Martin Milnes: What was it like to collaborate with Stephen Sondheim writing musical masterpieces? For actors, how did it feel to work with Steve interpreting that art? And what is Steve's legacy to those close personal friends who were also his dearest colleagues? In this episode, a vignette collection of intimate snapshots, Peter Jones and I meet a special select few who really know. The Broadway legends who wrote with Steve, the new generation inspired by Steve, and the actors whose Sondheim performances Steve considered definitive. Among Steve's earliest and foremost interpreters interpreters are his close friends, Millicent Martin and Julia McKenzie. In 1977, both Millie and Julia received Tony Nominations for the smash hit revue Side by Side by Sondheim, a show which Steve told Millie "opened me up to a bigger audience than I have ever had before."
Millicent Martin Sings: Black sable one day, next day it goes into hock. But I'm here. Top billing Monday, Tuesday, you're touring in stock, but I'm here.
Martin Milnes: Millicent Martin, still here and sparkling in her nineties, told PJ and me about a marvelous moment. It occurred during rehearsals for Side by Side by Sondheim, while Steve was busy writing his new musical, Sweeney Todd.
Millicent Martin: After I'd rehearsed with him at the piano, I said, "How's your new one coming along?" "Well", he said, "It's hard, it's difficult." He said, "I've got one song. If this doesn't work, I can't do Sweeney". He said, "This one has to work". And I said, well what is it? And he said, well, he said, I just finished it this morning. Would you like to hear it? And I said, yes, I think that would be lovely. And I just remember he said the first lines, said, "These are my friends. See how they glisten". And then he sang, "See how they shine, how they smile in the light". And I'm sitting next to him doing this and I'm thinking, "I'm the first person to have heard this song."
Peter E. Jones: Mhmm. It means he felt very comfortable with you to just off the cuff say, oh, I just finished this. You wanna hear it?
Martin Milnes: Millie, from your direct experience working with Steve, how do you feel actors should approach his work? And what was Steve like in the rehearsal room? He would be not stern, but quite ready, you know, no nonsense, and we'll get this done. And once he started to play and we started to sing, then he was like a kid. He loved it. He just would smile. And if he did something, he'd go, oh, oh. If you'd found something that he hadn't thought of.
Peter E. Jones: Well, Steve always said that your original cast of Side by Side by Sondheim was definitive. He loved how you and Julia and David Kernan interpreted his work.
Millicent Martin: What we did, unlike the Sondheims that have been on later, ours was absolutely straight singing. We didn't mug. We didn't do little things, know, a little tap dance or a little shuffle or something. The whole thing was singing the lyrics because why not? I mean you've got the best lyrics in the world. I've seen a couple of productions where they've done winks and nods and stuff and it just it takes it away from the audience. It's as though the lyrics aren't quite strong enough so we better do something funny. When they do something straight and just as he wrote it, it takes off.
Millicent Martin Sings: There in a trice, but I never do anything twice, except --- No! I never do anything twice.
Millicent Martin: It's a full bodied lifetime experience with Steve. I just stared at him and thought, how do you do this? How do you do this?
Martin Milnes: In the West End, Julia McKenzie won the Olivier Award as Mrs Lovett, as well as creating the roles of Sally and The Witch. She's also directed Sondheim musicals globally and knows all the intricacies of Steve's work. Julia shared her professional insight when I visited for a wonderful chat in her beautiful garden by the sea.
Julia McKenzie: Sometimes I go and do a little bit of coaching, and one girl came in and sang, "By the sea, mister Todd, that's the life I covet, By the sea, Mister Todd, Oh, I know you'd love it. You and me, Mister T, we could be alone in a house ---" I said, "Excuse me. Did you read what he's written at the top of this number?" No, she said. "Well, read it now. It says 'in one breath'". She said, "But that's so difficult". I said, "Why do you think he did that?" And she said, "Well, don't know. I don't know. It's just difficult". "No. It gives you this garrulous woman who, if she took a breath, he'd say no!".
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, now that Steve has become an icon, it's easy to forget that for many years, beyond his immediate Broadway fan base, Stede's work was largely unknown. But with the international success of the revue Side by Side by Sondheim, Millicent Martin and Julia McKenzie played a pivotal role in changing that, and Steve ranked them both among his definitive interpreters.
