Stephen Sondheim: Part 1/7 The South Bank Show 2010

Stephen Sondheim: The South Bank Show 2010 Part 1 of 7

Original air date: 25 April 2010

Stephen Sondheim is interviewed at home in Manhattan, for The South Bank Show Revisited on the eve of his 80th birthday.

This insightful interview with Melvyn Bragg is a combination of being gently reflective, whilst demonstrating clearly that Stephen Sondheim is a master of his craft. He talks movingly about his childhood, his parents' divorce and Oscar Hammerstein, one of the world's great lyricists, becoming "like a surrogate father".

This will be the third time that Stephen Sondheim has been the subject of The South Bank Show: the first in 1980, when working on his musical Sweeney Todd (which won an International Emmy for LWT), and in 1984 when The South Bank Show invited him to take a master class with students of the Guildhall School Of Performing Arts. He was also interviewed on The South Bank Show in the 1978 profile of Hal Prince, the great Broadway director, and Sondheim's long-term collaborator.

The South Bank Show Revisited includes clips from the current Broadway productions of A Little Night Music starring Catherine Zeta Jones and his classic West Side Story. The film uses archive footage from all the earlier South Bank Shows. Sondheim discusses his extraordinary work in the world of the musical, and talks in depth about the construct of his music, citing Sweeney Todd, which is still one of his most well known and successful musicals.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• stephen sondheim
• south bank show
• a little night music
• sweeney todd
• send in the clowns
• catherine zeta-jones

[ErikOtterberg]

@wilsondylanmccartney: If Sondheim is not good, then I want to be bad too.

[nickfox2]

Just for the record, Stephen Sondheim did not write the libretto of "West Side Story". Arthur Laurents wrote the libretto. Sondheim wrote the lyrics.

[ComposerInUK]

@ErikOtterberg Andrew Lloyd Webber is bad. Stephen Sondheim is a genius.

[HighKingTurgon]

All right, since people seem to be in such a fuss: Arthur Laurents wrote the book of WSS; Sondheim wrote the lyrics; together they wrote the libretto.

[HighKingTurgon]

@nickfox2 We know. But thank you.

[Tolstoy111]

@MondoMiami What would be an "unpretentiousnes" musical then?

[T4Tyson]

He is brilliant. Sondheim is AMAZING!!!!

[MonocleBunny]

Sweeney Todd looks like a combination of a grandmother and a deranged Oompa Loompa.

[prelasser]

@gonz0Thegr8 You are absolutely right- thank you for pointing out that writing lyrics and writing a libretto are NOT the same thing. Vive Sondheim! :)



[yensonna]

@jamiejones1313 The original West End production. That clip is from a previous episode of The South Bank Show.

[jamiejones1313]

tha clip of sweeney todd at the beggining, does anyone know what that production that was?