Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George

Apparently, David Hockney stormed out at intermission. Someone heard him complain, “Where are the bloody dots?!”

I’ll often put the script on the easel of the piano and just look at it, sometimes sort of sing it in my head.

Well, I got panned in The New York Times. SONDHEIM: Oh. Well, I knew I was right. (laughter) LAPINE: That was a first for me. It’s funny, because I went home after reading that review, and I thought, Oh, Stephen Sondheim’s never going to work with me now. I thought, Why would he? SONDHEIM: Gee, thanks. You had a lot of faith in my character. LAPINE

remember you once said, “Let me state the themes of the show in the songs.” SONDHEIM: Yes, because if you do it in the dialogue, it can be preachy. Oscar Hammerstein made a career out of preaching in music.

Turtle Bay townhouse

By then, I’d heard Bernadette speak the role, and the accent suggested to me Harold Arlen. He was a Buffalo boy who kept writing southern-inflected music, and I thought, southern inflection … hey, there’s my favorite composer. And I was off and running.

creating this musical about making a work of art was a unique moment for all of us, and in some cases a defining one.

the composer! Lionel Bart, who had a serious drug problem, initially wrote the music for La Strada.

always said that Bernie didn’t bet on the horses, he bet on the jockeys. Michael Bennett comes up with a musical. Mike Nichols comes up with a play, Neil Simon with a play. You try to get their shows in your theaters. So Sondheim comes up with a musical—you say yes. William Goldman used to say, “Nobody knows anything. Every time out, it’s a guess.”