Backlisted - Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat by Stephen Sondheim

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Stephen Sondheim's biographer David Benedict and writer and musician Jason Hazeley join us for a special episode devoted to Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat, the late and very great songwriter's two volumes of lyrics, memoir, criticism and much more, first published in 2010 and 2011 respectively; Sondheim's work defies easy categorisation and these glorious books are no exception. NB. This show contains expert recommendations for further listening and, as you'll hear, putting it together was a real thrill. Somehow we also find time to discuss the novel O Caledonia, a modern classic of Scottish fiction by Elspeth Barker, and Finna, the second collection by American poet Nate Marshall.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)07:45 - The Kids by Hannah Lowe. 14:18 - The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. 22:25 - Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien. 27:56 - Men Who Feed Pidgeons by Selima Hill. 37:54 - The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. 42:03 - The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen. 45:52 - Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. So I went to the cinema last week. I don't get to go to the cinema much at the moment to see West Side Story. Did you? Most of the planning that went into that visit

was trying to find a time of day and a cinema at which I could be fairly confident that few other people would be present. So we ended up seeing it at a retail park in board stairs at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. And it worked. It was pretty much only us in the cinema.

True Sondheim fan. Gotta love it. Wow. I think the film is not going to make its money back in any time soon. It is officially a disappointment to love it. Wow. I think the film is not going to make its money back in any time soon. It is officially a disappointment to the studios. It didn't do its opening weekend prediction. But they're hoping that it's got long legs, as it were,

that it will continue. They haven't yanked it from cinemas. They're hoping that it's a slow burn. It was supposed to come out Christmas, I think, last year. Sondheim saw it in February of last year. What did he think? He really likes it, and he has very fixed views on the 1961 film. And I think he felt that this solved a lot of the problems.

I agree with Sondheim. I thought it was absolutely magnificent. Really, I thought the casting was just first class. Everybody is bringing their A-game to it. And the music has never sounded better. Thank you Gustavo Dudamel.

David, would you care to comment? I would care to comment. I would absolutely agree about the score. The scoring of the movie back in 1961 is lush and plush.

On Broadway, they had I think 27 in the pit, and then when it was recorded, they added another 12 players. So it still sounds quite spare, but it's stronger than it is in the live theatre. On the movie soundtrack, it's nearer 100 players and it all sounds a bit too lush.

And the new film is much closer to the Broadway original and it sounds tougher and sharper and cleaner and brighter and stronger. Now that was a nice thing about the remake is that in the original production, I really hesitate to say this, but somewhat incoherently, Somewhere is sung by an offstage voice. In the original film, they gave it to a character. In this film, they gave it to a person who can sing it, the character who can sing it in a way that says, for us immigrants, somewhere there is a place for us,

which is a really intelligent thing to do, I think. It was great. I think that sort of corrected the imbalances from both the original Broadway and the original film. Well, listeners, that was just the informal chat. We haven't even started yet, but I think we should, don't you? I think we should harness that energy and build from there. Johnny, take it away.

Let's do it. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today, you find us in 1983 at the Playwright Horizons Theatre in West 42nd Street in New York. On a white stage, a man in 19th century dress sits at an easel. He has a large drawing pad and a box of crayons. He stares at the pad for a moment,

then turns to us and begins to speak. A chord of music sounds, a tree appears, and other bits of scenery start to assemble. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And we're joined today by two guests, one new and one returning, David Benedict and Jason Haisley. Hello. Hello.

Hello. You heard them talking, trading expertise in a rip-roaring way, which the next hour, this exhilarating hour ahead, can only build upon. Our new guest is critic David Benedict. David is the former arts editor of The Observer and theatre editor of The Independent,

the London theatre critic for Variety and weekly columnist on The Stage newspaper. A regular guest on TV and radio arts programmes, he is writing the authorised biography of Stephen Sondheim. That's fortunate. What a lucky coincidence. What a lucky coincidence. It's extraordinary.

Yes, he's like Billy Preston. He's just wandered in off the street. Got the Beatles in, Nicky. Got the Beatles in. Got the Beatles in. David also plays the Borchester Echo's redoubtable and feared theatre critic, Tristram Hawkshaw. We love him.

A.k.a. Linda Snell's nemesis on The Archers. Brilliant. Goodness me. David, my question to you, if you could choose only one, which is your favourite Sondheim score or show? This is very difficult. But I will say I will opt for best score as distinct from best show. And the best score for me is Merrily We Road Along.

The last number in the show, which is a huge emotional climax, is a song called Our Time. And it's a song of infinite hope, sung by people who at the start of the show you have seen much later in life. They've really compromised themselves. And the show tracks backwards to this moment where they all meet for the first time on a roof. And they become friends and you see all the hope and all the innocence.

they become friends and you see all the hope and all the innocence. And whenever I hear that song, if it just comes up on my headphones, if I'm travelling somewhere at random, it makes me cry. I think it's wonderful. The show, as a show, I don't think fully works for reasons one could get into and go on about at length, but I'll just leave it at that. I'm worried this is going to be a hard one, this show. I just think people won't talk.

I hope not. Thank you, David. The resurgent guest is Jason Haisley, who appeared on the 13th episode of Backlisted. Really? 13? Back in 2016, six years ago. To discuss Burt Fegg's nasty book for boys and girls by Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

Jason has two hats, one labelled musician and the other writer. As a musician, in his musician's hat, he has played with Portishead and the British Paro Orchestra, and with his writer hat, he has written for Charlie Brooker and Paddington. And he wishes it to be known he is nothing if not constantly for hire. Jason, similar question to you. If you could choose only six, which is your favourite Sondheim score or show? Oh boy, oh boy. I struggle with this because sometimes my favourite show is Merrily,

sometimes it's Company, sometimes it's A Little Night Music. But I think if I wanted to land on one, and it's really hard to do, it would be A Little Night Music because it's so totally charming and it's just so light and delightful. During the first lockdown, I used to wander across Wandsworth Common very often listening to A Little Night Music in my headphones as I went on my prescribed walk and occasionally singing out loud and alarming young mothers. So I think just as an apology to them, I think I ought to choose A Little Night Music, which is a show which is almost entirely, for those who don't know it, is almost entirely written in three beats to the bar instead

of four beats to the bar, which is one of these typical Sondheim, I'm going to set myself a challenge and see if I can meet it style things, and he met it absolutely beautifully. Thanks, Jason. I would just like to add that anyone who's read my stuff or listens to Lotlisted knows that I am probably the greatest night I've ever had in a theatre and therefore probably one of the greatest nights I've ever had in my life was the first time I saw Sunday in the Park with George, which I almost hesitate to talk about because everyone will be weeping on this.

