Mandy Patinkin: ‘There will be no one Stephen Sondheim’

The first time I met Stephen Sondheim was when I was trying Sunday in the Park with George, his show about the life of artist Georges Seurat, opened on Broadway in 1984 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The first problem was that I was nervous, a serious investigator. I had just won a Tony award Pewani, where I played Che, and I asked you if you should try after you beat Tony. Steve said, “Listen, Mandy: I ​​try everyone except Angela [Lansbury]. ”

The next problem was Steve, who died last week, and James Lapine, the author of the show, wrote songs for all but me. To master the art of art, I took art courses and practiced for eight, nine, 10 hours a day, while everyone else sang. This was a difficult, very strange, daily wait for Steve to write George’s song. Occasionally, every week or so, another piece came along.

I learned from him, to see him make a show, a smart man. They say: “What do you think? What are you experiencing? I want to talk to you about this. Do you have any ideas after I write? “He was always relaxed and generous. It was obvious when he didn’t like something but he could be funny with it.

During the test he wrote a song called “Beautiful” for George and his mother, and said that he would like to talk to me, would he call me? We had this conversation that lasted an hour and it was one of the best conversations I ever had with someone.

We talked about our mother, and Steve and his mother ‘s life has always been well-known – she wrote him a letter before the operation that said, “My worries in life were giving birth to you.” This was very distressing to him and very painful. One of Steve’s most amazing things is how he took his pain and began to walk, for the rest of his life, using piano, music, words as a battlefield in his presence, turning the darkness into light. That darkness, that trouble, in the end was a great gift to him.

And it was a lesson to me in my life as well, that hard times in life are not tragedies, they are a gift. He changed my life, defined my life, gave me words to speak and sang for the rest of my life.

I am always amazed when people say to me, “Are not his songs and lyrics so difficult and difficult to sing? No! It is a clear, easy-going song in the world because it sounds great in the mind. You do not have to struggle to learn the word because it sounds familiar. When it is written from the gut and is honest and sincere and generous, these are things you should not look at twice. You know them by “hello”.

Steve’s shows have had an amazing revival over the past 20 years – which was rethinked Sweeney Todd, to explain Stupid at the National Theater in London, gender change Company, which is now on Broadway. I think they are also famous because, except for Lin-Manuel Miranda Hamilton, there was a drought in Steve’s stadium when Steve finished his run Sunday, In the Woods (1987) and Love (1994). It was like, turn every Disney movie into a song, turn the Beatles into a song. I think people were starving – they had no food for the rest of their lives.

But then the Brits began to embrace Sondheim in ways that America did not, with interest and zeal, and gave him the respect I deemed appropriate. He aroused America’s deep appreciation for Stephen Sondheim! In the US his shows sometimes did not make much money, sometimes received differently, but Steve was not intimidated. He was known for his respect for his dedication to the arts, and I think people need that food.

Long before his death, American actors woke up with his unlimited gifts. And I assure you, his work will be done more often and in different ways than we have ever seen in our lives, and it will continue to grow and last forever, for generations to come.

There will be no one Steve Sondheim. There is one Shakespeare one and one Sondheim and we are lucky to have them forever. That I got to work and became a friend and lived in a room with one of those guys? I can’t stop it.

As told by Josh Spero