 America's
foremost musical-theater composer also proves to be a fascinatingly complex and conflicted
human being in this meticulous biography by the always-capable Meryle Secrest (Being
Bernard Berenson, etc.). Stephen Sondheim himself was interviewed for the book, as
were many of his closest friends, and the author makes perceptive use of this material.
Born in 1930, Sondheim was a successful Broadway lyricist (West Side Story and Gypsy)
before he was 30. But the scars from a miserable childhood remained: he was inclined to be
distant, hypercritical of those less intelligent than he, and terrified of serious
emotional commitment. Critics sometimes found those qualities in the series of
groundbreaking musicals he created with director Hal Prince--Company, Follies,
A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd, to name four--but they agreed that
he brought new intellectual ambition and artistic adventurousness to the musical theater.
Secrest does a fine job of delineating Sondheim's career in terms of what it tells us
about the state of American theater, as when he shifted to a partnership with
writer-director James Lapine and worked in the nonprofit sector for such musicals as Sunday
in the Park with George and Assassins. She also does well in selecting
revealing quotes to depict the composer's struggle to accept his homosexuality and a rage
at his overbearing mother so deep that he didn't even attend her funeral. Sondheim the man
and Sondheim the visionary artist get nearly equal time in an intriguing portrait. |