I watched it again yesterday. I find it almost impossible to get through the second act of it because it's so central and strong. And John, you hadn't seen that before, had you? I know that you've seen it this week. No, I did. I watched it on YouTube yesterday and was indeed in floods of tears. I'm really amazed I've got to this stage of my life and not i mean it's been an amazing experience reading these books and thinking about sundown for the last two weeks unsurprisingly uh you'll have guessed that the book or books we're

discussing today are both by the late stephen sundheim. The first, Finishing the Hat, collected lyrics 1954 to 1981 with attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines, and anecdotes. And the second, Look, I Made a Hat, collected lyrics 1981 to 2011 with attendant comments, amplifications, dogmas, harangues, digressions, anecdotes, and miscellany. They were each first published by Alfred A. Knopf in the USA in 2010 and 2011 respectively and were described by American Theatre Magazine as the best and most gorgeously produced books of their kind ever put together for a living composer.

They were also available in one package called The Hat Box, the collected lyrics of Stephen S sondheim which is a sumptuous thing in blue pink and gold it really it's absolutely spectacular this is it still imagine rap andy it is it's open it's open but look it's got the the thing is can you imagine what the tax and shipping was for this from the state astonishing Astonishing. It cost a fortune anyway. Now, this episode came together quickly and rather miraculously in the space of a couple of conversations in about 20 minutes last week, which struck me as it was meant to happen. And subsequently, we looked somewhat in disbelief because outside of libraries,

none of these versions of these books are currently available. And it rather might seem to you in an hour's time like we've been trolling you because these books are so brilliant. So listeners, my apologies. I would imagine that in the light of Sondheim's death, Knopf or another publisher will bring them back into print sooner rather than later. And if you go to our website at batlisted.fm there you will find links to ebook or online versions of both finishing the hat and look I made a hat to tide you over but before the house

lights dim and Paul Gemignani counts us off, I must consult the book. John, what have you been reading this week? Okay, I've been reading a, inspired I have to say Andy, by your wonderful collection of winter reading poetry. I've been reading a collection of poetry by an American writer called Nate Marshall. Second collection called Finna, F-I-N-N-A, which, as you read the collection, you discover is a kind of contraction of fixing to. So I'm fixing to go somewhere, so I'm finna go somewhere.

It was inspired, actually, by one of our supporters, one of our patrons, a patron who put a poem of nate marshall's uh up and i read it and really responded to it and liked it who was that valerie smith and it kind of it made a connection i was interested to read about sondheim's admiration for and liking for rap music and his kind of mentorship of lynnManuel Miranda. So this book, Finna, is full of, I think, incredibly strong lyric poetry with amazing clarity of language. It's kind of, you know, some of the poems understandably are angry.

It's about erasure, about the fact that there's an amazing opening prologue to the book where he talks about land acknowledgement, which is now something that if you're in a theater in America, you'll acknowledge the land of the particular Native American area that you're in. And that's something, if you're from the south side of Chicago, you don't have that. He calls it landless, landless acknowledgement, and that's how the book opens. So there's anger, but there's also an incredibly witty collection of poems. He particularly has fun with a guy called Nate Marshall, who's a white supremacist on Twitter, who he kind of addresses several poems to as the other Nate Marshall. It's one of those books that works

brilliantly as an audio book and i'm gonna i'm gonna play a short poem but this is available in the states isn't it i mean it is available in the uk but but it's not published in the uk not published in the uk uh it's published by random house in the states it was an npr um not 2020 book of the year as i say it's a second collection i think he'll write more it's really he's i mean he's an educator he works i think he's assistant professor at colorado but he's also a musician there are some really really great poems in this collection and this i think is one of them the valley of its making. Poetry makes nothing happen. W.H. Auden. The people in the streets are plucked up like radishes from dark earth.

Heads beat the purplish red of ripeness. The women lead the stupid and brutish to a future they don't deserve. The organized are still unbearably human. They still fuck and hurt and harm and are not actually sorry. The people still fight each other too much and the system not enough. And too often it is not a fight but a bullet. Too many men want to be in the front and don't want to march anywhere in particular. Some of us have degrees and noses to look down. So many want a version of old days that never existed. Many are still unwilling to grow a vocabulary for personhood, even from the words already in them. So many will deny they to a sibling simply because. Our people are messy and messed up and a mess. Nothing about our people is romantic.

And it shouldn't be. Our people deserve poetry without meter. We deserve our own jagged rhythm and our own uneven walk towards sun. You make happening happen. We happen to love. This is our greatest action. Yeah. Sold.

Yeah, just some really love. You know, I've been thinking a lot about rhyme and internal rhyme and rhythm, and I just think it's a... Thanks, Valerie. This book really delivers. Thanks, John. Yep. Andy, what have you been reading?

I've been reading a book, a novel, by Elspeth Barker. So far, her only novel, O Caledonia. I remember this being published, John. I'm sure you do. Yeah. 1991, Hamish Hamilton. I feel I've read it, but I know I haven't. I'm sure you do 1991 Hamish Hamilton

I feel I've read it but I know I haven't I bought it when it came out and I read it last week it's been on the shelf for 31 years I'm glad I'm not alone in things like this it is 30 years 31 years since O Caledonia

it's been out for so long that it's gone through the life cycle of being an exciting new novel that was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize to going out of print for years to being rediscovered. It was, Gally Beggar put it out as an e-book in 2014 with an introduction by Penelope Lively

and now Weidenfeld, W&N Essentials have brought it back into paperback. Maggie O'Farrell's written the introduction. So it's gone through the life cycle of any cult book. You know, a big hit neglected on its way back. I thought this was absolutely wonderful, this novel. It goes to show that something that you love can sit on your shelf for 31 years, hiding in plain sight, waiting for you to get round to it. It's such a good book.

This is Maggie O'Farrell's description of it from her introduction. O Caledonia is an account of Janet's life from birth to early death, taking in sibling bonds and betrayals, parental intolerance, the horrors and discomforts of adolescence and the saving grace of books. The world you're about to enter is one of prickly tweed coats, of grimly strict nannies, of irritatingly perfect younger sisters, of eccentric household pets and of enormous freezing castles. It is one where girls are considered to be merely, quote, an inferior form of boy, unquote, and Calvinist propriety is thrown into relief by the seductive wildness of the highland landscape.