Peter E. Jones: Well, really, no Sondheim history is complete without including Millie and Julia. Not just because of their great personal friendships with Steve, but also because of how much Side by Side by Sondheim meant to Steve personally.
Martin Milnes: Steve told me that his favorite theatrical memory from his entire career was the original Side by Side at London's Mermaid Theatre. After it opened, the show became a sellout, but initially, ticket sales have been slow. In later years, Steve enjoyed telling people that he walked past the box office one day and there was just one person at the window. And he heard her ask, "It's called Side by Side by What?"
Peter E. Jones: But Martin, you know, as much as Steve's work may owe to interpreters like Julia and Millie, he always openly acknowledged that he could not work without his collaborators, the book writers.
Martin Milnes: Yes. The book writers being the playwrights who created the narratives, characters, and dialogue, which Steve then dramatized into music and lyrics. Now his most frequent book writers were, of course, Arthur Laurents, James Lapine, and John Weidman. Arthur died in 2011. But when you and I chatted to James and John, I was fascinated to hear not just their professional stories, but also personal memories of their very special friendships with Steve.
Peter E. Jones: Well, not only were The J's, as I like to call them, both very close to Steve, but they're also close friends with each other. They share the unique bond of having worked so often with Steve. James goes back over forty years to their first collaboration Sunday in the Park with George, and John goes back fifty years to their first show which was Pacific Overtures in 1976.
Martin Milnes: Directed by another Sondheim collaborator, Hal Prince. Now of course, many years later in 2003, Hal directed another Weidman Sondheim musical, and this marked a notable reunion for Hal and Steve because their former professional partnership had ended very painfully more than twenty years earlier. But perhaps more than anyone else alive today, James Lapine and John Weidman really understand what it was like to work so closely with Steve, and indeed, so frequently. Steve never failed to acknowledge just how much his work owed to all his book writers. His love and respect for these collaborators, and James and John in particular, was observed by his close friend, Maria Friedman. And Maria knows just how deeply Steve felt about these friendships.
Maria Friedman: His book writers were his family. They were his brothers, his sisters, his children, his family, his family. They were the gold star, his book writers. You do not get between him and them.
Martin Milnes: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. This is a chat between Peter Jones, James Lapine, John Weidman, and me to recall our friend, Stephen Sondheim.
John Weidman: Steve would correct that immediately and say it's it's chat among the four of us. Am I not right?
James Lapine: Yes. You're absolutely right.
John Weidman: Sorry. Okay. We know ---
Martin Milnes: That's okay.
John Weidman: We know what my role is gonna be here. Right. Starts with A and ends with E. Continue.
Martin Milnes: Now, John, your collaboration with Steve dates back to 1976 with Pacific Overtures. So out of everyone here, you knew Steve the longest.
John Weidman: Yeah. I wrote a play about the opening of Japan, Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan. I got it to Hal Prince, contrived to get it to Hal. Mhmm. He wanted to produce it as a straight play and set that in motion. And then he called me one day and said, he changed his mind. I thought it wanted to be a musical. What I heard him saying was, I'm not gonna do your play. But he said he was gonna send it to Steve and, which he did. And, he reported back to me that Steve liked it but he thought maybe it was a play with music. He didn't see a full musical in it. And Howe who was nothing if not persuasive eventually persuaded Steve that he wanted to be the next project. So the first time I was in a room with Steve was in Hal Prince's office.
Martin Milnes: How did that feel for you having known his work?
John Weidman: I was both thrilled to suddenly become his creative partner, intimidated. I mean, I guess there's a whole list of adjectives. But I must say both Hal and Steve made me feel entirely comfortable. So there was never any sense of hierarchy. Mhmm. And I do think that was one of things that I immediately felt about Steve, who was a much more relaxed person than Hal was, was that there was a kind of generosity about him. He was interested in opening up to a new idea and working with a new person. So I just kinda took a deep breath and held my breath till the whole experience was over.
Martin Milnes: James, when he played Sunday in the Park with George for you, I understand that was quite an intense experience as well.
