Click right here to read an interview with Stephen Sondheim in The Baltimore Sun. Or, if you don't have time for that, read this quote, which is about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Before the show went into rehearsal, Sondheim asked his friend, playwright James Goldman, what he thought of the project…
[Goldman] said he thought the book was brilliant, and he said the score was a delight. He said the only problem was, they don't go together. I had written a rather salon-like score, full of cleverness and kind of literary puns — I wanted so much to show off as a lyricist — whereas [the book] was a very elegant low comedy. I learned from that to be very careful in the future to write the same show.
I pulled that quote out because, on TV projects I've worked on, I've become kind of a pest about quoting Mr. Sondheim, wringing variations on a similar, earlier quote that went something like, "The most important thing is to make sure you're all doing the same show." If I had to pay him royalties on every time I've said it, it would dwarf whatever he made off "Send in the Clowns." (Another allied quote is from Alan Jay Lerner: "More shows fail because of a breach in style between Act One and Act Two than any other reason.")
Anyway, it's always nice to read an interview with Sondheim. And now I have to return to a script and pray that everyone involved intends to do the show I think I'm writing…