Sondheim Speaks to KCRW's Bookworm 9/24 On 89.9FM KCRW-Santa Monica

On Thursday, September 24 from 2:30 to 3:00 pm on public radio station 89.9FM KCRW-Santa Monica (live stream at www.KCRW.com), KCRW's Bookworm Michael Silverblatt speaks with Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim and his collaborator, playwright John Weidman. (Podcasts and on-demand listening available here, along with the complete Bookworm archive: www.kcrw.com/bookworm)

The occasion for this interview was the release of a recording of Sondheim and Weidman's musical Road Show (Nonesuch, PS Classics), a show that was forty years in the making and, as Silverblatt believes, may finally be destined to become an American classic.

It's a well known fact that Stephen Sondheim rarely gives interviews-which makes this appearance with Silverblatt especially notable. A lesser known fact: Michael Silverblatt, lauded as the one most sought-after literary author interviewers in America, discovered his lifelong passion for musical theatre as a child. 

In this unusual pairing of interviewer and interviewees, lyrics and literature come together.

Off the air, Silverblatt and Sondheim discovered that they also shared a passion for a puzzle series called Cryptic Crosswords. For a period of time between shows earlier in his career, Sondheim wrote these puzzles; as a young man, Silverblatt was consumed with solving them. Those puzzles, Silverblatt told Sondheim (during the unrecorded part of their conversation) taught him a different relationship to the English language using clues, which helped him learn to read poetry, in which every word is "deceptive" and means something else, Silverblatt told Sondheim.

Road Show is about what has happened to America: the elevation of greed, the idea that no matter what their level of deception, perpetrators of social crimes need never apologize, never confess. In the end, the characters realize that they are neither in heaven nor hell, just on the road to their next scheme.

But Sondheim says Road Show is not gloomy. Instead, it's cheerful and bleak. But the road to cheerful bleakness was twisted and long. Sondheim and Weidman discuss the many revisions of Road Show, a musical that has evolved in an extraordinary way, pared down to the barest essentials on the way to its final incarnation, found on the cast recording.

About KCRW: KCRW 89.9FM, licensed to Santa Monica College, is National Public Radio's flagship station for Southern California. The Santa Monica-based nonprofit represents cutting edge radio at its best, presenting an eclectic mix of independent music, news, talk and arts programming. The terrestrial signal serves Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura Counties, as well as parts of San Diego, San Bernardino, Kern, and Santa Barbara Counties and the greater Palm Springs area. KCRW's programming is internationally renowned and available worldwide via KCRW.com, including three streaming channels, 27 podcasts and archives of our locally-produced programs and live band performances. Hear KCRW music online, all the time, on the ALL music stream Eclectic24.

Photo credit Walter McBride

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