So what this novel is, O Caledonia, is it's fundamentally Shirley Jackson meets Dodie Smith, a.k.a. we Have Always Captured the Castle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is what this book is. And I know lots of people who listen to this podcast would absolutely love this novel. In fact, John, I was reluctant, in a sense,

to talk about it today because I'm sure this novel was commissioned by our friend Alexandra Pringle. It was, when she was at Hamish Hamilton. Ali Smith describes it as the best least known novel of the 20th century. Reminded me of the Brontes, Muriel Spark, Sheena Mackay. And in fact, Alice Thomas Ellis, David, who I know you are a great admirer of. So if that sounds like your sort of thing,

listeners, this is your sort of thing. I'm just going to read you the opening of the novel, and I'm confident that there'll be a spike in sales directly after you hear this. Chapter 1, Janet. Halfway up the great stone staircase which rises from the dim and vaulting hall of Ochnosaur, there is a tall stained glass window.

In the height of its gothic arch is sheltered a circular panel, where a white cockatoo, his breast transfixed by an arrow, is swooning in death. Around the circumference, threaded through sharp green leaves and twisted branches, runs the legend Moriens Sed Invictus, dying but unconquered. By day, little light penetrates this window, but in early winter evenings, when the sun emerges from the backs of the looming hills, only to set immediately in the dying distance far down the glen, it sheds an unearthly glory. Shafting drifts of crimson, green and blue, alive with whirling atoms of dust, spill translucent petals of colour down the cold grey steps. At night, when the moon is high, it beams through the dying cockatoo and casts his

blood drops in a chain of rubies onto the flagstones of the hall. Here it was that Janet was found, oddly attired in her mother's black lace evening dress, twisted and slumped in bloody, murderous death. She was buried in the village churchyard next to a tombstone which read, Chewing gum, chewing gum, sent me to my grave. My mother told me not to, but I disobeyed. A half rhyme, incidentally, which is something we'll return to later in this podcast. Janet's parents would have preferred a more rarefied situation,

but the graveyard was getting full, and as the minister emphasised, no booking had been made. After that, only the spay wives, the fish wives, the midwives, the ill-wishers spoke of her, endlessly rehearsing a litany of blame, for blame there must be, and no one could blame the murderer. Their voices whined and droned, spiteful as the sleety wind which slashed their headscarves across their faces as they huddled by the village bus stop, dreary as the wind which spat hail down the chimney as they took Sunday afternoon tea in the cold parlours of outlying crofts, where the Bible was open beside a ticking clock and rock buns were assembled on snowy doilies, malignly aglitter with the menace of carbonized currents. So they blamed the mother for giving the child all those books to read.

It's not natural for a bam. They blamed the father for his ideas about education. They blamed everyone and everything they could think of, but in the end there was grim assent. The lass had only herself to blame. The subject lost its appeal and was closed in favour of the living, who offer continuous material for persecution. Brilliant. Well, I think Arctic Mon monkeys um if they're looking

for another album title have got beams through the dying cockatoo up there oh it's such a great book i'm sure we'll come back to that one oh caledonia by elspeth barker i'm so i'm so pleased you read it after all these years it's really good the book chat will continue on the other side of this message. I was asked to do a book of selected lyrics. I said I would want to do collected lyrics, that is to say all the lyrics, including some that I've discarded

or that got discarded in rehearsals or on the road with the shows, but that I really didn't want to do it unless I could write some essays about lyric writing. And it turned out to be so large that it's going to be in two volumes. They have never understood and no reason that they should. Finishing the Hat is a song from Sunny in the Park with George that's about the creative act. And the song's about the concentration required to create something.

And the song is about the concentration required to create something. Finishing the hat. How you have to finish the hat. How you watch the rest of the world from a window. Well, that was Stephen Sondheim, of course, explaining how the book came about and what the title Finishing the Hat, where the title Finishing the Hat comes from. It comes from a song from sunday in the park with george let's ask the question that we always ask our guests um jason i'll start with you when did you first uh read or hear about these books

finishing the hat and look i made a hat by stephen sondheim a friend of mine uh pointed them out to me when i was at a point where I wouldn't shut up about Sondheim. And he said, well, you really ought to see these books. And I wasn't really aware of them at the time, but I found them and got them. And they're just extraordinary. I don't want to go in with both feet at the deep end too soon. But the thing is that this is, if you wanted a book about, well, a book from a creator, how do we do this? So you take someone who is one of the most extraordinary imaginations and creative forces that has ever drawn breath and then say,

would you mind putting everything you did down for us in these books? And then taking the back off the clock for the entire thing as well and saying, here's how I did it. Here are all my worksheets. It's phenomenal. There's a trick that the magicians Penn and Teller do, which I think is called lift off or blast off, where they do a version of that trick where someone gets into a box and they're separated into three pieces

and then they're reassembled. And they do the trick and then they do it in Perspex boxes so you can see the entire trick being done. And it's more impressive when you know how it's done than when you see it as a performed effect. And that's what I think these books are doing. These books are saying, here we go, let me take the back off the clock for you. I'll show you how it's done. And you say and you say well hang on it was good in the first place

and now it's extraordinary in his introduction to the first volume finishing the hat i made a little list a sondheim tribute list of the different types of book he sets up in the introduction of finishing the hat and it contains if we're trying to communicate to the listeners what these books are they're they're collections of lyrics but they are also memoir archive songwriting manual guides to creativity critical analysis a brief history of the entirety of musical theatre and extremely waspish entertainment to name but seven. You don't half get your value for money from the hat box.

I mean, I genuinely do not know of any other artist who has written a handbook to their craft that goes anywhere near approaching this for its kind of wide shot and close-up. David, do you know when they were written approximately or how long Sondheim took? Several years. He's on record as saying that it was 14 years

between the commission and the first publication. So clearly, Stephen Sondheim, given the project, would you like to publish your lyrics? He went, yeah, sure, hang on, give me a decade and a half and I'll just have some thoughts about them. I mean, he never worked quickly, did he? And it shows because everything is so very, very thought out. Give me 900 pages.

I think it's like 900 pages and I might be able to do it. Nothing about this book feels like, hey, should we stick out your lyrics? Yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Can you give me a few months? I'll do an introduction. I just want to emphasize this point before I ask David about Sondheim himself. John, you hadn't read these books before, had you? And I want to capture your experience.

You had talked about one of them, perhaps finishing the hat. And I remember being struck by the bit that you read thinking oh that's that's very good that's that's excellent and i'm not i'm not a i'm not a natural sondheim fan i mean it's i i think i probably am now i mean i i'm i'm kind of mildly obsessed i'm going to be boring everybody about sondheim for the rest of my life but um welcome yeah well exactly I feel yeah we're better to be as it were um kind of inculcated into the cult but the the the point about these books as books for me it's like this is the book that I want every great creative artist to produce it's here's my work.

