America's foremost musical-theater composer also proves to be a fascinatingly complex and conflicted human being in this meticulous biography by the always-capable Meryle Secrest (Being Bernard Berenson, etc.). Stephen Sondheim himself was interviewed for the book, as were many of his closest friends, and the author makes perceptive use of this material. Born in 1930, Sondheim was a successful Broadway lyricist (West Side Story and Gypsy) before he was 30. But the scars from a miserable childhood remained: he was inclined to be distant, hypercritical of those less intelligent than he, and terrified of serious emotional commitment. Critics sometimes found those qualities in the series of groundbreaking musicals he created with director Hal Prince--Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd, to name four--but they agreed that he brought new intellectual ambition and artistic adventurousness to the musical theater. Secrest does a fine job of delineating Sondheim's career in terms of what it tells us about the state of American theater, as when he shifted to a partnership with writer-director James Lapine and worked in the nonprofit sector for such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George and Assassins. She also does well in selecting revealing quotes to depict the composer's struggle to accept his homosexuality and a rage at his overbearing mother so deep that he didn't even attend her funeral. Sondheim the man and Sondheim the visionary artist get nearly equal time in an intriguing portrait.


From Publishers Weekly
Secrest interviewed composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim extensively for this full-scale biography, resulting in a portrait as subtle and sophisticated as its subject. Son of a wealthy New York City dress designer and manufacturer of German-Jewish extraction, Sondheim, an only child born in 1930, was emotionally neglected by his distant father, Herbert, and by his domineering mother, Janet (Foxy). Herbert left her when their son was 10 to live with his blonde, Catholic, Cuban lover, Alicia Bab?, whom he married after they had two sons. Oscar Hammerstein II became mentor and surrogate father to Sondheim, who grew up isolated, keeping people at a distance. Sondheim discusses with Secrest his 25 years of psychoanalysis, his homosexuality, his early stumbling career as actor and TV scriptwriter, and his working relationships with such pivotal figures in his life as producer Hal Prince and playwright-director Arthur Laurents. Biographer of Leonard Bernstein and Frank Lloyd Wright, Secrest has written a wonderful biography of an uncompromising musical dramatist who uses irony, wit and disillusion to probe painful emotions. Decked out with memorable photographs, her moving and perceptive portrait, full of Broadway lore, provides an incomparable peek into the genesis of such musicals as West Side Story, Gypsy, A Little Night Music and Passion. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Much has been written about Sondheim as the foremost theater composer of the latter 20th century, with works ranging from West Side Story to Sunday in the Park with George. Secrest (Leonard Bernstein, LJ 11/1/94) here tackles his personal life, revealing a private side rarely discussed or explored. She has exhaustively researched her subject with the cooperation of Sondheim himself as well as numerous colleagues, family, and friends. Though initially bogged down in detailing his dysfunctional childhood and alienated parents, her book improves when she begins describing Sondheim's inspirational friendship with Oscar Hammerstein and his burgeoning career as a musical composer. While she does not discuss the creative genesis of his shows with as much detail as other sources, Secrest chooses her anecdotes with care. Her strength is her straightforward style: not reverential but respectful and informative. Sondheim's homosexuality is revealed very matter-of-factly, yet the discussion of specific relationships is sporadic. Despite the examination, Sondheim emerges as an intensely private and enigmatic man. Secrest concludes that his musicals to date are not only a reflection of his psyche but also a personal inspiration to himself. Only time will tell whether Sondheim's music in fact brings us closer to the man.-AKevin Henegan, "Library Journal"Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Benedict Nightingale
...both those with and those without a specialist interest in the musical theater are kept happy.


The Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout
Unable to speak with any comprehension about musical matters, Ms. Secrest has chosen instead to concentrate on Mr. Sondheim's life, about which he talked to her at length.... Alas, Ms. Secrest suffers from the inevitable diffidence of the authorized biographer, and her book proves on closer inspection to be more careful than candid.... All this notwithstanding, Stephen Sondheim: A Life is an indispensable book, and though Ms. Secrest fails to shed much light on Mr. Sondheim's work, she does at least manage to point out many areas where light needs to be shed.


The New York Times, Mel Gussow
In her intriguing biography ... Meryle Secrest--with the help of Sondheim--tries to pierce the enigmatic exterior of this very private person. Perhaps, considering the nature of the subject, this is all we will be privileged to see.... Ms. Secrest stresses the passion that Sondheim brings to his highly disciplined profession, and when it is pertinent she relates the life to the work.


