do your best, they will notice. And even if they don't notice, you'll know, and shame on you." That's why we love him so much is that he never underestimated us. And if I learned nothing else from Steve, that alone would have put me on the path to becoming a better writer.
Martin Milnes:However, for composer Stephen Keeling, there were occasional frustrations.
Stephen Keeling:He didn't really talk too much about music. It was always the lyrics and the drama and characterization, how everything served the drama. I remember being slightly frustrated by that because I did want him to talk about music, but he always referred to it as, "Oh, it's the fun thing you do at the end". And I remember he said, "I expect you and James McConnel know all the ways to get to E flat major." He said, "But what interests me is how I would get to E flat major", which is something as I've got older, I understand what he means because, yes, you want to find how you would do it.
Martin Milnes:And composer James McConnel agrees.
James McConnel:I think there was something about him who didn't particularly like discussing music. I think we had to sort of slightly drag it out of him because he was so attached to it. He taught me about the way that when a lyric rises and falls, the music should match it, which is why Cole Porter wrote so well because he did both. And if you're working with a lyricist who is separate from the composer, you really need to be writing the same song.
Martin Milnes:For Ed and Leslie, was Steve a hard taskmaster?
Leslie Arden:The first half of the master class, like, first few months was really difficult because he was really tough on me. And I finally asked him about it. I remember we were walking on a street in Oxford, and I just finally blurted out, "why are you so hard on me?" And he said, "Oh, that's easy. Everyone else hasn't decided that they wanna be writers yet. They're all trying to make up their mind whether they wanna write musical theater, and they all have backup plans. They're they're singer actors. They're pianists. They're conductors. They're music directors. They're orchestrators, and they haven't made up their mind. You've made up your mind. This is all you do. It's all you wanna do, so I don't have to waste time." So after that, the classes got easier because then I understood why he was so hard on me.
Ed Hardy:He wanted us to be conscious about what we were doing and meeting Steve was a bit like someone slapping you across the face and go "Hang on! No! Just wake up here! You know, okay you've written this, why? Why did you write it like this? What was your decision making process?" And that was quite shocking and interesting for us because suddenly we had to become conscious of what we were doing.
Leslie Arden:I spent weeks writing this song. It was a quartet. It was really complex. I was so proud of it. I spent just all the time in the world perfecting it, played the song, and Steve said, "That's the wrong tone for that spot in the show. Next." That was all he said! He wasn't always that blunt. Sometimes he was terrific. One thing that I think Steve was very good at was understanding how much a student could take. So he knew he couldn't dissuade me, and he knew that I would just brush myself off and try again, which I did.
Martin Milnes:Socially, James McConnel witnessed Steve in several unique environments. Not only did James introduce Steve to two much loved writers of British musicals, but he also became Steve's unofficial chauffeur. So what did James observe about Steve?
James McConnel:He was very pernickety about the truth. Any kind of ambiguity in the sentence you said, "what do you mean? Did you mean that or did you mean that or what did you mean?" You know, I was just saying, "Would you like a cup of coffee?" You know, he said, "What do you what do you mean?" It was just he had to have absolute clarity about anything. And I think that is also a mark of a great artist, somebody who never relinquishes the truth, is always prepared to find out exactly what's going on. God is after all the details. He also had this wonderful childlike quality, which I've only known in two other people actually of the same sort of ilk. I have had three mentors in my life. The first person was Julian Slade who wrote Salad Days, and then my second mentor was a chap called Lionel Bart who, of course, wrote Oliver!, and then it was Stephen Sondheim. Now I conspired one fine day to get all three of them in the same room in Oxford, and it was hilarious. You had the man who'd written Salad Days, which is all fluffy and lovely and marvelous, and the irony of the man who wrote Oliver! being in the same room as the man who wrote Sweeney Todd, which is a sort of extension of Oliver!, but a much grittier version of it. And I noticed that Steve and Lionel Bart were sort of slightly wary of each other. I I didn't know what I expected. Was I expecting him to sit down to the table and compare notes and say, well, I think 'Not While I'm Around' isn't nearly as good as 'As Long As He Needs Me'. But it wasn't. It was I mean, in a way, I know it's right because you you put two composers in a room, there's a kind of subconscious competition going on. And I should have realized that, but all three of them had this wonderful childlike ability to see the fun in life and to see the wonder of things. To give you another example, I was driving Steve home from Oxford to London one night and he said, "Where do you live?" And I said, "I live in a place called Stoke Ferry". He said, "Oh my God! Stoke Ferry! What a wonderful name. We don't have any names like that in America". And I said, "Well, it's funny you should mention that because I'm about to go live in somewhere called Great Snoring". He said, "Oh my God! These wonderful British names. God, they're fantastic!" And then I said, "When I was at school, used to live near a place called Piddletrenthide, and he practically had an orgasm when he heard that.