Here's where my work came from. Here are the theoretical principles that I tried to base it on. Here's what I think works. And by the way, here's, here's an earlier version, which I kind of prefer, but we didn't put into the,

it's like, if you are interested in Sondheim, I can imagine, you know, you just want to, I mean, as I did yesterday, sat with the book open watching you

know sunday in the park with george because i wanted to watch the show but i also wanted to try and feel what it was like for some time to be still thinking he still cares about each moment each word each line of every as a kind of a 900 pagepage record of somebody's deep commitment to their art and craft, I can't think of a book that's like it. I really can't. I find these tremendously inspiring books from the creative point of view that, as Jason was saying, to see how someone creates the magic by sitting there day in, day out, until the magic works

by trying out various spells that don't work. David, a biographer of Stephen Sondheim. I assume you have read the book several times, as you say. But when did you first encounter Sondheim's work? Can you recall? There's a sort of short intro and then a longer version. The short intro is that my parents had a few, not many, LPs. And one EP, and one EP.

And, and for younger listeners, an EP, an EP was a four track, a four track single. And I have that four track single above my desk. And it is of the original Broadway cast of West Side Story. I very much doubt that I, however small I was, I very much doubt that I looked at who any of the personnel were, and I don't think I even knew what a lyricist was. I'm sure I didn't. But that was my first introduction, that I listened to Geoff Sikrupki, The Tonight Quintet, Maria, and I Feel Pretty on that EP. I listened to Geoff Sikrupki, The Tonight Quintet, Maria,

and I Feel Pretty on that EP. I listened to it quite a lot, but I didn't really understand what I was listening to. And then when I was a teenager, for reasons I don't know, I went to see this show called Gypsy. I told this story, pardon the name drop, to Angela Lansbury. I almost, you know, you almost didn't notice that, did you? It was so... We got a clang sound, an anvil sound effect we can put in there. Yes, it was. So Sondheim was given a special Olivier Award about 10 years ago.

And he called me and said, you know, what's the form? And what should I say in my speech? And I just, you know, I blathered something or other. And he came and he gave the speech. And it was preceded by Angela Lansbury's singing Liaisons from Jason's favourite show, A Little Night Music. And happily, you can find that performance on YouTube. And I said to Steve afterwards, please, please, can you introduce me to Angela Lansbury? So he did afterwards. And I said, it was a great pleasure to meet you. You ruined my life. And she looked a little surprised and I explained that

when I was a teenager I went to see this show called Gypsy and she was in it and I said the the whole thing completely blew me away I had no idea that musicals could be that dramatic and that exciting. And I assumed on the basis of that, that all musicals would be like that. And therefore, life has been one long disappointment. And she laughed. Thank goodness. But that was absolutely my response. I was just aghast at at this astounding piece of theater that happened to be a musical well look i'm gonna david i'm gonna ask you in

a moment for your whistle stop tour of uh for anyone who is not familiar with steven sometime we want to lead you gently by the hand into his world and the world of these books. Throw me roughly. I'm happy to be. Throw you in the deep end, indeed. But I think we should start by hearing how he got on with his mother. So she wrote me a letter

and had it hand-delivered the night before she went into the hospital. And she said, the opening sentence was, before I undergo open heart surgery, which she had underlined three times, I just wanted to tell you that I have only one regret in my life, which is giving you birth. And when I got this note, and then she went on, I thought, I was stunned first. And then I thought, oh my God, I'd always thought all those years that like so many parent-child relationships, it was misplaced or misguided love. It was all about my father and she didn't know where to place her funeral. Then I realized she never wanted me on earth. I was an inconvenience.

Oof, as they say. David, the reason why I wanted to hear that apart from the insouciance with which Sondheim characteristically tells that brutal story is to say that Sondheim's mentoring, just tell us who was Stephen Sondheim? Where did he come from? So he is born and brought up in New York City in the San initially in the San Remo building which is on Central Park West um very beautiful Art Deco building he is the son of Herbert who is a dressman successful dress manufacturer and janet sometime uh foxy as she was known and she um designed the dresses and it was all very successful however he undergoes the divorce of his parents when he is 10 and his mother gets custody it's a very as that clip would. It's a very, as that clip would indicate,

it's a very tricky relationship. And when he's 11, he meets Oscar Hammerstein, who is huge in musical theatre, and Steve gets sort of enveloped into the family, and Hammerstein becomes his surrogate parent, but also becomes his teacher and mentor. Sondheim has often said, if he'd been a geologist, I would have been a geologist.

It so happened he was a songwriter. Sondheim is musically gifted. He takes piano lessons early on. He then gets lessons from Hammerstein into how to write for musical theatre. And he writes a show. It doesn't get put on. It's called Saturday Night. The first show he does put on is a little known show called West Side Story, for which he writes the lyrics to a score by the impossibly famous already Leonard Bernstein. He has a very, very lucky break and goes on to write many, many more shows. He writes one more show, which we'll come to as a lyricist and then uh pretty much throughout writes his own music as

well and david and i want to move back to the books in a minute but just in a nutshell what is it that sondheim does from the 70s onwards you know we've talked about people will look at west side story and they'll perhaps not see how revolutionary it was in its day. But nevertheless, when Sondheim is working on his own and he's teams up with Hal Prince, what is it that makes him so important in the history of not just musical theatre, but the theatre in the 70s and 80s? From 1970 to 1981, he and Hal Prince revolutionise what musical theatre is and what musical theatre can do in terms of subject matter, in terms of tone, in terms of just ambition. You know, that none of the musicals he writes, which are, if I can get the order right, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along.

They are all utterly unlike each other. He writes a song for a film called The 7% Solution. And in that movie, the song he writes is called I Never Do Anything Twice, which could have been the subtitle of his books. He hated repeating himself. Lots of other novelists, playwrights, filmmakers have a hit with something and then go, well, I think I'll write another one a bit like that in order that you can clean up. And he refused to do it. And those six shows that

he wrote with Al Prince opened the door to big ideas. I mean, you know, Sweeney Todd is a serial killer slasher musical. I mean, no one had ever done anything like that. And that's just one thing. Well, let's hear a clip now. This is Sondheim talking about his lyric, A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd. I wanted to hear this because this will give listeners a real flavour of what the books are like. You know, Sondheim's voice here is very close to the voice that appears in print.

So this is Sondheim talking about A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd. The very first preview of Sweeney, I sat there with Hugh Wheeler, who wrote the book. And at the end of the first act, after Mrs. Lovett and Todd have concocted their scheme of chopping up people and serving them as meat pies. And remember, nobody in this country, unless they were born in Britain, knew who Sweeney Todd was. So they didn't know what the story was. They had no idea about the meat pies. Well, you know me.

