writers institute logo  Fall 1998 Volume 3, Number 1  Stephen
Sondheim  Stephen Sondheim has provided those who love musical
theatre with their best reason to continue the affair. As
composer and lyricist, as sheer theatrical intelligence, he
stands alone in a theatre where audiences seem to want to see
cats cavort, lions rule, and designer barricades mesh, where
they are content to leave the theatre not even "whistling the
scenery" as one wag said but whistling the costumes. As Madame
Armfeldt the aging grand horizontale sang in A Little Night
Music,  Where is style? Where is skill? Where is forethought?
Where's discretion of the heart, Where's passion in the art,
Where's craft? Passion in the art, indeed. The answer to those
sobering questions is here tonight.  When Stephen Sondheim
graduated from writing lyrics for other people's music as he did
for Julie Styne in Gypsy and Leonard Bernstein in West Side
Story, the age of rock and roll was setting in with its
reduction of musical form to simple ostinato an