Stephen Sondheim’s 90th Birthday Concert

Whenever Stephen Sondheim hits a major birthday milestone, the cream of the Broadway crop gathers to celebrate his illustrious body of work with a tribute concert. Everyone is dressed to the nines, and all the old favorites are trotted out – original cast members giving you chills as they sing the classics you remember, the biggest names in Broadway singing iconic hits, and everyone reveling in a brilliant night of incomparable melodies and lyrics. This year, Sondheim had this 90^th birthday, and of course, following the usual tradition of packing a concert hall wasn’t feasible. Instead, Broadway took to YouTube.

Things got off to an inauspicious start. The livestream was delayed by about 40 minutes, and when it started, we got a quick, lovely opening of Stephen Schwartz playing “All Things Bright and Beautiful” from Follies before host Raúl Esparza took to the screen with a microphone he didn’t realize was muted. More technical delays. All told, we got started “for real” more than an hour late. (Since Esparza’s few brief segues appear to be the only parts actually streamed live, with everything else seeming to be prerecorded, I’m not exactly sure what the extended holdup was for.)

But even though the show began on the wrong foot, once it got going, it turned into a beautiful night. I liked pretty much everything about how the show was set up. Most performers were introduced via illustrations of them from Sondheim shows they performed in (i.e. Donna Murphy in Passion, Nathan Lane in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Michael Cerveris in Assassins, etc.), and the evening included both the usual stunning performances and quieter, more personal tributes as people shared memories about Sondheim and discussed what he (or the particular song they were singing) meant to them. Nathan Lane made me smile when he joked about how happy he was that there was “finally” a Sondheim tribute concert, and I loved what Maria Friedman said about how, when you have lyrics like Sondheim’s, all an actor has to do is follow it and they have nothing to fear.

The online, socially-distanced format gave rise mostly to solo pieces, although Neil Patrick Harris enlisted his kids for a few non-sung responses in his delightful performance of “The Witch’s Rap” from Into the Woods. That’s understandable to me. 1) If the many delays to the show are any indication, maybe Broadway people aren’t super savvy at online-video recording. 2) Coordinating on any song over an Internet connection would be tough, but I’m sure the intricacy of Sondheim’s music would make that infinitely harder. But a few brave souls took a stab at it (I’m working under the assumption that, for the most part, everyone just recorded their own bits separately and then someone cut it all together.) We got an instrumental performance of the overture from Merrily We Roll Along, a cute duet of Into the Woods’s “It Takes Two” featuring Beanie Feldstein and Ben Platt, a lovely duet of “Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George revival stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford (I feel like Gyllenhaal has definitely earned his place in the theatre world now,) and a couple memorable larger team-ups.

But yes, lots and lots of solos, covering a wide array of Sondheim’s work. We got some deep cuts (Judy Kuhn doing a song from Dick Tracy? Brian Stokes Mitchell doing a cut song from Assassins?) and all manner of iconic classics. Some songs choices fit their performers to a tee, and some seemed to come out of nowhere but generally still worked beautifully. Stripped away from the glitz and pomp of a big fully-orchestrated concert, most of the songs were accompanied only by piano, the performers wore their everyday clothes (with Aaron Tveit showing off quite the quarantine hairstyle!), and the backgrounds of the performers’ homes ranged from artfully staged (Donna Murphy sitting next to her piano with sheet music from Passion sitting out as she sang A Little Night Music’s “Send in the Clowns”) to wonderfully ordinary (pretty sure Laura Benanti sang “I Remember” from Evening Primrose while sitting on her bathroom floor.) We also got one (very minor) parody from YouTuber Randy Rainbow, who sang Sweeney Todd’s “By the Sea” to Mr. Sondheim himself and changed bits of the dialogue to include references to the pandemic (like getting decked out in a homemade face mask in lieu of the usual “bathing dresses.”)

A couple things struck me watching this. First, there’s just so much essential Sondheim that a 2-hour+ concert still leaves out wide swathes of his most beloved work. Despite all the wonderful songs included here, there was no “A Little Priest” (though that one may have been hampered by the remote nature of the concert, since it’s so dependent on the interaction,) no “Good Thing Going,” no “Losing My Mind,” and so many more I could easily rattle off. Second, I got to wondering how song choice occurs and what hierarchy there might be in concerts like this. How do you decide who gets to do “Finishing the Hat” or “Send in the Clowns”? For the big divas, do Patti LuPone and Bernadette Peters get first choice and the others go from there? Inquiring minds want to know.

I’ll break down some more specific thoughts on individual performances on another day, but all in all, a great night that’s probably much more enjoyable to settle down and watch now that it’s not live, since you won’t have to deal with the long delays! What a lovely tribute, a beautiful celebration of his man’s work and all that it’s meant to millions of people for decades.