Martin Milnes:Back in the classroom, Steve set for students an exercise to examine a scene from the Peter Nichols play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. It was based on Nichols' real life experience as the parent of a disabled child, and the students had to turn the end of act one into a musical number. Peter Nichols, a friend of Steve's, came to hear their results, and fascinatingly, each student wrote very different songs from identical source material. The day was captured on a cassette tape recording never publicly heard until now. Here's Ed's piece, sung with his then girlfriend and now wife, Eileen. James McConnel composed a character number with his collaborator, the late lyricist, Kit Hesketh Harvey. Meanwhile, the tape captures a candid exchange between Steve and Australian composer lyricist Denise Wharmby.
Denise Wharmby:I don't think I ever really reached a full point where I forgot who he was. There was always some sense in me that he was the epitome of an entire musical universe. But I think as the weeks of the course went by though, that did shift. We were able to engage a bit more socially, and he wanted us to feel easy with him, easy with each other. And I think he really did care about us, and I think maybe being our teacher was possibly as valuable a time period for him as it was for us.
Martin Milnes:But of all the songs presented to Steve and Peter Nichols, Ed remembers that one writing team in particular came up with something spectacular.
Ed Hardy:There was one standout piece. Paul James and Ben Mason, they wrote a piece called 'Isn't She Sweet'? And it was this huge great big song and dance number and it just blew me away. It was so joyful and ironic and and kind of cruel and sad and it was amazing and I'll always be happy to listen to that song again.
Paul James:Isn't she sweet? Isn't she everything you wanted when you heard you were to have a child? Always discreet, never a word out of place, and that charisma that can drive you wild. Got to admit when she gurgles and she looks at you, she said it all, there's nothing left to sigh. Isn't she sweet? And if she smiled, then her smile would drive the worries away.
Martin Milnes:Ben, it must have been special to showcase your song to Peter Nichols as you had a family connection.
Ben Mason:My parents were both actors. My mom had been an actor in Rep with Peter Nichols before he became a playwright. Also sitting in on that day was the master of Saint Catherine's, Brian Smith. Years later, I I had a chat with Brian Smith, and he said, Steve was making some arcane point about iron make pentameter or something. And he said Peter Nichols whispered under his breath, "Oh, for God's sake, Steve!"
Martin Milnes:Well, as Steve always said, "God is in the details". Meanwhile, Steve arranged a very special experience for the students in London. As Ed recalls ---
Ed Hardy:He was very insistent that the course was run concurrently with a production. He wanted us to have first hand experience of seeing the genesis of a of a production. And so at the time, The National were putting on Sunday in the Park with George. They were just about to start rehearsals. And so Steve had made sure that our course was timed so that we could dip in and out. By the time we saw it, I think we knew every every note, every nuance, every word of it.
