Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy

Pulitzer finalist Okrent (The Guarded Gate) crafts an intimate and detailed biography of late composer and lyricist Sondheim, who died in 2021 and whose credits include Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and West Side Story. The author wisely focuses on the relationships that shaped his subject’s life, among them Sondheim’s acrimonious but enduring connection with his mother, Foxy, who never missed one of his opening nights, but once wrote to him in a letter, “The only regret I have in life is giving you birth”; and his stormy love life, which involved brief flings with Vogue cover model Nancy Berg and actress Lee Remick, though he knew he was queer and married Jeff Romly, 50 years his junior, in 2017. Also explored in depth is Sondheim’s creative process, which was informed by his brilliant mathematical mind—he played blindfold chess with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, and likened composing to solving a puzzle. (Lyric writing, a process he once described as “hell,” was deeply connected to his characters’ story lines; actor Robert Westenberg describes Sondheim’s songs as “scenes, basically, that happen to be sung.”) Drawing on rich research, Okrent vividly captures a clever, sensitive, complicated, and sometimes abrasive artist, and sheds fresh light on even Sondheim’s most well-known productions. It’s a stellar portrait of an American theater great. (Mar.)