NY Mag Discusses Life in Theatre with Lansbury and Sondheim

New York Magazine features an interview with acclaimed Broadway lyricist/composer Stephen Sondheim and five-time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury. Sondheim and Lansbury have collaborated many times over the years in bringing Sondheim's plays to Broadway. Lansbury has starred in Anyone Can Whistle, the first revival of Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and is currently starring as Madame Armfeldt in the revival of A Little Night Music.

Their first collaboration began when director Arthur Miller decided he felt Lansbury would be an excellent fit for the role of Cora in Anyone Can Whistle:

Angela Lansbury: I received a thin blue envelope with a thin blue piece of paper inside, like toilet paper. It was a very nicely handwritten letter from Arthur, asking if I might be interested in auditioning for the part of Cora the Mayoress. The idea of being in a musical thrilled me!
Stephen Sondheim: You'd done the film The Harvey Girls, but they didn't use your voice. So you hadn't actually sung with an orchestra in a movie, had you?
A.L.: No, but you've forgotten that after leaving London during World War II, I began my professional career in cabaret-in a Russian nightclub in Montreal called the Samovar. I sang a lot of Noël Coward, and an arrangement of "I Went to a Marvelous Party" with coloratura, contralto, mock German. I had ideas of singing, but it was always a character singing, never straight singing.
S.S.: Did you have eyes on a club career?
A.L.: No! I'd just come out of drama school, I was 16 years old, and I needed to work because we had no money. When I got the job, I lied about my age and went up to Montreal. I don't know how I had the gall to think I could do this.

To read the full article, "Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury on a Lifetime in Theater," visit the New York Magazine website, here.

The first Broadway revival of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC starring Academy Award-winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, five-time Tony Award®-winner Angela Lansbury and Olivier Award-nominee Alexander Hanson, opened on December 13, at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desirée Armfeldt,Angela Lansbury as Madame Armfeldt, Alexander Hanson as Fredrik Egerman, Aaron Lazar as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, Erin Davie as Countess Charlotte Malcolm, Leigh Ann Larkin as Petra, Hunter Ryan Herdlickaas Henrik Egerman. The cast also includesStephen R. Buntrock,Bradley Dean, Katherine Leigh Doherty, Marissa McGowan, Betsy Morgan, Jayne Paterson, Kevin David Thomas, Keaton Whittaker,Karen Murphy, Erin Stewart, Kevin Vortmann.

Based on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC is set in a weekend country house in turn of the century Sweden, bringing together surprising liaisons, long simmering passions and a taste of love's endless possibilities. Hailed as witty and wildly romantic, the story centers on the elegant actress Desirée Armfeldt and the spider's web of sensuality, intrigue and desire that surrounds her.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC - featuring a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler - originally opened in 1973 at Broadway's Shubert Theatre and ran for 601 performances. Produced and directed by Harold Prince, the production garnered six Tony Awards® including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The Sondheim score features one of the composer's best-known songs, "Send in the Clowns," as well as "Every Day a Little Death," "The Miller's Son" and "A Weekend in the Country."

Trevor Nunn's production of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC debuted to critical acclaim at London'sMenier Chocolate Factory in November 2008 and subsequently transferred to the West End where it played a successful limited engagement through July 25, 2009 at the Garrick Theatre.

For more information visit www.NightMusicOnBroadway.com.