The Observer Voiceover:The Observer. Sunday, eleventh March nineteen ninety. It's a January afternoon, and Stephen Sondheim is in the seminar room of the Mary Sunley Building, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, midway through his second Masterclass. Sondheim has been showing his students a video of the Broadway production of Sunday in the Park with George. The musical concerns that one of his songs describes as 'the art of making art', which is exactly the task that Sondheim's 13 students are embarked upon. He tells them ---
Stephen Sondheim:That show is about all of you, in case you didn't recognize it. And I thought it was wonderfully appropriate that it that of all the shows that should be on, that should be in connection with this set of seminars, that it should be that one because it's about the creative act, that's what this seminar is about. One of the things you will discover, I hope, is that as your material goes to actors and actresses, you suddenly find yourself in the embarrassing position of having to defend what you've written because an actor will come to you and say, "Now what did you mean by this line?" And you can't say, "Oh, well, I mean that, it's a you know", you've gotta tell them exactly what it means. You must be able to defend every single word and note!
Ed Hardy:He was always on the "Oh, you have to justify every single word, every single line, you know. You have to be prepared to defend, you know, even if no one asks you". I remember one conversation we had about the opening to act two, the song, It's Hot Up Here. And I have to stress, as I said earlier, I was like the awkward one and I was always saying the wrong thing and making a fool of myself and so on. He'd often go around the groups and then at the end he'd say, "Okay Edward, now what do you wanna say?" But I remember we were talking about the opening to Act Two and I made some stupid remark. And I said, "But Steve, that song has just got nothing to do with the rest of Act Two!" And he just kind of yelled at me and said, "Look, just shut the fuck up! It was just a really good idea for a song!"
Martin Milnes:On the journey from Oxford to London, Canadian Leslie Arden had the best possible tour guide.
Leslie Arden:The first day we drove into London to go to the rehearsals, somebody asked me how often I'd been to London. I said, I'd never been to London. And Steve heard this and said, "Oh my gosh. You've never been to London?". And and he came over and sat beside me on the bus and pointed all the sights out.
Martin Milnes:And what was Steve like in the rehearsal room?
Leslie Arden:There was one day that they were singing big company number, I believe, and we were all behind the table. He got up. He walked over to one of the chorus people, and he pointed out that it was he said, "This isn't a quarter and two eighths. This is a quarter note triplet", and walked back. And they were like, oh, okay. So he wanted exactly what was on that page.
Martin Milnes:Paul Leigh's observations of Steve in rehearsals remain distinct.
Paul Leigh:I think he he got the best out of people by his force of his personality and his intellect. And the other thing I vividly remember was the extraordinary physical changes that came upon him when it was close to opening night. I mean, he must have been wound up like a spring inside. I mean, his skin turned gray. You think he'd sort of been transformed into somebody completely different. Obviously, it meant so much to him that it had a huge toll on his body, I guess, as as opening night approached and all the anxieties that that went with that. But then, of course, when the opening night came along and everything went well, he sprang back to normal.
Martin Milnes:As weeks turned to months, the students began to realize the impact that Steve was having not just on their work, but on their lives. Here's Masterclass student Michael Bland.
Michael Bland:There'd been some sort of cocktail party. If I was nearby or talking to Sondheim and he introduced me to somebody, he said, "Oh, this is Michael Bland. He's a composer". I thought, good lord. Sondheim thinks I'm a composer, you know, which at the time was not at all a label I would have put on myself! And I mentioned it to one of my roommates and punched them together and they made me a T-shirt, which on the front said, "I am a composer", and on the back, "Stephen Sondheim says so".
Martin Milnes:Patrick Dineen remained very aware that studying with Steve was a privilege.
Patrick Dineen:I never forgot it was Stephen Sondheim, and I had an absolute hunger to get as much teaching from him as I could. He had to distinguish Sondheim the composer, Sondheim the teacher, who was this brilliant combination of being highly generous and very tough, and then Sondheim the person you'd have a coffee with. And those three levels were all working. He never played status with you. You always thought you were talking as an equal. And of course when you feel like that, doors open within you. You start to say things because you think you trust this person and you think, wow! But he gave me a certain belief that I didn't have before. I've always got that little bank of belief I can go back to on on just some of the things that he said about my work, in the sense that I was gradually through him getting better. So that's what he gave me. Just a little place within me where I could go to if I was really feeling unsure.
Martin Milnes:And what about Ed? At the time, did he recognise the true value of Steve's mentorship?