James Lapine: Well, it was intense because I had been working and working and working, and he hadn't done anything. So it was intense like, you know, you wait and you wait and you wait, and then I just figured, well, it's gonna be a play. Mhmm. And he didn't really give me any indication he was working on much. Unlike John, I did not have the background of having gone to shows and musicals. So I had only seen one show of his, which was Sweeney Todd. And I knew vaguely of his reputation, but I didn't really know any of his other words. But when he finally was ready to play a song, he made me sit next to him on the piano, which he was so nervous then it was like I became so nervous next to him. I think he wanted me to turn the pages or something, and it's like, I'm listening. He's going like that. And, you know yeah. It was an experience that was thrilling and somewhat bizarre in a way because I just made him do it again after he did it the first time. Then he started to relax and I started to relax and then he started to slow down a little bit. And
John Weidman: My memory of Steve when he was ready to play anything was that it was never a polished performance. It's not as though he'd sort of pulled it together. Now you're really gonna hear it. He'd start. He'd stop. He'd apologize for parts of it.
James Lapine: Or talk through it. And then this happens and that happens as he's playing. Yeah. And his singing was intense. You know? He performed it in his way, but it was quite intense.
Stephen Sondheim: Got a phone going off here. Is this is this you, James?
James Lapine: Yeah.
John Weidman: Steve is calling and saying that's not what happened. What you do mean I wasn't doing anything?
James Lapine: Stop talking. It's the text that says stop. Alright. Hold on.
John Weidman: Steve told me that when he was at whether it was the funeral or the memorial service for Arthur Laurents out on the island, The most serious part of it, a phone rang. Somebody's phone rang and Steve said, "It's Arthur".
Martin Milnes: Did he enjoy talking about his other collaborators to you? Were there many Arthur Laurents stories for instance?
John Weidman: His relationship with Arthur was constantly shifting from best buddies to lose my phone number. So yeah, I mean in that sense, I feel like I was often sort of an audience to how Steve was feeling about Arthur at a particular time.
James Lapine: A love hate relationship, really. What was it like when you went back to work with Steve and Hal? It was Which was and when I mean, many years later. It was complicated. It Had it changed, how the dynamic changed from the first time you worked with them?
John Weidman: Yeah. Hal had done Phantom. And I mean, each of them had had each of their their careers had diverged. Both have been enormously successful but with very different kinds of material.
James Lapine: Yeah.
John Weidman: Sunday In The Park over here, Phantom of the Opera over here. It was an obstacle to either of them doing their best work. Steve and I had taken a first crack at a show which then was called Wise Guys, which would ultimately be called Road Show. And so we did this workshop down at New York Theatre Workshop, Sam Mendes directed it. It just didn't work. But Hal saw it there. And he wanted to reengage with Steve and reengage with me and reengage with the project. And so Steve and I came sort of stumbling out of the experience at New York Theatre Workshop. And Hal said, "I'm your guy. Come on over here and we'll do this". And that's what we did. And Hal's instincts in the end, I think, about the show really weren't right. And we undid a lot of what we did with Hal before we finally finished the show. But it was aside from the show, I watched Hal and Steve negotiate this reunion after they'd been married and then got divorced and were now trying again.
James Lapine: How many years was that between, I guess Merrily ---
John Weidman: Merrily was what year?
Martin Milnes: 1981. Yes.
Peter E. Jones: 1981.
John Weidman: So this was twenty years later. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It would be presumptuous to say much more about what they were trying to figure out about what went wrong and what they were now trying
James Lapine: Well, twenty get years later, they changed.
John Weidman: They changed.
James Lapine: And you were in the middle of it.
John Weidman: Yeah. Well, book writers. That's where the book writer always is. It doesn't matter what show it is.
James Lapine: Yeah. Now that relationship always fascinated me.
John Weidman: So that was it was intense.
James Lapine: Yeah. I remember Steve wanted me to meet Hal. I'd never met him when we started working together. And, invited me to the film festival. He used to go to the New York Film Festival a lot. And he was going with Hal and Judy, he said, I want you to meet them. Come. You know? So I was I was nervous. I don't know why, but I was nervous. And so, of course I smoked a joint and then went in and we sat down and he sat me next to Hal and he sat next to Judy and they started talking and Hal and I started talking. And then finally Hal said, so what are you working on now? And I realized, holy crap.
John Weidman: He didn't tell
James Lapine: He never told ---
John Weidman: He never told him.
James Lapine: I thought to myself, I'm not telling him. Yeah. But I thought that was a really interesting kind of moment all the way around.
Young Lin: That's very funny.
Martin Milnes: Were there any projects which either of you would like to have done with him that you never got the chance to do?
