Stephen Sondheim

James Lapine

Interwoven with such classics as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Ridinghood, is the story of the baker and his wife, whose longing for a child is thwarted by a mischievous witch who lives next door.

Into the Woods

A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the iconic musical Sunday in the Park with George Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. In 1984, James Lapine, then a fledgling playwright and director, met Stephen Sondheim, already a legendary Broadway composer, and the two decided to turn Georges Seurat’s masterwork Sunday on the Island of La Grand Jatte into a musical. Through Lapine’s recollections, conversations between Lapine, Sondheim, and the original cast and crew of the production, and a treasure trove of personal photographs, sketches, script notes, and sheet music from the making of the show, the two Broadway icons lift the curtain on their beloved musical. Putting It Together delves deep into the making of Sunday in the Park with George and the story of how a Broadway icon went off-Broadway with a neophyte nineteen years his junior to create a Pulitzer Prize– and Tony Award–winning smash hit.

How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George"

Putting It Together

Inspired by Georges Seurat's pointillist masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical celebrates the art of creation and the creation of art. In the first half of the musical, set in 1884, the people - and the animals - in the painting come to life in a world where, for the artist George, art comes before love, before everything. In the second half, a century later, Seurat's great-grandson is wrestling with the same obsessions in present-day New York. Sunday in the Park with George was premiered on Broadway in May 1984, in a production directed by James Lapine. An earlier, incomplete version had been performed Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in July 1983. The musical went on to win the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The first London production opened at the National Theatre in March 1990. It won the 1991 Olivier Award for Best New Musical.

Sunday in the Park with George

A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the iconic musical Sunday in the Park with George Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. In 1982, James Lapine, at the beginning of his career as a playwright and director, met Stephen Sondheim, nineteen years his senior and already a legendary Broadway composer and lyricist. Shortly thereafter, the two decided to write a musical inspired by Georges Seurat’s nineteenth-century painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Through conversations between Lapine and Sondheim, as well as most of the production team, and with a treasure trove of personal photographs, sketches, script notes, and sheet music, the two Broadway icons lift the curtain on their beloved musical. Putting It Together is a deeply personal remembrance of their collaboration and friend - ship and the highs and lows of that journey, one that resulted in the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning classic.

William Finn

Frank Rich

Three one-act musicals. Contents: In trousers - March of the falsettos and Falsettoland. With an afterword by Frank Rich.

Falsettos

Finally Back in Print in Over a Decade, the Lavishly Illustrated Book of Into the Woods, One of the Most-Performed Musicals, by Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine Based on the Grimm Brothers’ most popular folktales, Into the Woods is a reimagining of what can happen when beloved fairytale characters are thrown together in increasingly dramatic and humorous ways. The Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning team of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine bring their cherished musical off the stage and onto the page with the help of Hudson Talbott’s enchanting illustrations. Published for Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday, join Cinderella, Jack (of beanstalk-climbing fame), Little Red Riding Hood, the Baker and his Wife, and more on their quest to find “happily ever after.” Along the way they meet Rapunzel, the Big Bad Wolf, terrifying giants, lusty princes, and their own destinies. But after their journeys are done, the real question remains: what comes after “happily ever after” and will the prices paid for it be worth it in the end?

THE STORY: Inspired by an actual case history denoted by Carl Jung, the play traces the story of a little New England girl, Emma, who makes a booklet of her dreams which she gives to her psychiatrist father, Charles Hatrick, for Christmas. Still nu

Twelve Dreams

WILLIAM. LAPINE FINN (JAMES.)

A seamless pairing of March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, acclaimed Off Broadway musicals written nearly a decade apart, Falsettos is the tale of Marvin, who leaves his wife and young son to live with another man. His ex-wife marries his psychiatrist, and Marvin ends up alone. Two years later, Marvin is reunited with his lover on the eve of his son's bar mitzvah, just as AIDS is beginning its insidious spread.

Falsettos (UK Programme Text)

THE STORY: FRAN'S BED asks the question: What constitutes a life? As Fran lies comatose in a hospital room, her husband, Hank, and two daughters, Vicki and Roberta, are forced to decide her fate, but in so doing, discover things about her and about

Fran's Bed

THE STORY: THE MOMENT WHEN follows five people as their lives intertwine and separate. Steven, an artist, meets the writer Alice at a fashionable New York party hosted by Paula, a legendary literary agent. Paula's young assistant, Dana, introduces

The Moment when

from the autobiography by Moss Hart

THE STORY: Growing up in an impoverished family in the Bronx, Moss Hart dreamed of being part of the glamorous world of the theatre. Forced to drop out of school at age thirteen, Hart’s famous memoir Act One is a classic Hortatio Alger story that plots Hart’s unlikely collaboration with the legendary playwright George S. Kaufman. Tony Award-winning writer and director James Lapine has adapted Act One for the stage, creating a funny, heartbreaking, and suspenseful play that celebrates the making of a playwright and his play Once in a Lifetime. ACT ONE offers great fun to a director to utilize over fifty roles, which can be played by a cast as few as twelve, and in a production that can be done as simply or elaborately as desired.

Act One

Offers the complete libretto to the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical

A Musical

Passion

By the Tony-award winning authors of Falsettos, here is an energetic, sardonic, often comical musical about a composer during a medical emergency. Gordon collapses into his lunch and awakes in the hospital surrounded by his maritime-enthusiast lover, his mother, a co-worker, the doctor and the nurses. Reluctantly, he had been composing a song for a children's television show that features a frog - Mr. Bungee - and the spector of this large green character and the unfinished work haunts him throughout his medical ordeal. What was thought to be a tumor turns out to be something more operable and Gordon recovers, grateful for a chance to compose the songs he yearns to produce.

James Lapine

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