Ed Hardy:Okay. That's a really, really embarrassing question for you to ask me. I'm gonna give you a really honest answer. And I'll tell you why I'm gonna give you an honest answer, because I wasn't honest to him and I regret it to this day. Of course with any brilliant experience after a while it can also become banal, right? That's human nature, right? I was supposed to be driving to Oxford to meet up and I don't know, was a young man and I just couldn't be bothered. I couldn't be arsed. And I actually called up and I lied and I said I'd had a puncture on the motorway and I couldn't make it. And actually he said on the phone, he said, "Oh come on Edward". And I went, "No, no, no!" I had to stick to my lie. Can you imagine? And it's like, this is quite therapeutically telling you this. I mean, what these sessions were worth like in monetary value? How much would how much would you pay for one of those days, Martin? Yeah. How much would you pay each hour of those sessions? Steve, I'm really sorry about that and you knew that I was telling a lie. Will you forgive me?
Martin Milnes:On Friday afternoons, the students received Guest Lectures from other giants of Musical Theater. Just imagine for one moment not only having Steve as a mentor, but also receiving dedicated time from all these others and absolutely free of charge. Among those who offered their time to the master class were Steve's collaborators, John Weidman and Arthur Laurents. Evita lyricist Tim Rice, and Les Mis creators, Boublil and Schonberg. Directors Nicholas Hytner, fresh From Miss Saigon, and Mike Ockrent of London's Follies and Me and My Girl. Broadway choreographer Bob Avian. Legendary orchestrators Jonathan Tunick and Bill Brohn. Actors Patti LuPone, Philip Quast, Jonathan Pryce, and Julia McKenzie. The best of the best arrived in Oxford to meet Steve's students, but Leslie remembers that Steve was not keen to welcome everyone who worked in theater.
Leslie Arden:He asked us, "Who would you like to hear from? Who shall we invite?" And somebody in the class said, "We should invite some critics". And he said, "No. Moving on".
Martin Milnes:Towards the end of the course, the BBC asked students what they'd learned from working with Sondheim. Here's Ed Hardy, Denise Wharmby, and Paul James.
Paul James:I think the one of the most important things that I've learned from the course is from Stephen, the the primacy of the show itself. And that no matter how clever an idea is, musical idea or a script idea, if it doesn't work, the show comes first. So you ditch it no matter how much work you put in or whatever. So it's all part of making up a large jigsaw.
Denise Wharmby:I think being true to your own individual voice and your own individual style as a writer, and that includes listening, hearing, and communicating. And communication has been a key element that Sondheim is stressed to all of us.
Ed Hardy:We've learned that it's going to be bloody hard work.
Martin Milnes:In conclusion, each student received a twenty five minute public presentation from their individual musical. The showcase was produced by Cameron Mackintosh, starring top-class West End performers. For instance, composer Stephen Keeling's musical Maxie starred Mary Miller, Janie Dee, and fellow Masterclass student, Denise Wharmby. And then suddenly, the master class ended. It was all over. Ed, what was your first instinct?
Ed Hardy:Panic! To be released at the end of that period was ghastly. I think I went into major depression. I'm not kidding. Because it was like, well, what now? What do we do now? We've had the planet's greatest musical theater teacher giving us all his support and nurture and all this opportunity and, you know, Cameron put on workshop at the end and duh duh. We got to sort of display our wares and then that was it. See ya! But I think I felt as though, no, I can do this. And you know what? I've carried that with me my whole life. I think he enabled us to believe it of ourselves that actually we were capable lyricists and composers. What the future lay in hold was unknown. But yes, we could do it.
Martin Milnes:And how were the students now perceived professionally? Prior to the master class, Leslie Arden was about to give up. But upon her return to Canada, it was a different story.
Leslie Arden:When I came back after studying with him, the phone was ringing off the hook. People knew that I'd been chosen to go and study with Stephen Sondheim. And, suddenly, people were taking me seriously, and I haven't stopped working since. So I talked to him about that, and he said "That's the opposite of what I expected to happen. I thought I would be the kiss of death!"
Martin Milnes:But the remaining students in London had to take on the Wild West End alone.