James Lapine: Oh, that's interesting.
John Weidman: I went to the meeting which resulted in the conversation about assassins. I called Steve, said I had an idea, and I wanna come over and talk about it. And it's something I I've actually started working on again a little while ago. But I wanted to, write a show about the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, about the world gathering for six months to fix the world. So what just happened would never happen again. And the fact that virtually every decision that was made in the end by three old white men on their knees drawing lines on a map has created every problem that we've been dealing with since then. And I remember Steve saying, yeah, don't know. It sounds like a movie. I'm like, what do you think about this? Assassins. And I said, well, what are you talking about? And so that was the end of the Paris Peace Conference.
James Lapine: But you should write that.
John Weidman: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting though. Feel like You
James Lapine: write a play. Mean, I don't even have to ---
John Weidman: Well, take it easy.
James Lapine: I want to see that.
John Weidman: All right. One of the things I like about the musical theater, one of the things I like about collaboration is I feel like I think best in conversation. Steve seemed like a really interesting person, not because Steve would have known a whole lot about what happened in Paris in 1919, but he seemed like he'd be a great person to be in conversation with and that what would then come out of those conversations, what he would create would be sort of breathtaking and full of stuff that I never would have thought of.
Martin Milnes: James, did you want to do any additional projects which you have come up with?
James Lapine: I wanted to get him interested in the LSD project.
Martin Milnes: This is your musical Flying Over Sunset.
James Lapine: It's kind of striking that he just wasn't interested. He had this idea that he may have also come to you with of this split personality thing where he had this thing where he wanted to write this show about
John Weidman: Yeah. We talked about it.
James Lapine: What goes on in a person's mind before they make a big decision. And I also wrote a first scene for that, which he didn't seem to grab onto. And I felt kind of like he doesn't wanna work with me, so I guess that's what's gonna be. Mhmm. You know? And it's funny because I loved working with him. Yeah. No. But the LSD project, I really wanted him to do, and he just didn't really even articulate why, just said he really wasn't interested. And then, of course, I found out many years later, we were at a benefit and the leading lady who was gonna be in the show sang the song. And Steve was there and he told Jeff, his husband, he was really sorry. He didn't work on it. Of course, I wanted to just strangle him. Strangle him. And I realized in retrospect, I should have just not take no for an answer because he would have fallen in love with it when he kinda figured out what to do with it. But that was my own sort of ego that didn't wanna be convinced. I I don't really believe you should convince somebody to do something they don't wanna do.
John Weidman: Well, don't know. I mean, if I'd gone to Steve with the Paris Peace Conference and the meeting hadn't ended with a different idea, I don't know what I would've would I Yeah. Pushed, would I try to persuade? I have no idea. But the other idea was really appealing to me as well.
James Lapine: I don't know if he ever expressed it to you, this kind of theory when you collaborate, whoever cares most wins, you know, which I thought was a really good way to work because no matter what it was about at the end of a conversation, you realize that he's more passionate about that idea than I am or vice versa. But I should have just pushed and pushed and gone gone on with him because I think he would have done something really amazing.
Martin Milnes: What was Steve like to work with once you got into the theater, especially during difficult periods, for instance, when previews of Passion had very negative audience reaction?
James Lapine: He didn't come to the theater often, and he didn't come to many previews. He'd come to maybe one or two a week. It was frustrating, to tell you the truth, in that regard because you work with somebody on a project like that, and then all of a sudden, being the only the writer and director
John Weidman: Yeah.
James Lapine: I had to become the director and he would be home. We'd pretty much talk every night after a rehearsal or whatever. Of course, what he created was the minute he walked in the room, it was an event which really is not good.
Peter E. Jones: Well, that's one of the reasons he stayed home. I can tell you that. Meaning? Because he he was aware of how he affected the room.
James Lapine: No. But my point is if he came every day, people would just
Peter E. Jones: Oh, it would normalize?
James Lapine: And it wouldn't be a big deal. But, you know, when he showed up once a week or twice a week, was a big deal. You know? And then it was all about the music. And
Peter E. Jones: He started to get so self conscious about going out because of the reception. You know?
James Lapine: But, no, I just mean, it became all about him, which and and I don't think it's just Steve, any composer. You're doing a musical. You know? They don't care about the book writer or the you know? They care about the music. So if somebody walks in, whether it's Bill Finn or whomever with songs, it's really a big deal, and particularly when it was Steve.
