THE FINAL SONDHEIM

When he died in 2021, the composer had been working for years on a new musical with the playwright David Ives and the director Joe Mantello. This is the story of how they made it.

- Frank Rich

In June 1982, Stephen Sondheim, still reeling from the flameout of the original Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along seven months earlier, had his first meeting with the Off Broadway playwright and director James Lapine. The future collaborators soon were comparing their tastes not just in plays but in movies, Sondheim’s greatest cultural passion after music. Lapine had recently seen and liked The Exterminating Angel, the 1962 classic by the Spanish Mexican director Luis Buñuel. Sondheim was a fan of Buñuel’s 1972 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Lapine thought it might be a possible project. They set up a screening, but nothing came of it. When they reconvened at Sondheim’s Turtle Bay townhouse after Labor Day, Lapine arrived with a bunch of random images to see if they might strike any creative sparks. The last in the pile was a postcard of Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884. It inspired a torrent of riffing, and a week later Lapine brought Sondheim the first five pages of what would become Sunday in the Park With George.