Ed Hardy:Making a career in musical theater, that's another thing. Right? I mean, that's not set out for you. If you train as an engineer, you can then apply for a job as an engineer. It's not quite so obvious in musical theater. The opportunities are very, very rare.
Martin Milnes:But although Steve was now back in New York, he still remained available to you?
Ed Hardy:His door was always open, literally. My wife, Eileen, and I went to New York to see Assassins. So he got us tickets, and then we went round the next morning. He stood up and he kind of yelled across the room, "Wasn't it a terrific show?" And I just went, Yes! And that was a really good moment for me personally because it taught me the stupidity of false modesty. You know, as an Englishman, you're always saying, "No, you know, it's really nothing". And suddenly here's this big, larger than life Jewish New Yorker just standing up and saying, "Isn't my work great? Isn't this show just the best?" And with all honesty, I was able to say "Yes! It was terrific!"
Martin Milnes:Decades passed, but Steve remained accessible, which Paul James found wasn't always the case elsewhere.
Paul James:I used to work for many years in the West End. Occasionally, I'd have to try and talk to Andrew Lloyd Webber's people.
RUG Operator #1:Really Useful Group. How can I help? One moment I'll put you through.
RUG Operator #2:Really Useful Group. No.
RUG Operator #3:Really Useful Group. No I can't. Have you tried his PA?
Paul James:You never got anywhere near the Lord himself. You rang his office and then you were put through another office. You'd ring Steve and he'd answer the phone.
Stephen Sondheim:Hey there! Hey there. How are you? If you need any help or advice, don't hesitate. Just give me an email or a call.
Paul James:I went to see a workshop of what was then called Bounce. At the interval, he's got all sorts of people clamoring around, but he just took me in a corner and debriefed me on everything I thought about it. "Oh, right, right, right, right". And it was just so flattering to, you know, to have that attention from Steve, and it wasn't put on at all. He actually saw us all as creators and saw creators as valuable.
Martin Milnes:Leslie, meanwhile, had bought a farm in the country. But then her latest musical opens to mixed reviews.
Leslie Arden:I told him, that I'd read all the reviews, and I didn't know what I've learned. That every review disagreed with every other review. That this review would would say the lyrics were trite and but the music was soaring and beautiful. And this one would say that the music was unhummable and humdrum, but the lyrics were insightful. And I said, so in the end, I don't know what I learned. Now I have to go turn over my compost pile. My life is so full. You know, love Leslie. I received a letter in three days, and it said, "Of course, you know what you learned. You learned not to read reviews. Go back to your compost pile. It beats theater any day".
Martin Milnes:Musicals written by Oxford proteges were produced off Broadway, regionally across America, throughout Europe, and in the West End. January 2020 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Masterclass. Now almost 90, Steve planned to attend the London reunion. Then he had a fall and couldn't travel. Soon after, the world was in lockdown. Undeterred, Ed brought everyone together digitally, including Steve, on Zoom.
Ed Hardy:I sort of emceed it, and I said, look, we're all gonna go around and just talk about what that master class meant to us thirty years ago. And he was there mainly crying. We had like a two hour call and it was very very emotional. Because we looking back on it we were able to say how it had shaped our lives and what it had meant to us. As I said to you at the beginning of this interview, this was not just about musicals. This was a man who set standards, who taught us to be awake, to work hard at our craft, whatever that is, not just a musical theater. It doesn't matter what you do. You might not always do the greatest of job, but at least you've done it consciously, deliberately. It's very, very important to him, and it became important to us.
Martin Milnes:The Oxford Masterclass was the first and only time that Steve was ever officially a teacher, and he remained deeply proud of all his students. But looking back, does Paul James feel it increased their chances of major commercial success?