John Weidman: Yeah. I don't know why I remember. So you're talking about Steve going out in public. When assassins was done at Studio fifty four, the theater had not been reconfigured yet. It was still set up the way it had been for Cabaret with cabaret tables and then Mhmm.
Banquettes and then theater seating behind it. And it the banquettes were perfect. You could sit there and drink. Oh my god.
James Lapine: It was just perfect.
John Weidman: Steve and I were sitting in the banquettes. We're still in preview, so it's not like we were changing the show, but making notes. And I was sitting next to Steve, and Steve had a, like, a drink. We both had drinks. And I looked past him and we were on the island. There was a guy engaged in a serious conversation with a woman, presumably it was his wife. And he got up and he came over and he said, "Mr Sondheim, I'm so sorry to interrupt but I just wanna," and he went like this and he knocked Steve's drink into his lap. And I thought and so the ushers came down. You know, it was wiped up. Ice cubes and stuff to clean them up. And the guy but I just thought that guy's gonna go back and sit down next to his wife, and he's gonna remember this not just tonight, but tomorrow morning when he wakes up in the morning.
Martin Milnes: James, do you have any particular standout memories of Steve?
Peter E. Jones: Maybe a quirky image in your mind of something that's
James Lapine: You know, what I don't like? Well, I shouldn't say I don't like, but sometimes I hear things come out of my mouth that sound like Steve. I think, yeah. I mean, the sarcasm of Steve, through whatever all the time spent together, I found myself being sarcastic and I didn't particularly like that until I discovered I was doing it, you know. But with him and me, it was fine, you know. But when you do it with somebody who doesn't know you or whatever.
Peter E. Jones: Doesn't appreciate sarcasm.
James Lapine: And also he had such a his wit was so instant that sometimes I I sort of got into the habit with that because you're with him in a room and you're and then it's not so much appreciated by others sometimes.
Martin Milnes: Having worked with Steve that closely over so many years, what have your friendships with him meant to you both personally?
John Weidman: People don't realize what an intimate relationship, I think, it is to to create that way with somebody who's gonna go away and do their piece of it while you do your piece of it. But there has to be a sort of perfect meeting of minds to work with Steve over such a long period of time. Having had that experience with him, you know, was really extraordinary. And then I was thinking about coming down here, but Pacific Overtures was 1976.
Peter E. Jones: Mhmm.
John Weidman: Assassins was like a whole another piece of my life, and then Road Show was another piece after that. And then, you know, we just remained friends after that. But I can't think of another relationship that lasted as long other than my marriage.
James Lapine: Yeah. We're like blood brothers or stepbrothers. John and I. Yeah.
Peter E. Jones: One of the ways you know the level of importance to him personally in the office was that the two of you had carte blanche. I didn't have to ask him. John wants such and such or James is asking for this or that. I just did it because I knew. You were both very, very important to him
Thank you a lot for saying that.
John Weidman: Yeah.
James Lapine: It was. Yeah. I think we both felt it too and vice versa. Yes. Yeah.
Martin Milnes: Steve's collaborations with James and John shaped both their careers and their lives. But how does it feel when Steve's mentorship shapes not just your life and legacy, but also the face of Broadway. It's well known that Lin-Manuel Miranda became a protege of Steve's while writing his musical Hamilton. But Steve first entered Lin-Manuel's life many years prior to that. In fact, they first met when the future Tony, Emmy, Grammy, and Pulitzer Prize winner was just a teenager.
Lin-Manuel Miranda: I continued to do theater in high school, and then senior year, I got to choose the show, and I chose West Side Story. And the incredible good fortune was that I had a friend, Laura Weidman, whose father is John Weidman. And so he came to talk to our cast, and then he coaxed Steve into coming to our cast. But it was like he was descending from another planet to talk to us, that one of the names on our libretto was coming into our classroom. So he came and spoke to us on a lunch break. So we all piled into one classroom, Room 215, and I was given the honor of the first question as the director of the show. And apparently, I asked ---
Young Lin: What was it like?
Stephen Sondheim: What do you mean?
