Original subtitles

Thank you

Thank you. Thank you

Hi everyone. Can you hear us? Does that sound OK? Great

Actually what I want to talk about first is-

People sort of think that a Sondheim show is a Sondheim show, but actually...

...you're in essence a collaborator,

and the person who I think we should really start talking about is James Goldman

I'll tell you about that, as a matter of fact

James Goldman has a brother named Bill Goldman,

who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, among other things

James wrote plays. And he said, 'I've always wanted to write a play. A reunion'

'l have an idea for a musical'

'l picked up the newspaper the other day and read about this reunion each year of the Ziegfeld Follies girls'

In fact we went to one of these Ziegfeld Follies things - You went to one?

Yes, absolutely - With notebooks?

Yes, indeed. Indeed. Yeah

And some of the ladies were really- one of them had been in the Follies of 1918

We decided that it would take place at a party - a reunion of the girls...

...who haven't seen each other for 25 years,

get back together and all their old hates, loves, etcetera, etcetera, are resuscitated

In which all four central characters all fall bad! into the past

and express what's going on through Follies songs

And it would involve two of the girls who had been best friends when they were in the Follies,

and it would be about how their relationship fell apart

So we decided exactly to do that

I don't know how much you talk with your book writer before you write

I talk extensively. I mean really extensively

You go into the detail. What does this mean? What are you trying to convey to the audience?

What are you trying to convey to the other characters in the play?

It's all about getting to the character

And you suddenly find that certain words either - if they don't rhyme with each other, relate to each other

It's very much about serendipity. It's very much - 'Oh, I didn't think' -

and sometimes a lyric just starts to build

Too many mornings Wasted in pretending I reach for you...

Often, the first couple of songs are terrific and right on the nose

The problem starts with Number 3 and Number-call and Number 5

Now you have problems of variety. You have problems of point of view,

and then things slow down, this character gets boring whatever. You know, it's hard

Follies had been written for a company

And we wrote eleven drafts, because after the first draft, we read through it,

and when it was setting the situation up, the people arriving at the party,

it was really interesting and atmospheric

And then as soon as the plot started to kick in, it started to, you know, get mechanical

Eventually about the filth draft, we got the point

Don't have a plot - Right

But you have to remember, the idea -

we thought no producer is ever going to produce a musical that has no plot

Just people talking, and getting drunk, and hating each other, and going home

One of my favourite words which is misused a lot is pastiche. But you do use that, especially in Follies

I wanted to see if I could write pastime

I know that sounds ridiculous since I made an entire career out of writing pastiche

But I wasn't sure at the time. I wasn't sure at the time

So I did that and I thought, yeah, I can write pastime

All those Follies songs, in fact all the pastime songs are, by nature of pastime,

imitations of very specific composers and lyric writers

And are these in some ways love-letters to that style?

Absolutely... Those are songs that I grew up on, so to speak, of course

I think it's a prerequisite for anybody who writes anything to know what the past is

If you're going to write a novel, you should have read Dickens

Particularly since it gives you something to steal - Yes!

And as - was it Stravinsky who said, Talent borrows, genius steals'?

You know, you write - because you want to tell this story about these characters,

and as you know, any story you tell has so many implications

But that's the great thing about the theatre as opposed to movies and TV - it's malleable

You can see a show with an entirely new cast, and a new director, and a new set of designs,

and get a whole different take on it

Every generation there's a new Hamlet, there's a new way of looking at Hamlet

It's not just Shakespeare who keeps the play alive: it's the directors and actors who keep that play alive

There's always another way of looking at it, and that's always a pleasure

It's an immense privilege for me, and I hope for you, to be around my hero Stephen Sondheim