STEPHEN SONDHEIM Art isnt easy

Pulitzer finalist Okrent (The Guarded Gate) crafts an intimate and detailed biography of late composer and lyricist Sondheim, who died in 2021 and whose credits include Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and West Side Story. The author wisely focuses on the relationships that shaped his subject's life, among them Sondheim's acrimonious but enduring connection with his mother, Foxy, who never missed one of his opening nights, but once wrote to him in a letter, "The only regret I have in life is giving you birth"; and his stormy love life, which involved brief flings with Vogue cover model Nancy Berg and actress Lee Remick, though he knew he was queer and married Jeff Romly, 50 years his junior, in 2017. Also explored in depth is Sondheim's creative process, which was informed by his brilliant mathematical mind--he played blindfold chess with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, and likened composing to solving a puzzle. (Lyric writing, a process he once described as "hell," was deeply connected to his characters' story lines; actor Robert Westenberg describes Sondheim's songs as "scenes, basically, that happen to be sung.") Drawing on rich research, Okrent vividly captures a clever, sensitive, complicated, and sometimes abrasive artist, and sheds fresh light on even Sondheim's most well-known productions. It's a stellar portrait of an American theater great. (Mar.)

Short, shrewd biography of the legendary composer/lyricist. Much has been written about Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021), most prominently Meryle Secrest's more-or-less-authorized 1998 biography. It's characteristic of Okrent's ability to go beyond the usual that he found there a revealing, previously unremarked comment by Judy Prince, wife of Sondheim's longtime director/producer Hal, and herself one of the composer's closest friends. After hearing songs fromSweeney Todd, his blood-soaked masterpiece about a vengeance-driven barber, she exclaimed, "It's the story of your life!" A thirst for revenge is one of several dark personality traits that Okrent (Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, 2010) discerns in a portrait refreshingly unlike the generally worshipful treatment accorded the man who revolutionized the American musical. Not that Okrent isn't a "Sondhead," as he affectionately terms Cult of Sondheim members, and his coverage of such storied productions asCompany, Follies, Merrily We Roll Along, andAssassins is cogent. What stands out, however, are his thoughtful exegeses of Sondheim's work as it expressed lifelong personal conflicts. Okrent identifies two paradigmatic songs: "Someone in a Tree" fromPacific Overtures "is the effort of a young boy trying to connect," while "Finishing the Hat" fromSunday in the Park With George "is the effort of a mature artist trying to create" who bemoans that others don't understand why this is more important than any human connection. The subtitle is apt: A perfectionist to the point of cruelty to collaborators, Sondheim dedicated his life to the agonies of creation and was profoundly uncomfortable with intimacy. In his final decades, when his creative abilities faltered but he was happily in love with a man 50 years his junior, his longtime librettist James Lapine saw "the reservoir of anger inside of him dissipate." But for five decades, in more than a dozen shows that expanded the horizons of musical theater, work was Sondheim's salvation. "The difference between Sweeney and me," he told an interviewer, "is that I turned it into art." An indispensable supplement to our understanding of a musical theater giant. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.