Paul James:One would have missed it for the world because it was a life changing course, but did it make us all millionaire writers? No, of course not. And it never was going to really, I don't think. I was sort of in the back of my mind conscious that even as we were being taught by the greatest musical theatre practitioner of the age, and of many ages, he was kind of against the grain. He was working in a medium that was changing so fast. I mean in 1990 we'd had ten years of Cats and Les Mis and Miss Saigon and you know, the beginnings of jukebox musicals. He's giving us this incredibly wonderful tools for something really that's of its time: Golden Age musicals sort of thing. We couldn't go out and apply all those tools because nobody wanted those shows! Literacy on stage was not big, you know, at those times when it was all helicopters coming down on stage and whatever. But what we did get was respect for writing. He would always say, "You're writing! You're still writing, yeah, you keep writing!" Even if you get knocked back, which you're going to in musical theatre, but keep writing and never write things that you think people want to hear. Just write things that you want to write. Write what you know and write the sort of shows that you want to go to see. He also said success comes in many forms. Everyone has had a level of success and probably written better stuff and enjoyed the success more because of the sort of personal relationship and learnings we had with Steve.
Martin Milnes:So there it is. While, of course, Steve's mentorship was professionally invaluable, what has touched his proteges most is his love, support, and wisdom as a human being. Ed, it's thanks to you that this episode exists and that thirty five years on, we've tracked down all your fellow students to share your Oxford story. Clearly, this Masterclass and knowing Steve has shaped your entire life.
Ed Hardy:It was only six months, Martin. This is the bit where I tear up. Right? It was only six months but somehow it was incredible. Somehow it was a piece of magic in Oxford. I think it was because he he really dedicated himself to that experience. He really gave of himself and did it in such a spirit of love. I think perhaps he hadn't had the opportunity to teach, and he valued teaching so highly. He'd had such influential teachers of his own. So maybe finally he was able to express that side of himself, to give that back to a group of young people. And he did it with such joy and such seriousness and dedication. It was overwhelming for us all.
Martin Milnes:And for Leslie, still writing in Canada, Steve is somewhere a part of her life forever.
Leslie Arden:When you have a mentor like that, his voice is in your head all the time. I used to make this joke that to a Musical Theater writer studying with Stephen Sondheim is like a Christian meeting Jesus. And I measure my life in before and after. He valued teaching highly as much as he did his writing, I think. When people ask me what Steve was like, I always say that he was as good a friend and a teacher as he was a writer.
Peter E. Jones:We dedicate this episode to Steve's late Oxford Masterclass proteges, Stephen Clark, Kit Hesketh Harvey, and Andrew Peggie.
Mehran James McCullough:In this episode, the Guardian advert was read by Susan Fleet and the Observer article was read by Johnny-James Kajoba. Leslie Arden's agent was played by Broadway legend Sondra Lee, star of nineteen sixty four's Hello Dolly!, nineteen fifty four's Peter Pan, and nineteen forty seven's High Button Shoes. The Really Useful Group operators were Rebecca Ridout, James Gower-Smith and James Bentham. Dramatic reenactments were written by Martin Milnes and produced by Peter E Jones. The music of Stephen Sondheim, Jonathan Larson and Jule Styne was played by Colm Molloy.
Mehran James McCullough:Sondheim instrumental tracks were provided by Broadway Studio Orchestra. The songs of Maltby and Shine were sung by Barbra Streisand ('The Morning After'), Beth Fowler ('I Want It All'), and George Dvorsky ('If I Sing'). Selections from Salad Days by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds were played by Julian Slade on Minnie The Magic Piano. 'Move On' by Stephen Sondheim was sung by Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin. 'Robert Dreams' featured music, lyrics and vocals by Leslie Arden.
Mehran James McCullough:Intelligent beautiful person by Paul James and Ben Mason was sung by John Winfield with guitar by Richard Bolton and drums by Ralph Salmins. 'Isn't She Sweet' was sung by Paul James. And I am Mehran James McCullough. Loving You: The Untold Sondheim is produced by Martin Milnes and Peter E. Jones. The Executive Producer is Jason Caffrey of Creative Kin Limited.
Mehran James McCullough:Mix and mastering is by Chris Traves. Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics are featured courtesy of The Stephen Sondheim Trust. The podcast's original score is composed by Peter E. Jones. The series is written, devised, and directed by Martin Milnes.