Bright ideas just pop into my head and I keep thinking. When Mrs. Lovett, at the end of the first act, I'm getting a chill as I think about it, that very first preview, Mrs. Lovett gets her idea and there's a little note in the article. She says, well, you know me. Bright ideas just pop into my head and I was thinking, and the entire audience went, and they started to scream with laughter

because they had no idea that it was going to be this outrageous notion of cannibalism. What is that? It's priest. Have a little priest. Is it really good? It's too good at least Then again they don't commit sins of the flesh So it's pretty fresh

And once I got that and I got the scheme for the song Then I had written myself into a whole Because most of the professions Have to be one syllable professions that rhyme And there aren't a lot of them, I'm sorry to say. There are a lot of two-syllable professions, but I'd written it with yadda-dadda-dum, yadda-dadda-dum, masculine rhymes, meaning one-syllable rhymes.

And then every now and then there's a chance for a two-syllable one. So that was the difficulty. I just made lists and lists of every profession I could think of, which is why you get things like sweep and even a non-professional like fop and priest. Even priest isn't exactly the right one I would have started with, but there are so few one-syllable professions. In the year of reading Dangerously, I referred to these two books as, quote, the two books to have given me the most pleasure in the century so far. And here we are in 2022, nothing's changed i mean i i jason that little bit we just

heard is the exact thing you were talking about the trick and then another trick yep yep it's like honestly if we if we wanted to we could do an entire backlist just about this one song because it's jesse jesse green from the new York Times said, this is probably the greatest first act closer that has ever been written. Where do we start with this? So it's a waltz, OK? So it's a nice, light, bouncy thing, but it's about cannibalism.

And just to combine those two ideas and go, and I'm going to make this the closer of Act One of a musical and you're going to enjoy it and it's going to be full of ideas, ideas even to the point and it's going to be full of ideas uh ideas even to the point where he's actually stretching himself and he's having jokes with himself about the notion of lyric writing and rhyming butler got anything subtler uh that and what's that what's the one which he grounds on the one which he can't rhyme locksmith that's it and there's a pause you can't rhyme that so you just carry on the big thing that really struck me when i watched Rhyme, locksmith, that's it. And there's a pause.

You can't rhyme that, so you just carry on. The big thing that really struck me when I watched lots of interviews with Sondheim, the big thing that struck me was he said, no, I couldn't be a director because I'd just be giving line readings to the actors. But the great thing is that as a lyricist, you're giving line readings to the actor. I'm giving them a rhythm in which I want my joke told. And one of the best examples is in this song.

The trouble with poet is how do you know it's deceased? Have some priest, which is, you know, and so you go, okay, that's good. You've paced the gag there. And he does that constantly. There's an awful lot of that in his writing. My husband, the pig, and the best one at which he refers to in the books he says this is the greatest moment in any of my shows it's in assassins

when cholgos just singing the gun song and he says what a wonder is a gun what a what a versatile invention first of all when you've a gun and the music stops and there's quite an unhealthy pause. And then he says, everybody pays attention. And when you listen to it, it's absolutely magnetic. But when you know what's going on on stage, there's another layer of how brilliant it is because he says, when he sings, first of all, when you have a gun, he points the gun at the audience and he rakes it through the seats.

So the audience is sitting there having a gun pointed at them. And that's why there's a silence there. It's just brilliant. It's like that's where the God is. God is in the detail, as he said. And he gave us a megaton of God. We're going to come to that right now. Finishing the Hat, John, wasn't Sondheim's first book.

His first book was a book of crossword puzzles indeed um he's single-handedly responsible for introducing the cryptic crossword to america yeah um in the late 60s 90 in 1968 uh yeah bizarre true but mitch could you read us please the preface to, well, finishing the hat, because this contains so many of the principles that Sondheim worked from, condensed to their absolute purest form. There are only three principles necessary for a lyric writer, all of them familiar truisms. They were not immediately apparent to me when I started writing, but have underlie everything I've written in no particular order and to be written in stone. Content dictates form. Less is more. God is in the details, all in the service of clarity, without which nothing else matters. If a lyric writer observes

this mantra rigorously, he can turn out a respectable lyric. If a lyric writer observes this mantra rigorously, he can turn out a respectable lyric. If he also has a feeling for music and rhythm, a sense of theatre and something to say, he can turn out an interesting one. If, in addition, he has qualities such as humour, style, imagination, and the numerous other gifts every writer could use,

he might even turn out a good one. And with an understanding composer and a stimulating book writer, the skies are green. Oh, my heart is singing. It's so inspiring. It's so inspiring. I wish more lyricists would just read that introduction because people almost always talk about musicals in terms of the songs and by that they mean the tunes and or the idea of song they don't

actually look at the lyrics and the depressing thing about most musicals of probably the last 20, 30 years is that the lyrics are incredibly weak and they don't obey any of those principles or they barely obey those principles. And no, not everybody has to write like Sondheim, but actually he's not saying those principles are not right like me. This is the essence that you should be

yeah aware of that you then develop your style to what you want to express in the way that you want to express it but without those principles you end up with just sloppy rhyming slack nonsense. John, I was thinking about how this applies to writing. And I was thinking in terms of book writing, and I was thinking, you know, what's interesting is I think two out of three probably do automatically apply. So content dictates form, and God is in the detail. We can carry over to literary endeavour. Less is more, I'm not sure about.

That's in our line of work. That's debatable, right? The less is more, I think, is to do with the fact of two things. One is the way words strike the ear when they're sung but also that you have to leave enough space for something else to be added in a way that you absolutely do not if you're a novelist and something else to be added is of course the music yeah yeah well one of the features of these books which is is so enjoyable, is, as I referred to earlier, the waspish entertainment value. I'm going to ask Jason to read something to us in a moment, but I thought we should hear from Sondheim himself.

One of the features of both Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat is Sondheim offers his critical appraisals of fellow songwriters, albeit dead ones. He doesn't believe in bad-mouthing living people. But he's quite acerbic about others. And here's a clip. This is Mark Lawson talking to Sondheim in Cheltenham in 2010 about a couple of our most cherished songwriters. You're quite tough on two of our favorite English lyricists.

I know, I know. Noel Coward and W.S. Gilbert. I knew I would never be allowed in this country again, so I thought, I'm 80 years old, it's okay, it's my last visit to England, it's fine. But I'm also unkind to others who are American, and myself. And yourself.

