Daniel Okrent’s new biography of Stephen Sondheim offers a rich portrait of the composer and lyricist, blending gossip and erudition. The book vividly captures mid-20th-century New York, where Leonard Bernstein called Sweeney Todd “disgusting”, Sondheim said Barbra Streisand “doesn’t have one sincere moment left inside her”, and Arthur Laurents insulted everyone. In a 2000s exchange, Sondheim told Laurents, “you’re just good enough to know you’re mediocre”.
Okrent, a former New York Times editor and inventor of fantasy baseball, balances storytelling with analysis of Sondheim’s work. He explores Sondheim’s fraught relationship with his mother, Foxy, whom the composer openly hated. The early chapters detail Sondheim’s mentorship by Oscar Hammerstein, who warned him against imitation: “You’re writing like me… Write what you believe, and you’ll be 99% ahead of the game.”
At Williams College, Sondheim switched from maths to music after tutor Robert Barrow taught him that music is “craft, not inspiration”. Barrow’s analysis of Debussy’s La Mer focused on the whole tone scale, a lesson Sondheim later credited for shaping his approach. Forty years on, he gave similar insights to the hero of Sunday in the Park With George.
Early in his career, Sondheim faced rejection from Ethel Merman, who called him “a beginner” for Gypsy; he later described her as “loud, vulgar, cheap, small-eyed”. Reduced to writing lyrics, he shared Everything’s Coming Up Roses with Jerome Robbins, who asked: “Everything’s coming up Rose’s what?” During cast recordings, Sondheim would read the New Yorker, then correct a French horn’s E-flat.
Sondheim struggled with his sexuality, dating women including Mary Rodgers and Lee Remick before accepting he was gay in the late 1960s. Laurents believed Sondheim had been with women “because he hoped”. This ambivalence fed his work, leading to masterpieces like Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park With George. After Gypsy film rights, he bought a townhouse next to Katharine Hepburn.