Young Lin: What was it like writing West Side Story?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: Which makes me teary eyed to think of it because in a way, it's such a simple and dumb question. And on another level, I so badly wanted to understand how you made these things that it's the most direct possible question I could have asked him. And he proceeded to tell us this incredible story about writing the opening number to West Side Story. But the way he told it to us was by singing all these lyrics he had written for the Jets and for the Sharks. We learned that Riff was named Riff because he came in out. A month of work. And again, for someone who loved that show so much and basically thought it came from two stone tablets on high, to get a glimpse at the process that even these masterpieces are not carved in stone, they are result of rewriting and trial and error and personalities fighting in the room for their version of what the best moment should be. It was a total revelation and it was the first glimpse at what it's like making a thing as opposed to just admiring a thing. It wasn't until I got hired to write the Spanish translations for the 2009 revival of West Side Story that I reconnected with Steve and he remembered that visit. And the reason he remembered it was because he knew John had never heard those lyrics before. So he remembered this one lunchtime visit that had happened on a Friday in 1998 and I was amazed that he remembered.
Martin Milnes: How did you feel prior to your first meeting at Steve's house?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: I got there early and just circled the block a few times, so I was already sweaty and clammy when I walked in the house. Was immediately accosted by his enormous dogs by Willie and But, yeah, you know, we sat, we had a drink, and our conversation about West End Story, don't think it was more than ten minutes. And then he was like, "What else are you working on?" And I told him about at that point, 2009, I'd written one and a half songs for Hamilton. And he his reaction honestly kept me going for years because he just might, "That is fantastic! No one will expect that from you! That's great!" And I think that he was so delighted by what an unexpected choice it was after, you know, In The Heights, it's a totally different thing, that he was delighted by it. And his delight was like, okay, I'm on the right track. And and one of the things he said to me and I'm sure he said to you and he has said to many many folks is "Stay in touch and don't be shy". And so, really I had to work up the don't be part, but I emailed him about everything. Like, I just I would email him the dumbest stuff if I thought he would enjoy it, whether it was a hip hop song that I I knew wouldn't be on his radar otherwise, or it was an ice cream truck in Queens that play Send In The Clowns, to which his response was "Very upsetting. Thank you so much". And more than anything, he really wanted to stay in touch about Hamilton. And so I sent him, I think, the first four songs when they were ready. I sent him the first act when it was ready, and he would always just kind of hit me back with "variety, variety, variety", and some emails more detailed than others. And I remember on one email, I was very moved by this. He really like went in and it, you know, in one light the email could be read as as harsh, but his he signed it off by saying, "I know this sounds like serious talk, but you're writing important work and it deserves this level of consideration". And that meant more to me than anything. He was just like, "You're a big boy and you're writing a big show and it's your responsibility to really get it right". The thing he hammered into my head and he wrote it over and over in his emails regarding Hamilton, but it's a pretty good life advice is "variety, variety, variety". He would write, "You're doing an evening with a lot of lyrics, you have to surprise us. You have to surprise us musically or you have to surprise us verbally or rhythmically, but if our heads are bobbing, we're gonna stop paying attention to the lyrics. So variety, variety, variety, do not let up on the variety." And I also take that in terms of the choices he made, in terms of the things he chose to traumatize. He never repeated himself. So I think that once you've done something, something, move on.
Martin Milnes: As Hamilton soared to global success, Steve, in his late eighties, began working with a new collaborator, playwright David Ives. Their musical, eventually titled Here We Are, spent several years in development. But then, for a brief interim towards the end of Steve's life, his close friend, Jeremy Sams, stepped in as the new book writer. In 1990, Jeremy had been musical director of Sunday in the Park with George at the National Theatre. Then, in 1997, he directed the original West End production of Passion. But now, after a friendship of thirty years, Jeremy briefly reunited with Steve one last time as his collaborator. They worked together on Here We Are at Steve's home in Roxbury, Connecticut. Observing Steve at work during this very late stage in his life, Jeremy found their collaboration especially poignant.
Jeremy Sams: Towards the end, he was very aware that he wasn't making art like he needed to. And that was sad for him. At the very, very end of his life, I got a call saying, "Can you help me out on my last show?" And that was about a year before he died, maybe. Because he'd come to a bit of an an impasse with working on this. He felt he'd he'd worked on it for a very long time. And what was sad for him is it wasn't firing. It wasn't happening. So I think he thought that maybe a different writer would make it fire in a different way. His ease of making lyrics never dimmed. Musically, he was drawing from familiar wells in that piece. And he said, "Oh it's all my old music recycled".