We're going to get to those in a moment, but let's just stick with these two as you've got a quite healthy hiss there. Noel Coward, whose lyrics I cordially but intensely dislike. Cordially. Cordially. But intensely. We say cordially. Yes, but intensely.

Oh. You say cordially? We say cordially. Let's call the whole thing off. We'll have to, won't we? But intensely you dislike. Well, the attitude is one of the things that gets me about him. There's no question that he's technically very facile and expert,

but the attitude. I compare him to Cole Porter. They have a lot in common. They're both verbally playful, very skillful, and both gay with a gay sensibility. And they both like to skewer high society cole porter was born into high society and noel coward was not the result is that cole porter's lyrics are fond while he's skewering them and cowards are sneering you can take there are two songs that are about similar subjects one called i I've Been to a Marvelous Party, that's Coward,

and one called Well Did You Ever, Cole Porter. And you compare the two lyrics and one of them is funny and sarcastic, but kind. I think he had an old coward bypass. I know he did. I know he did. We talked about it once years and years ago. I think Coward suffers very badly from from bad productions. Coward is done badly by people that talk very, very fast in very, very little voices and assume that that's good acting.

And then you go and see Anna Chancellor in in private lives and go, oh oh my God, this is something else. And I suspect that Sondheim had not seen a really good Private Lives. And if you see a second rate one, then you go, it's thin and mean spirited. In the second book, there's a marvellously waspish little bit where he's talking about operettas and, you know, grandiosity, humorlessness, romantic, sweet, melodramatic stories which take place in long ago times. And what better description of the biggest hits of recent decades? Shows like The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. That's a brilliant put down of the Lloyd Webber, Cameron McIntosh universe. One of the many joys of the book

is that feeling that it's like having Sondheim by your elbow while you're watching them. So there's just a little bit I love here where he says the original title of this song, it's a song from Sunday Park with George, the original title of this song was Primer. I liked the pun, a base for both Dot and the painter. But then I thought about Alan J. Lerner's title pun

in the song from My Fair Lady called A Hymn to Him, a title I found so self-consciously clever I almost turned against the lyric, which proved to be the best one in the show. So I reverted to something pointed and straightforward. A wise decision, I think, especially as I get a chance to point out my cleverness here. It's just so delicious to read.

One of the things I love about these books is the sense of an author withholding, but not quite. That you are in no doubt that if Sondheim wished to open an elegant can of W-ass on anyone, he would be able to do so. But he's choosing not to. That seems such an important part of the authorial voice, don't you think, Jason? Well, I do, yes, but except that, I mean, he really gives it to Alan Jay Lerner, doesn't he? I mean, he absolutely just whacks him with a fucking lyricist's spade.

He's not having it. He's just not having Alan Jay Lerner whatsoever. And I mean, there are also, there are occasions where, as you've already identified, it's like he's circumspect about, for instance, Lloyd Webber and probably Bublé and Schoenberg as well. But he doesn't actually name them. He's just doing, he's doing that thing that President Biden did a few weeks ago where he mentioned the previous guy without actually naming him at all,

which is circumspect and also right on the nose. There's a note to the reader in the first volume which says something lovely. There's another thing about these books, is that they are full of the character of the man. This is basically a footnote, but it's full of the character of the man. And this on a most, this is basically a footnote, but it's just, it's full of the character of the man. It says there are some minor discrepancies between the lyrics printed

Harry and those printed in other sources, because apart from the occasional misprint, I sometimes change my mind about word choices after first or even second publication. The ones in this book can be considered definitive. Until I change my mind. Well, in fact, the preface that John read out from Finishing the Hat changes between Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. He loves that Paul Valéry quote, doesn't he? That a poem is never finished. It's abandoned. It's abandoned, that's the word.

I'd like to give listeners another clip which shows you how deep Sondheim goes into his own work in the books. And I'm sure lots of people, even if they're not familiar with all the ins and outs of Sondheim's works, will know West Side Story and will know the song somewhere from West Side Story. So here's Sondheim analysing his own work 50 years after he wrote it. There's music in everything we say in the sense of rise and fall and I like to write music that comes from the inflection of the way people speak, because I think it makes the lyric and the music fit together. Inflection always implies tune. And in the same way, if you start with a musical idea, you want to get a lyric that reflects the inflection, I'm sorry about that, of the music and the rhythm too. I remember I saw some of Cole Porter's papers

at the Library of Congress and I saw his first sketch for Just One of Those Things. And he wrote it with no note inflection, just the rhythms. He just wrote, it was just one of those things in the rhythm. So he took the rhythm of the idea he had lyrically. Then he chose whether the notes would go up or down and all of that sort of thing. The marriage of words and music in the kind of shows I like to write, which are story shows,

it's very important that you match the inflection of the way people speak so that the actor can treat the lyric as if it were dialogue, even if A note is held out that way. But if it's A note and the accent is right on the note and not on the A, it works. One of the things I make fun of myself is the song Somewhere in West Side Story.

It was a tune that Lenny had written many, many years ago and tried to insert into every show, and he finally got a sucker. It's really an instrumental tune. It should not have a lyric. The way it goes, there's a place for us. In other words, the least important word is the one that gets the most accent, right?

So a friend of mine, Bert Shavlo, used to refer to it as the uh song. I love the uh song. He said, that's such a good tune. The uh. There's a place for us. That's an example of where the inflection and the music don't go together. You'll never be able to hear somewhere the same way again, I'm afraid, everyone.

Sorry about that. But he's like that the whole time, isn't he? He is constantly critiquing his own output. You know, the introduction to volume two of these books, Look, I Made a Hat, it begins with the words something like, well, volume one was meant to be, and he then goes on to critique, it's called reintroduction, the introduction, and he goes on to critique the first volume of the books. But that's part of the genius of it, I think, is that the second volume is a response to the first volume.

It's almost like a rewrite. It's the Sondheim method. You go back, you look at what you did, you think that didn't work, this is what my material is this time, I'm going to re-approach it. You know, his rigour is really extraordinary. And what that means is, interestingly to me, is that he admits that he is very rarely surprised by what an individual performer brings to the work.

Obviously, there are some performances that he prefers to others, but he's not surprised by an interpretation. There's a lovely discussion in the book about Into the Woods, and Joanna Gleeson, who plays the baker's wife, Into the Woods is a show about five interlocked fairy tales, and most of them are traditional, like Cinderella, but he and his, the British James the Pine, created a fairy tale of their own about a baker and his wife. And they're played by Chip Zine and Joanna Gleeson.