The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Don Shirley
She spent 50 hours interviewing Sondheim and communicated with a couple hundred of his friends and associates. Sondheim ventured out of his protective shell further than he has for any other interviewer.... Secrest's Sondheim is irresistible. Anyone who wants to know more about the American musical theater's unchallenged master will have to read this book.


From Booklist
With books on Romaine Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, Salvador Dali, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Leonard Bernstein behind her, Secrest continues her progress from the plastic arts to music and from appreciation and patronage of the arts to their execution. In her book on the current dean of the American musical theater, biography takes a backseat to artistic execution. Secrest offers far more about Sondheim's many shows than about his personal life. Nearly every chapter after the fifth is primarily concerned with a show. The ones that aren't are fraught with such interesting stuff as Sondheim's difficult relations with his mother and, more happily, his love of games (the more elaborate the better; Anthony Shaffer, impressed by a complicated Sondheim murder game in which he participated, wrote the hit play Sleuth in homage), but nothing salacious. Theater mavens would not have things any other way. From his early success as lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy through paradigm-busting hit after hit as both lyricist and composer (OK, the earliest mold-breaker, Anyone Can Whistle, was a flop), Sondheim has created one of the most significant and moving bodies of American theater work--A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George are just the most famous--and how he did it constitutes an American cultural document of great importance. Secrest has given us that document, and those who want a gossip fest about Sondheim will just have to wait. Ray Olson


From Kirkus Reviews
Veteran biographer Secrest moves, logically, from Leonard Bernstein (1994) to one of his collaborators and friendsand one of the undoubted giants of the American theaterStephen Sondheim. Like his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein, Sondheim has vehement detractors and vociferous defenders; Secrest is quite clearly in the latter group. Born in New York in 1930, Sondheim is the son of well-to-do German Jews. But when their marriage disintegrated while Stephen was still a child, the boy found himself a pawn in his mother's machinations. As Secrest makes clear, the scars from that experience stayed with Sondheim for a long time, occasionally finding their way into his creative work. Despite personal travails as a youth, Sondheim enjoyed a pretty nearly unbroken road to theatrical success, being virtually adopted by the Hammersteins, making his Broadway debut at 27 with the lyrics for West Side Story and not actually having a failure until his second show as sole composer-lyricist, the legendary Anyone Can Whistle. Secrest has had the great advantage of cooperation from her subject. More than any previous work on Sondheim, this book has the benefit of early reminiscences and access to its subject's apprentice work all the way back to his high-school years. Yet Sondheim remains a somewhat emotionally distant figure, not surprising since his guardedness seems to be one of his most prominent traits. Regrettably, although there is much material here to fascinate both Sondheim addicts and theater fans, Secrest fails to organize it coherently. Although there are some engaging stories about the creation of such classics as Company, Pacific Overtures, and Sunday in the Park with George, the book rambles with a ramshackle thrown-together feeling and with awkward run-on sentences. And not surprisingly given that her subject is still working hard at 68, Secrest's effort doesn't so much end as stop abruptly. Some genuine insights into one of our living masters, but a disappointingly disorganized work with a surfeit of dollar-book Freud and Jung. (95 photos, not seen) (Literary Guild selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the first full-scale life of the most important composer-lyricist at work in musical theatre today, Meryle Secrest draws on her extended conversations with Stephen Sondheim as well as on her interviews with his friends, family, collaborators, and lovers to bring us not only the artist -- as a master of modernist compositional style -- but also the private man. We see Sondheim at work with composers, producers, directors, co-writers, actors, the greats of his time and ours, among them Leonard Bernstein, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Robbins, Zero Mostel, Bernadette Peters, and Lee Remick (with whom it was said he was in love, and she with him), as Secrest vividly re-creates the energy, the passion, the despair, the excitement, the genius, that went into the making of show after Sondheim show.

FROM THE CRITICS

Patrick J. Smith

Secrest's look at the man and his works is a valuable guide to understanding and appreciating one of our greatest musical-theater artist. -- Opera News

Mel Gussow

An intriguing biography. —The New York Times

Newsweek

A major biography. Secrest spent dozens of hours iinterviewing Sondheim and he talks with unprecedented candor . . .Even walking Sondheim encyclopedias will find news here.

Jeremy Gerard - New York Magazine

A must-read for anyone interested in the musical theater.

Publishers Weekly