Martin Milnes: Right, so he actually acknowledged that?
Jeremy Sams: Well, he couldn't not, really. I wrote book scenes and he would write music occasionally to book scenes. I was in the pool house, he was in the main house and we'd meet. But most importantly, we would eat.
Martin Milnes: Which was appropriate enough for that show!
Jeremy Sams: Absolutely. And we'd actually get to as well, which is nice. So that it was social, as much as anything. We'd do crosswords and we'd chat. And like I said, when we got stuck, I'd say, what was that on Ethel Merman like in rehearsals? Or did you meet Jerome Kern? But that didn't that didn't work and it it wasn't happening. They went back to Dead Ives and came back to him again. And the the piece they ended up with was made up entirely of of what I first saw. And I've heard the album and it's it's lovely and very odd to hear because there it is. But there were things in that that he thought, you know, this isn't good if I can't put this in the room. It was timely in that we were all wanting a tribute And the wonderful thing of having an unfinished show by the greatest master was marvelous. So it's great that that happens and it's great that people could pour their love into it. I think you can rank these musicals in the same way you rank Shakespeare plays. Mhmm. Histories, by which I mean Pacific Overtures, mean Assassins, by which I mean Wise Guys. Yes. Those are history pieces. So, tragedies, I put Sweeney in there and others. Romances and comedies. Shakespeare and Ibsen was absolute gods. He was crazy for Macbeth. Crazy for Macbeth. Hamlet, I love Hamlet. Hedda Gabler. I remember seeing Hedda Gabler. He said, can you believe what this did to an audience on its first night? And we never went to a Shakespeare or Ibsen play without him being well, you know, he's a great weeper
Martin Milnes: Yes.
Jeremy Sams: And hyperventilator. But he would just particularly obscene who was an amazing dramatist, modern amazing dramatist, and Shakespeare. And I remember going to see Hamlet at the National, which Rory Kinnear did. And we were going out and we were all knocked sideways. And everyone around us was checking their phones, which is what you do nowadays at the end of a show. Yes. And he was saying quite loudly, "How the fuck can you check your phones after a masterpiece like that?" He's quite outspoken. The lobby of the National, and there'd be someone playing piano in the distance. Mhmm. And he rather foolishly started playing Losing My Mind, something like that. So Steve was giving me my notes, and he just shouted, "Wrong chord!" And carried on with me. He didn't like wrong chords. Particularly because he'd taken so much time to find the right chords. So much time. And he was a bit iffy about arrangements that reharmonized. Not reorchestrated, but reharmonized because his it was the care that went into it. I remember going to see Sweeney Todd at Covent Garden, which is an okay production, and at the end of it I was sitting up with him in the circle and I said, "Steve, is anyone gonna get you on stage for a bow?" He said, "No, no one's mentioned it". I said, "I don't believe it." And then the bows came and we sat together and no one, but no one from Covent Garden, fucking Covent Garden had thought that the genius who made this thing that everyone was clapping was in the house, which they must have known, but didn't get him out there. Cut to the same show, Sweeney Todd, which we saw together in Paris at the Chatelet; and that was marvelous because no one had ever seen it before in Paris. And when it was the the moment that we all get when Mrs Lovett decides what to do with the excess corpses, the audience, I swear, took about the same time as Sweeney to get it. And you heard people go, And he said, that's what I dreamed of, you know? We went to see Gypsy when that was done at Chichester if you remember? This really moved me. After the show, we were having a drink. He said, "So what do you think Jeremy?" And I said, "Oh, it's really good." "So what do think of the show?" I said, "Well, it's great. I love where they've done this and this is a challenge in this space," and went on. He said, "No, no. What do you think of the show?" I said, "What, Gypsy?". He said, yeah! He said, "Come on. What do you think of the lyrics?" And I said, "Steve, they're fantastic." He said, "Well, thank you very much!"
Martin Milnes: And he really cared what people thought, didn't he?