And at some point in rehearsals, Anna Gleeson and at some point in rehearsals um because her character feels more urban and to a degree urbane than than the fairy tale characters she um she said I feel like I'm in the wrong story at which point a light bulb went off in his head and went oh oh, yes. And he then wrote a lyric where she sings, I'm in the wrong story. And that's a case of being surprised by an actor, but mostly he's not surprised because he has worked in such granular detail about, as we just heard, inflection,

intention, idea, expression. I once taught a masterclass to some musical theatre students. And I said, you know, people say that Sondheim is hard to sing. Actually, I think if you've got ears, Sondheim is an awful lot easier to sing than plenty of other contemporary composers, because there's so much there for you to listen to, take on board and then present because you've got what's happening in the harmony, what's happening in the melody, what's happening in the lyric,

what's happening in the story. And if you listen to all of those things and put them all together, pardon the pun, then you can express it as opposed to a song which is incredibly vague and just goes, I love you, I love you, I don't know why I love you, I love you, I love you. As an actor, you have to go, what on earth am I going to do for three minutes where I keep saying the same thing? I don't think you love me, David. I think you're not sincere about that. think you love me david i think you're not sincere about that well listen perhaps sometimes most recorded song i don't know famous song is sending the clowns and we've got a clip jason found this

for us everybody this is this is totally jason's hard digging found this this This is the South Bank show in 1984. And what you're going to hear is Sondheim tutoring a couple of female singers, the second of which is a very young Jay Griffiths, on how to sing one specific phrase in Sending the Clowns. And this is one of those moments where Sondheim is the most charming monster. Don't you love farce? Careful there. The V and the F, it's an awkward moment in the lyric, but that V and that F should be separated.

Don't you love a farce? And you've got to do it without making it, but you've still got to separate them. Let's try from Don't You Love Farce. making it but you still got to separate them. Let's try from Don't You Love Fars. Don't you love Fars. Be careful about the pronunciation of something again. Love and Fars, the V and the F. It feels slightly clumsy, those two words, but in fact what it is is like a little one-two jab. Don't you love Fars. farce? She's digging at him at the same time she's digging at herself. So it's important to keep the D and the F separate

without making it too separate. Use the consonants to make that point, don't you love farce? So it'll have a slightly more ironic tone. Because what the song is building to is the real bitterness of the last line which is don't bother they're here so let's get a little jab in there don't you love farts i think it was one of the guardian crossword setters who once said i i take as much pleasure in you getting the answer as you not getting the answer he He's basically sitting there really enjoying these people not getting it, but going, I'm going to enjoy it just as much when you get

don't you love farce and get those two things separate. I'm going to enjoy that as much as I'm enjoying you not getting it right. There's a lovely moment in the book where he explains that once he realised he needed a song for Glynnis, he said, and she can't really sustain a note so therefore everything needs to be short and you he takes you through his thought process where he says they need to be short phrases there are no held notes that suggests questions and then you end up with isn't it rich are we a pair it's brilliant amazing amazing john you wanted to say something about

the actual production of these books. Yeah, I mean, you know, it would be so easy just to do collected lyrics with kind of footnotes and essays, but they are physically beautiful. The end papers carry the kind of rubrics that are in the preface, you know, God is in the details, less is more. It's got photographs, it's got photographs it's got wonder facsimiles of people's notes and sketches so you've got that sense of immediacy of of a human being writing uh writing and annotating they're just elegantly put together beautiful rich kind of volumes in that sense so rare in publishing when you say this is this is the vision that i have i would i want i want this to be perfect in every detail how can they be so witty

yeah yet also feel like scrapbooks yes and treasure chests they're superb pieces of publishing brilliant bits of publishing and i and also i think even in the bits where i was enjoying this morning you know you feel we're saying earlier about he's obviously he's not exactly settling scores but he wants to talk about critics so there's a brilliant essay in the second volume there is and it's what it what it is is he's not going to be rude what he's going to do is he's going to show that he's thought more about the job of the critic and the difference between a critic and a reviewer than anybody else. Oh, you're so right. And he nails it completely. And then I don't have to get crossed because I understand what they're doing better than

they understand themselves. And then on to the next song. It's called, here's the thing. The essay is called Critics and Their Uses. Look, I made a hat. And then six pages later, and this is such a Sondheim manoeuvre, it's followed by a second essay called Awards and Their Uselessness. Critics and Their Uses, Awards and Their Uselessness.

I'm so pleased you mentioned those essays. We don't even have time to read from them. They're so brilliant and funny. But it's time for the 11 o'clock number. David Benedict. As I say, my intro to Sondheim proper was going to see Gypsy. And Gypsy, alongside the virtues of Sondheim's lyrics, has a knockout score by the veteran Broadway composer, Julie Stein. It was directed by Jerry Robbins, and it was based on the real-life character of Gypsy Rose Lee, who became kind of toast of high society

by being a very, very classy, as she calls herself, ecdesiast, and as everybody else in the world calls her, stripper. And she, you know, she was this extraordinary character in American culture. She wrote an entirely unreliable autobiography, and it was turned into a musical. And Walter Kerr, who was famously horrible horrible to uh sometime in most of his reviews uh said the best damn musical i've seen in years which was plastered all over the publicity

what extraordinary thing about the show is it's called gypsy it's about gypsy rosalie but it isn't it's sort of really all about the mother ah and that's why we heard about his mother at the top. And it ends with this extraordinary scene, which is the musical equivalent of an operatic mad scene where the character just oversees, looks at her whole life. She's just had a row with her now very successful daughter. And she has this explosive scene. And Sondheim writes about how that scene came to pass. The song is called Rose's Turn.

The making of Rose's Turn remains the high point of my theatrical life, at least the life I'd imagined it would be from the movies, as in the scene from Lady Be Good in which Anne Southern and Robert Young composed the title song in two minutes of excited improvisation, or the scene from The Saxon Charm in which Robert Montgomery transforms Audrey Totter instantaneously from a vapid singer and into a cabaret star, or in any number of other Hollywood moments of creative inspiration, usually taking place at night time and in the empty darkness of a theatre or a nightclub. My moment came about as follows. Rose's climactic breakdown was originally to be a surreal ballet

in which Rose would be confronted by all the people in her life. How Gerry intended to use Ethel Merman in a ballet is something we'll never know, I'm sorry to say. One week into rehearsals, Gerry suddenly announced that he didn't have time to choreograph the ballet. It would have to be a song, and Julie and I should meet with him at the end of the day to discuss it. As it happened, Julie had a social engagement that evening, so I went to meet Gerry alone. At that point, we were rehearsing in a small theatre on the top floor of the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street. This theatre had been the location of Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic,

