Stephen Sondheim: Seven Decades Of Broadway Musicals And Still Working

"I've lived my entire life in 20 square blocks," Stephen Sondheim tells Billboard from his home on a rather unremarkable block in Manhattan's East Midtown.

That itself may seem rather remarkable when you consider he's the composer/lyricist whose musical dramas have taken theatregoers to 19th Century Japan, Seurat's Paris and Bergman's Sweden with as much authority and detail as his musical about a dilapidated Broadway theatre.

At age 85, the man whose work defines the highest level of intellectual artistry achieved in the American art form of musical theatre is working on his newest, a collaboration with David Ives based on two movies by Luis Buñuel, one of the first surrealists in the 1930s.

"THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE is about a group of upper-middle-class people trying to find a place to have dinner. Odd things happen in the restaurant; there's a wake being held right in the kitchen. That's the first part of the show; the second part is another movie that he made called THE EXTERMINAGING ANGEL. It's about another group of people, also upper-middle-class, who arrive at this elegant mansion for a large ­dinner and they can't leave. They get their ­dinner, but something ... it's not like a glass wall; it's a ­reluctance to leave. They stay in this one room for weeks, running out of food and water. They're trapped within their own desire... It's really about the end of the world."

When asked to comment of how his work affects so many people emotionally, he replies, "I write personal because I get into characters who are real people, the playwright's invention. They're not just vessels to sing ABBA songs. If you get inside a good character, you will always write something that touches people universally. It doesn't mean it will be a hit, but people can identify because you know that girl, you know that guy. You know who they are and what they're about."

Like most of Broadway, Sondheim has strong opinions about Hamilton: "Most new stuff is new but not as skilled as Hamilton. Lin (Manuel-Miranda) knows how to write a song, and so did Jonathan Larson. RENT was the perfect ­example of a guy with one foot in the past, one foot in the present and a third foot in the future, but it's mostly in the ­present. In other words, they're not just into their own ­stylizing. And ­therefore they can write a good, fresh musical. Because with any art form, you've got to know the past to be any good. You have to know what has been done before you."

Outside of theatre, his pop musical tastes runs toward Radiohead, The Association and Steely Dan, saying that pop music is primarily about rhythm and sound and he prefers selection that focus on harmony and the music as a whole.

As more of a dramatist than a hit-maker the popularity of Stephen Sondheim's song rarely escape the insular world of theatre, "Send In The Clowns" being the obvious exception, but he still hears from fans who weren't even born yet at the height of his success.

"Whenever I appeal to anybody under 50, I feel a triumph, seriously. Seriously! Look, popular music changes every generation. And to know that people -- a generation or two in this case, or even three generations after you -- still like what you did, that's a big compliment."

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Photo: Walter McBride