Jeremy Sams: About Gypsy, which he'd written before I was born. Yeah. So I said, "Oh my god, Steve, fantastic. This rhyme is amazing and that rhyme is amazing. And no one ever gets the rhyme in Rose's Turn where it rhymes, 'thosands' with 'bows and', because everyone takes a breath after 'bows'. He said, "Yeah, yeah, I hate that". No, no, you know, so we were off off to the races and then Mhmm. And then those conversations were just led to everything else. That turned into go it turned into painting, turned into plays, turned into novels, you know, everything. Mhmm. And off we go. But that was a tricky moment. And it hadn't occurred to me that he might want to care what someone thought about the lyrics of Gypsy. Yes.
Martin Milnes: And yet, for all the gems in the score of Gypsy and every other Sondheim show, Steve's best known song remains, Send In The Clowns. Its commercial success always astounded Steve, and he frequently offered to play his friends 'a medley of my hit'. So to end our collection of intimate vignettes, it is our privilege and honor to share stories from two legendary Sondheim interpreters, both with close personal connections to Send In The Clowns. Steve often told the story of writing this song around the vocal limitations of actress Glynis Johns, the star of A Little Night Music. But for this moment in the second act, Steve had originally planned to write a very different song intended for the show's leading man, Len Cariou.
Len Cariou: He wouldn't sleep. He'd be up all night. He couldn't write the eleventh hour song for me. It was gonna be my song. And we very seldom saw him, of course, until it got down to crunch time. So the first three weeks of rehearsal, I I never saw the guy. And then finally, I said to Hal, "When are we gonna get this song, do you think?" And he said, "Well, I don't know. He's having a terrible time, I think". And we worked on a scene, and we improvised a little, and we performed it for him. And it was over, and he went, Okay. And he got up and left. That's all he said. And I looked at Hal. I said, "Okay? That's it?" He said, "That's Steve". He said, "I don't know. Something going on". Two days later, came back. All the company was in the rehearsal room. He sits down at the piano, looks at me and says, "Sorry, Len". I said, What? He said, "Well, you don't sing this anymore. She does." And he starts playing Send In The Clowns. So it's my song.
Martin Milnes: Steve claimed that many cover artists, even Frank Sinatra, didn't understand what the song was really about. So I asked perhaps its best loved interpreter, the wonderful Dame Judi Dench.
Dame Judi Dench: It means that you've got the timing wrong. Perhaps even if the song, in my case! Had it been another time and another place, everything would have been alright. But it just happened to be that it is --- You know, it's like ships that pass in the night or trains or anything. That you just miss the moment.
Martin Milnes: And for his eightieth birthday, you sang it for Steve at the Royal Albert Hall.
Dame Judi Dench: Being on the stage there is quite another thing. Crikey! And I suddenly saw Steve sitting in about the sixth row. Strangely enough, instead of that being a terrifying thing, I thought, well, of course, this is who we're doing it for. I'll sing it for him. That's who I'm doing it for. It doesn't matter about anybody else. That's why I'm singing, and he's there. I do remember how comforting it was to see him there.
Martin Milnes: And Steve said of your performance, "I thought I had never heard that song before. It moved me in a way I've never been moved before."
Dame Judi Dench: That's lovely. That's lovely. Because that doesn't mean to say I actually sang it properly, but it did it meant something. And that means in a way more than than anything. I have to write that down, Martin. I have to write that down. Boast about that a bit somewhere.
Martin Milnes: Well, Judi, on behalf of audiences everywhere, may I just say thank you so much for the joy that you've brought with Sondheim the Clowns, your performance in A Little Night music, all your other musicals and indeed just thank you for everything.
Dame Judi Dench: Thank you, Martin, for including me Very much indeed. Would you like a nice glass of champagne?
Martin Milnes: I wouldn't say no to that.
Dame Judi Dench: Oh, that's my man. It's what we need. I think so. When you've been frightened and doing something, hope you get it right. Yes. Then you need a nice glass of champagne.
Dame Judi Dench Sings: Isn't it rich? Isn't it queer? Losing my timing this late in my career. And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Well, Maybe next year.
Mehran James McCullough: In this episode, Stephen Sondheim was portrayed by Alistair McGowan. Young Lin-Manuel was played by Karsci Wright. Our French theatergoers were Jerome Gicquel and Nathalie Mrgudovic, who appeared by special arrangement with Jean Bayless. Dramatic reenactments were written by Martin Milnes and produced by Peter E Jones. Sondheim and Bernstein instrumental tracks were provided by Broadway Studio Orchestra. The music of Jule Styne was played by Colm Molloy. 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 Kid Limited. 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.