an informal extravaganza held every now and then after the Follies itself, involving many of the Follies' performers strutting their stuff in front of an invited champagne-guzzling audience of society knobs and friends of the producer. By 1959, this theatre was a shabby shell of its former self, but it had a ratty auditorium and a usable stage, and the atmosphere suited Gypsy well. I met Jerry around seven o'clock. The setting was excessively theatrical. Everyone had gone home and there was no light in the auditorium except on the stage a ghost light, a single exposed bulb on a stand. It was like every shimmering night-time rehearsal scene I'd ever loved in the movies. I suggested to Jerry that since he'd wanted all

the people in the story to collide in a ballet, perhaps if Rose's breakdown were to be sung rather than danced, it would comprise fragments of all the songs associated with her and the people in her life. The songs we'd heard all evening colliding in an extended surreal medley consisting of fragments of the score. He asked me to improvise what I meant. I don't like improvising in front of other people, but sitting at a piano in a deserted, ghostly auditorium with a man I considered a genius was too glamorous to resist. As I pounded out variations on the burlesque music, Jerry clambered onto the stage and started to move back and forth across it like a stripper, but a clumsy one, like Rose doing a strip. That was the beginning of three exhilarating hours of musical and choreographic improvisation, as we shaped and constructed the number to be a

summary of the score. I even improvised lyrics, something which was anathema to me. By the time we finished, Rose's turn was outlined and ready for detailed work. I brought it to Jerry the next morning with some trepidation but a blast enthusiasm. And we filled it out within the day. The crowd rises to its feet. And now, the picture nearly complete, the cast must take their final bow. Huge thanks to David and Jason for helping us pay our respects to the words and work of an American genius.

To our producer, Nicky Birch, for putting it together, and to Unbound for the best pies in London. You can download all 154 previous episodes of Batlisted, plus follow links, clips, and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website, batlisted.fm, and we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook, and now, in colour and and light on instagram too you can also show your love directly by supporting our patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted we aim to survive without paid for advertising your

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I would like to ask you to leave us with your, I'll start with you, Jason. Jason, what's your favourite Sondheim lyric? Okay, well, when it comes to things like just lines, I mean, I regularly find myself padding around the house singing, men are stupid, men are vain, love's disgusting, love's insane. I don't know why I do that. My partner and children don't seem to object to it. But there's, I mean, there's so many little things like, you know, when a person's personality is personable,

it shouldn't all just sit like a lump. It's harder than a matador coercing a bull. I mean, that really has been through the ringer, hasn't it, that rhyme? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I suppose as a complete lyric, I think it's sending the clowns. There was a really lovely thing that Nico Mouly wrote in the London Review of Books blog just after Sondheim died, which with your indulgence, could I read it?

It's very short. Yes, yes, please do. He said, and it's basically of that line, he calls it the hiccup line in Sending the Clowns. Me here at last on the ground, you in midair. That little tiny pause there. He said, every audience member is invited to insert their own little gasp, the memory of a relationship gone wrong or someone we've lost.

Midair could mean anything from over there to in heaven, but Sondheim has briefly forced our feet off the ground as well to hover in this delicate moment. And he's spot on about that. That song is an absolute piece of magic, lyrically and musically.

It's magical. David? The point about Sondheim is he isn't merely a songwriter. He actually, he is a dramatist who uses music. You know, it's, I think, pointless to compare him to his peers. He's doing something different. He has a voice, like Edward Albee had a voice, like David Mamet has a voice.

And that's what's extraordinary and delightful though this has been I feel it's faintly fraudulent because we've missed half the voice which is the music that's not our brief David I tried David I tried I've got one short and one extremely short favorite so my short favourite is from the last show for which he only wrote lyrics, which was Do I Hear a Waltz, which was an extraordinarily unhappy collaboration with Richard Rogers.

It's a song in which characters discuss in 1965 the horrors of flying. And one of the characters says that he hates the food most of all and then sings the shiny stuff is tomatoes the salad lies in a group the curly stuff is potatoes the stuff that moves is soup anything that is white is sweet anything that is brown is meat anything that is gray don't don't eat. But what do we do? We fly. That's the line reading thing again, isn't it?

I've timed the joke for you. It's fantastic. Brilliant. But my actual favourite is back again to Gypsy. I sound like a one-trick pony. I do like lots of other scores. There's a number for the strippers, which is where Gypsy gets the idea to become a stripper they're booked into this um two-bit theater and there's a stripper act and they have this amazingly funny number

called uh you got to get a gimmick and there's um the first stripper mazeppa strips with a trumpet. Electra has a costume that is lit up with light bulbs. And the third one is Tessie Tura, a joke in itself, which, you know, nobody need get, singers get it, nobody else does. And Tessie Tura does her strip in sort of piss elegance. and she's got a very floaty costume and she does ballet steps and then does bump and grind at the end of every movement and she just has the line where she's um she dismisses the other two and she says dressy tessy tura is so much more demure. And you just go, that's brilliant. Because it just tells you everything about that. It tells you her pretension. It tells you her lack of education.

It's just, it's a tiny, tiny moment that I think probably when I was a teen, I didn't really get. And then I read it later and went oh my god that's kind of brilliant he he says that was uh his tribute to Frank Lesser who wrote Guys and Dolls it's vernacular and simple and clear and pithy and brilliant. David you were talking about how you have above your desk your your extended play from West Side Story as a little totem. Well, up above my desk there, I have a lyric from Move On, which is the climactic song of Sunday in the Park with George. And it's such a simple lyric.

And within context, it is the most moving thing. I will say it with as steady a voice as i can it is and there it is i'm going to read it off the wall anything you do let it come from you then it will be new give us more to see the four most inspiring lines for any creative person. Thanks, guys. Brilliant. This has been just amazing. Thank you.

Yeah. Everyone, oh, now I'm getting choked up. It's ridiculous. It's been so much fun. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. John, anything you wish to add? No, only that I should be listening to Sondheim pretty much nonstop all this coming week.

Well, listen, we'll see you in a fortnight. Make sure you listen to the very end of this because Stephen's got a message for all of us. And we'll see you next time. Thanks very much, everybody. Thanks, guys. Bye. got a message for all of us and we'll see you next time thanks very much everybody thanks guys bye bye I wanted the show, above all, to tell people that art is not an easy thing to do. There is a natural myth about the artist. I had it myself when I was a kid, that you sit in your room,

whether you're a composer or a painter or a writer, and wait for the muse to come. And I've heard people say, oh, so-and-so is so talented, as if all they had to do was get up in the morning and the painting was made or the song was written. And they don't understand that it's exactly as much hard work and maybe harder than making a shoe or anything that you make out of nothing. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts,

you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.