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First, there were the Jekkies – the fervently devoted fans of Frank Wildhorn’s Jekyll & Hyde. Throughout the show’s long 1995 cross-country tryout, they kept appearing at the various theaters, sparing no expense to see their beloved musical. And the Jekkies begat the Pimpies, who equally celebrated Wildhorn’s The Scarlet Pimpernel. They in turn begat […]

By David Foil Call it a tipping point. Call it a watershed. Call it, by all means, a “magic moment.” However you characterize it, Barbara Cook’s concert at Carnegie Hall on January 29, 1975, was a kind of joyous pivotal event in our love affair with classic American songs. Columbia Masterworks’ live recording of the […]

The vast majority of Broadway ballads springs from boy-meets-girl, boy-loves-girl romance. But you know that Stephen Sondheim; he’s always looking for ways to expand musical theater horizons. So while the new anthology, Send in the Clowns: The Ballads of Stephen Sondheim – now available for digital downloads — does offer odes to love, it shows […]

In “Comedy Tonight,” one of Broadway’s best opening numbers (for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1962), Stephen Sondheim wrote “Weighty affairs will just have to wait” – a nice example of his deft wordplay. But this week, we’re talking about an eighty affair that just cannot wait. We must […]

I’ve often seen it happen, soon after Stephen Sondheim has taken the stage and is interviewed by a moderator. Eventually the moderator opens the floor to questions, and inevitably, someone asks, “Mr. Sondheim, of all your shows, what’s your favorite?” Just as inevitably, Sondheim answers, “I don’t have a favorite, but I have a least […]