Sunday, May 29th
Currently enjoying: Derek McLane’s set designs for some of the Kennedy Center’s past Sondheim productions.
His website portfolio unfortunately doesn’t include set designs for Merrily We Roll Along, the current production of Follies or the Kennedy Center’s 2002 Sondheim celebration, but more designs can be found here.
Friday, May 13th
It would be nice to claim that the clinky xylophone-like accompaniment of [The Little Things You Do Together] is meant to reflect the brittle hollowness of Joanne and her fellow sophisticates, but in fact it’s the result of where I wrote it: on the Queen Mary during my one transatlantic boat trip. I was en route to deliver the first few songs to Hal Prince, who was shooting a movie in Bavaria, and since ocean liners, like the plays and musicals I had grown up with, were on the way out, I decided to travel in the old glamorous fashion. The purser arranged for me to have a small salon room, complete with piano, so that I could work while I travelled, assuaging my guilt over such luxurious time-wasting. But the ship kept listing to starboard and I unwittingly kept sliding toward it on the piano bench, resulting in a preponderance of treble plinks. Thus is insightful art produced.
Stephen Sondheim
