Ravinia 2022, Issue 4

JIM STEERE (SONDHEIM) Sondheim checks production notes backstage at Ravinia’s 2005 staging of one of his earliest musicals, 1964’s Anyone Can Whistle . But this won’t be just another revue collecting the Broadway titan’s songs, which has been done endlessly ever since Side by Side by Sondheim in the mid- ’70s. Sure, the music is the draw, and the evening will even feature some new arrangements. But audience members will also experience a new element, tying all the songs together: excerpts from the legion letters Sondheim wrote. Over the decades, he corresponded with everyone from established performers to up- and-coming composers to school kids. This glimpse into his role as “encourag- er-in-chief ” (as the New York Times dubbed him less than a week after his death) provides a new lens for looking at his accomplished life. Lindley himself is the first to admit, when he first began planning a tribute, that it started out simply as a retrospective concert. Although Sondheim left a massive oeuvre to choose from, Lindley found himself looking for something more. “Like with anything, I tried to follow the advice Dot gives George,” he says, referencing the star-crossed couple at the heart of Sunday in the Park with George . “I thought, ‘Well, what hasn’t been said about Sondheim already? He’s had so many tribute concerts.’ And then I remembered: ‘Anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new. Give us more to see.’ “Around that same time, I found letters on Twitter and on an Instagram ac- count called Sondheim’s Letters. Just everyone—including stars like Lin-Manuel [Miranda] and Trey Parker from South Park and the Jonathan Larson estate—all of them are posting these letters Sondheim had written to them, encouraging them, or vouching for them when they needed a grant. “And then I started seeing friends of mine with letters! I have a friend who teaches a Sondheim course at Northwestern, and his letter was there. I have another friend who did an 85th birthday concert [honoring Sondheim] at the Auditorium, and she has a letter. A great music director here in town has a letter of Sondheim just saying, ‘Hey, I didn’t get to talk to you, but your playing was impeccable.’ Just a thank-you note for playing a show well!” Like countless others touched by Sondheim’s incredible art, in the days after the composer’s death, Lindley found himself deeply moved all over again, this time because of Sondheim’s generosity: “He’s not just at the top of the game. He’s defined what the game is! And he’s incredibly human. This guy showed up for everybody . That became my ‘in’ to the concert. “What I love about these letters is: There’s a whole spectrum of them,” Lindley observes. From short thank-you notes to long letters looking for donations to a charitable cause, Sondheim covered it all, typically with his trusty typewriter and personalized stationery. Often he was self-effacing; sometimes, Lindley notes with a smile, “he wasn’t all sunshine and roses. There’s some really funny, snarky ones. I love that too.” The underlying impetus behind “Yours, Stephen Sondheim” is not to mourn but to celebrate the man—and to find inspiration in how he treated others, most- ly people who were complete strangers. Take, for example, one particular letter that stood out to Lindley: “He wrote to an elementary school teacher saying, ‘Hey, thank you so much for the drawings from your students, and thank you for exposing them to musical theater. It’s the encouragement I needed today.’ “There’s something so beautiful and delightfully human about it all.” Native Chicagoan Web Behrens has spent most of his journalism career covering arts and culture. His work has appeared in the pages of the Chicago Tribune , Time Out Chicago , Crain’s Chicago Business , and The Advocate and Chicago magazines. Between the casts of “Yours, Stephen Sondheim” on the 7th and the revue “Once Upon a Time: Alan Menken’s Broadway” on the 19th, August at Ravinia is flush with theater singers, some who have even brought Sondheim’s iconic characters to life onstage in the months since his passing. Here follows some of their reminiscences on the music and the man. Heather Headley A Tony and Grammy winner, Heather Headley has appeared on Broadway star- ring in The Lion King , Aida , and The Color Purple . If you had to pick three favorite Sondheim songs, what would they be? “Send In the Clowns” [from A Little Night Music ] is beautifully sad. You can get caught up and confused thinking it is about something else, when it’s written about something totally different. It’s filled with sadness, sarcasm, and subtlety, and the melody is like a lullaby, yet so haunting. It really is a beautiful piece of music. Into the Woods is filled with great songs, but if I have to pick one, “Children Will Listen.” Now that I have children, it is even more poignant: the lesson in it; the admonition through it; the hope of it. It’s also fun to sing. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 1 – AUGUST 14, 2022 16