Next week, the London National Theater will be staged Here we areThe final work of the late Stephen Sondheim, composer of musicals such as Sweeney Todd,, Business And Sunday in the park with George; A man so venerated that his nickname with friends and fans was simply “God”.
Based on two social satires of Luis Buñuel – which take place both during bourgeois dinners overly subverted – the idea of Here we are For the first time, Sondheim, obsessed with the film, in 1982. But after having started working seriously in 2013, his demanding standards and his advanced age led to a creative block which lasted almost until his death in November 2021.
Two years later, the show received its world premiere in New York and now, with some rewritings and a partly new distribution including Martha Plpton, Rory Kinnear, Jane Krakowski and Denis O'Hare, he came to the United Kingdom.
David Ives, book writer: Steve called me unexpectedly in 2009 and invited me to drink a drink. I didn't know him very well. He said, “I have an idea for a musical. Would you like to work there? ” What do you say when Shakespeare asks to collaborate? I said yes. We worked on the idea from 2010 to 2013, but we finally had to leave the project. Then he told me that he had an idea for another project, based on two films by surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel, The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie And The exterminating angel. I discovered later that it was in fact (director and playwright) the original idea of James Lapine, who had worked with Steve on In the woods And Sunday in the park with Georgeof which they had discussed first in 1982. I know because I met James and he said: “I hear that you work on My musical. “We understood the characters and the structure fairly quickly, with the first act Discreet charm And the second The exterminating angel. In a year, we had the basic plan, because it remains roughly today.
Joe Manta, director: In 2004, I achieved a revival of Assassinsthat I had to present to Steve. When you stand in front of the door of his house, about to meet this American theater giant, it's very intimidating. But when you sit down and talk to him, it's just the opposite. He was an extraordinary collaborator in that he never played the Stephen Sondheim card. Twelve years later, I still don't know why, I was invited to read what Steve and David had written and asked to direct the show. When this first agreement came into play, I had chills. No one that Steve could have written it.
IVES: We meet in Steve's study and he was sitting down or went to an antiquity of captain of ship. We knew what many figures were going to be, we knew their shape and what characters would sing them. It was just a question of writing the songs. But Steve was a procrastinist master. He said once he couldn't do work because of an embodied nail.
Coat: We made an approximate staging of act one with music, then read the act two. But a few years ago, he just felt that he could not do musical cracking.
IVES: Steve was already in the 80s, so he slowed down. At one point, I said, “You know, Verdi wrote Falstaff And Otete When he was older. Steve's response was: “I hate Verdi.” But gradually, the work improved. THE Extermination of the angel) where everyone is trapped in a room.
Coat: He had trouble understanding what they would sing. Much of its process was that the content dictates the shape, and the content apparently does not lend itself to musicization.
IVES: We lived in a surrealist dream, like something of a Pirandello piece. Work with someone who was supposed to write a musical but who was not. Our collaboration ended up feeling more like a friendship, and perhaps it made a little too easy for him not to work. We were opposed in many ways. He worked late at night while I was working in the morning. I hate the directions of the scene, but Steve dictated all the nuances. He was so demanding and it was sometimes exasperating.
Denis O'Hare, member of the distribution: I met Steve when I made a terrible hearing stranded for Passion In 1994. He said to me: “Yeah, it's a really difficult song”, which is a great way to say: “My boy, you didn't understand.” Years later, I played Guiteau in Assassins. After a show, he said to me: “Ah, Mr. O'Hare, your usual mediocre performance.” It was difficult to know if it was a joke. It is difficult to read the man.
IVES: Around 2018, I found myself moving away from the theater. I told Steve, “maybe it's time for you to find someone else.” But at the end of 2019, he called me and said to me: “I would like you to see and try again.” I couldn't say no. We resumed where we stopped. Then a hidden blow, and everything was on the polar ice. In 2021, Joe called me. He said, “I had a revelation.”
Coat: We were all stuck in our homes and I remember having turned to my partner one evening before dinner, and say: “Do you think we will never go out? And suddenly, I said to myself: “This is act two.” We had never taken the idea that they cannot leave the room seriously. It was always an abstraction. But what is happening if we take what we are going through at the moment and food in acting two?
IVES: In September 2021, we gathered in a room with a stellar group of actors for a reading. Steve was in good humor, healthy, walking with a cane, cheerful. Almost Falstaffian. It was the last time I saw it.
Coat: The three of us sat down after this reading and had a very serious conversation. I said, “We must all agree that if you never write another word, that's the piece.” And he accepted.
IVES: Two months later, the thanksgiving in 2021, Steve died. The show concerns a group of rich people trying to find a meal and fail. And he was there, withdrawing after dinner with friends on the day which is a matter of food. I can just hear him laugh at poetic irony.
Martha Plpton, member of the distribution: It was so unexpected because he was not sick. He was old, but still worked every day. He has always procrastinated, he always stressed. It was really shocking, and I spent the next two days listening to his music.
Rufus Norris, outgoing director of the London National Theater: After Steve's death, his friend and lawyer Rick said to me: “You know, there is another work.” It sounded crazy. He said: “Sondri's favorite theater in London was the National.” So I said: “Of course, if there is a way to do it, then we will.”
IVES: It was never intended to be a Broadway show. It is not a “spectacle” in the traditional sense; It is a final statement by a great American artist. We opened on the experimental place The Shed in October 2023.
O'Hare: The rehearsals for New York race were quite crazy. There has been a lot of rewriting, rearrangement, withdrawing things and putting them back. The music remained the same, but (musical director) Alex Gemignani was trying to understand where everything went.
Plpton: He was like a musical detective bringing things together. The script is now very different from the first to the hangar. It is very different from all that Sondheim previously did. He has no traditional narrative arch.
O'Hare: I play five disparate pieces, but all people in the working class are neglected. This play is super-scary because it is the upcoming revolution. In New York after the show, a woman wearing clothes of $ 3,000 and a bag that was worth the same thing as my car said: “I love the show, it's so precise, such an indictment of these people.” People choose not to see each other sometimes because they cannot face it.
Norris: I remember talking to Steve once and asked what he had listened to. He told me about this obscure radio from Eastern Europe. He said, “I listen to him because they never play everything I have ever heard. I constantly want to be stimulated.” When others would have watched TV and go to the bingo, he still nourishes his brain with new information.
Coat: The most surprising thing about Steve was how hard he was on himself. He would not just repeat something he had done before, even after all he had accomplished. There will always be the question: would he have written more? But if he was in the room and had experienced it as it exists now, it would have been excited.
IVES: (Sondheim) was drilled by the press for shows that later became staples. He was his own brand, always new, always intelligent, always funny. He is his own universe.
April 23 to June 28, Nationaltheatre.org.uk
Find out first of all our latest stories – Follow the FT weekend on Instagram And XAnd register To receive the FT weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
