STEPHEN SONDHEIM THEATRE Marquee Lighting

Stephen Sondheim, Patti Lupone and Tom Tuft

Patti Lupone

Nathan Lane

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim's name is now in marquee lights of a Broadway theatre. Earlier this evening, the Stephen Sondheim Theatre marquee lighting took place at 124 West 43rd Street. To honor the most celebrated artist in American musical theatre, some of Mr. Sondheim's collaborators were present including Broadway stars, Patti Lupone and Nathan Lane, as well as librettist, John Weidman. Formerly the Henry Miller's Theatre, the newly constructed venue opened in the fall of 2009 and is operated by the Roundabout Theatre. 

ABOUT STEPHEN SONDHEIM (from Playbill.com)

Sondheim has one foot in the Golden Age of the American book musical (withGypsy and West Side Story) and one in the modern world of the concept musical, which sought to tell stories in fresh ways (Company, Follies, Pacific Overtures). Like his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, he changed the nature of musical theatre forever, influencing subsequent generations of writers.

Sondheim is the winner of an Academy Award, many Tony Awards, multiple Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. Some of his other accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors (1993), the National Medal of Arts (1996), the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Music (2006) and a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre (2008).

Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for Road Show (2008), Passion (1994),Assassins (1991), Into the Woods (1987), Sunday in the Park with George(1984), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sweeney Todd (1979), Pacific Overtures (1976), The Frogs (1974), A Little Night Music (1973), Follies(1971; revised in London, 1987), Company (1970), Anyone Can Whistle(1964) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), as well as the lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) and additional lyrics for Candide (1973). Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1981), You're Gonna Love Tomorrow(1983) and Putting It Together (1993/99) are anthologies of his work, as is the new musical Sondheim on Sondheim. He composed the film scores of "Stavisky" (1974) and "Reds" (1981) and songs for "Dick Tracy" (Academy Award, 1990). He also wrote songs for the television production "Evening Primrose" (1966), co-authored, with Anthony Perkins, the film "The Last of Sheila" (1973) and, with George Furth, the play Getting Away with Murder(1996), and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls of Summer(1956), Invitation to a March (1961) and Twigs (1971). He won Tony Awards for Best Score for a Musical for Passion, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Follies and Company. All of these shows won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday in the Park with George, the latter also receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Saturday Night (1954), his first professional musical, finally had its New York premiere in 1999 at Second Stage Theatre.

PATTI LUPONE is Mama Rose in GYPSY

PATTI LUPONE's name in lights at the St. James Theater on 44th Street

Last night, we attended a performance of the new revival of GYPSY starring the legendary PATTI LUPONE as Mama Rose in GYPSY. Ms. Lupone won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a leading actress in a musical this year. She was marvelous! For some reason I liked this production much better than the last revival with Bernadette Peters. Playbill.com reports that Gypsy will end its run at the St. James Theatre March 1, 2009, at the conclusion of LuPone's original contract.

From Playbill.com:

Directed by the musical's librettist, Arthur Laurents, Gypsy will have played 388 performances and 27 previews when it closes. Following an acclaimed run at City Center, Gypsy began previews on Broadway March 3, 2008, with an official opening March 27, 2008. In a statement lead producer Roger Berlind said, "I know I speak on behalf of my partners when I say that this production has been one of the most gratifying endeavors of our professional careers. Legendary director Arthur Laurents assembled a superb company lead by the incomparable Patti LuPone. And, while we wish Gypsy could entertain us all much longer, it has become clear to us that there is no way to replace the irreplaceable." A consummate show-biz musical suggested by the memoirs of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. She was once just plain Louise, the awkward daughter of an unstoppably ambitious stage mother. When her pretty sister runs away from the family's minor vaudeville act, Louise tries to fulfill her mother's dreams. But it's not until trouping with Mama dwindles to appearing in burlesque, that Louise finally finds pleasure in the spotlight. The vibrant score includes “Some People,” “Let Me Entertain You,” “Together,” “Everything's Coming Up Roses” and “Rose's Turn.”

Review from the New York Times (Ben Brantley):

Watch out, New York. Patti LuPone has found her focus. And when Ms. LuPone is truly focused, she’s a laser, she incinerates. Especially when she’s playing someone as dangerously obsessed as Momma Rose in the wallop-packing revival of the musical “Gypsy,” which opened on Thursday night at the St. James Theater.

Watching that balance shift is a source of wonder, amusement and even pity and terror. If in the Encores! version of “Gypsy,” Ms. LuPone seemed to be trying on and discarding different aspects of Rose as if they were party hats, she has now settled on a single, highly disciplined interpretation that combines explosively contradictory elements into a single, deceptively ordinary-looking package.

It’s as if the new wig she wears here — a ’30s-style mop of recalcitrant curls that is a vast improvement on her blunt bowl cut of last summer — had forced her to internalize her many ideas about what makes Rose run. And while Rose may be a dauntingly single-minded creature, Ms. LuPone now plays her less on one note than any actress I’ve seen.

This Rose begins as a busy, energetic, excited woman, and you can’t help being infected by her liveliness. You understand why Herbie would be smitten with her, and for once, his description of her as looking “like a pioneer woman without a frontier” fits perfectly. But every so often a darker, creepier willpower erupts, as involuntary as a hiccup.

In Rose’s two great curtain numbers, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “Rose’s Turn,” the darkness takes over so completely that you feel that you’re watching a woman who has been peeled down to her unadorned id. In “Rose’s Turn,” in particular, Ms. LuPone takes you on a guided tour of all Rose’s inner demons, from sexual succubus to shivering infant. (Be warned: they will live in your head for a while.)

A great Momma Rose is usually enough for a thoroughly compelling “Gypsy.” But this one has so much more. Mr. Laurents and his cast have applied the same careful analysis to all the major characters. As a result we become newly sensitized to “Gypsy” as a sad story of colliding desires, of people within an extended family vainly longing for love, for security, for recognition from one another. And this production makes us painfully aware of the toll exacted by repeatedly missed connections.

I have never, for example, seen a Herbie as palpably in love or in pain as the one the excellent Mr. Gaines provides.

When Ms. LuPone delivers “Rose’s Turn,” she’s building a bridge for an audience to walk right into one woman’s nervous breakdown. There is no separation at all between song and character, which is what happens in those uncommon moments when musicals reach upward to achieve their ideal reasons to be. This “Gypsy” spends much of its time in such intoxicating air.