Sondheim & Lapine

Starting as a lyricist for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story and known widely for the musicals Company (1970), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Into the Woods (1987), Stephen Sondheim is indeed a remarkable figure in the history of American musicals and a prolific artist whose prominent works far exceed those introduced here. 

Sondheim's musicals are never without a sincere commitment; every note and lyric carries significance. Every scene and melody should move the plot forward, engaging organically with the story. Accordingly, Sondheim's plays come with complex plots that provide the audience with a depth of experience on top of the spectacular happenings of the musical.

Musical theatre scholars often describe Sondheim as one of the most prolific writers of the concept musical, a form which focuses on theme over plot, non-linear structure, and self-commentary. Though Into the Woods has a clearer plot and structure than his other musicals, the show allows for a wide range of conceptual and aesthetic possibilities (explored in more detail on our Production History page).

As we stage Into the Woods in June 2022, it has only been six months since Sondheim's passing in 2021. We hope that producing Into the Woods, probably his most-performed piece, would allow us to admire Sondheim's genius once again and pay respects to his lasting legacies. 

A longtime collaborator of both Stephen Sondheim’s and William Finn’s, James Lapine is an acclaimed book writer (librettist) and director with a wide-ranging career in both musical and non-musical spaces. He launched his playwriting journey with Table Settings (1980), after having studied at California Institute of the Arts and working at Yale School of Drama.

In addition to working with Sondheim on Into the Woods, Lapine wrote and directed Sunday in the Park with George (1984) and Passion (1994). For Sunday in the Park, a fictionalized look at painter Georges Seurat’s life and the creation of Seurat's famous piece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Lapine and Sondheim won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize (among many other awards). Lapine reflected on their collaboration process in his 2021 book, Putting It Together (see link below).

With William Finn, Lapine worked on the successful March of the Falsettos (1981) and Falsettoland (1990)—the two musicals that now make up Lapine and Finn’s Falsettos (1992)—as well as A New Brain (1998). Most recently, Lapine wrote and directed Flying Over Sunset (with music by Tom Kitt and lyrics by Michael Korie), a fictionalized account of Hollywood icons Cary Grant, Clare Boothe Luce, and Aldous Huxley, who all used LSD, and set in the 1950s. Originally postponed due to the pandemic, Flying Over Sunset premiered on Broadway in late 2021.

Although Lapine's interests were not initially in musical theatre, Lapine's work pairs seamlessly with Sondheim's musical approaches; both figures have helped to move musical theatre beyond the traditional book musical of the earlier, so-called Golden Age and, instead, towards the concept (or fragmented) musical form that became popular during the 1980s. Lapine's work as a writer-director provides a unique aesthetic approach that bridges the concept, shape, and staging of musicals and, like Hal Prince (another popular musical director of concept musicals who also worked with Sondheim), Lapine is "concerned with using theatre to explore and question rather than simply to entertain" (Lundskaer-Nielsen 78-79).

Lundskaer-Nielsen, Miranda. Directors and the New Musical Drama: British and American Musical Theatre in the 1980s And 90s. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.