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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation's Summer of Sondheim. From now through the beginning of September, we're going to revisit what amounts to a treasure trove of episodes we've recorded over the six years of this podcast that celebrate the genius of Stephen Sondheim.

[0:20] ♪ Musical number: "The Girls of Summer" — performed by Unknown artist ♪

[1:30] David Armstrong: Many of these episodes you'll probably be hearing for the first time, and all of them I feel confident are worthy of an encore. I thought the summer was grand, but here I am with the same undamaged heart that I had at the start. And of course, you can never get too much of Steve. Here we go.

[1:58] David Armstrong: Welcome to season two of Broadway Nation. The podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African-Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Everything Sondheim. Broadway Nation is inspired by a course that I teach on the history of the Broadway musical at the University of Washington School of Drama. In season one, over 37 episodes, we trace the more than 125-year history of the Broadway musical from its origins right up to today. In this new season, we will explore shows, creators, and topics that we just couldn't fit into last season, as well as those that we just barely scratched the surface of and now will dive into more deeply.

I also plan to cover quite a few new areas of interest that I've been researching during the hiatus. As always, this podcast will be a lively mix of music, history, opinion, analysis, and interviews with leading Broadway experts, artists, and practitioners. Today, my guest is Rick Pender, author of the brand-new and extraordinarily comprehensive The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia. Rick is a longtime member and former chair of the American Critics Association. He first began reviewing shows in 1985 for a public radio station that he managed at Northern Kentucky University. He later became the theater critic for City Beat, Cincinnati's alternative weekly newspaper, and eventually became its arts and culture editor.

During this time, he also often contributed articles to the Sondheim Review, a quarterly magazine that I know many of you will fondly remember. And then, for 12 years, from 2004 to 2016, he served as the Sondheim Review's managing editor. His latest venture is The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia, a 638-page overview of anything and everything related to Stephen Sondheim's work, life, and career. It was published just this past April, and since then has been selling briskly and receiving rave reviews. Hello, Rick. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[4:42] Rick Pender: Oh, thank you for the opportunity, David. It's my pleasure.

[4:45] David Armstrong: So, first of all, how did this book come about? How did you come to create a gigantic Sondheim Encyclopedia?

[4:51] Rick Pender: Well, I think, most specifically, it's rooted in my experience of editing the Sondheim Review, a quarterly magazine that came out for about 20-plus years. I wrote for it earlier under its first editor. He departed, and I think it was 2003 or 2004, and I took over, and for the final dozen or so years, I was its editor. So, I had managed lots of content during that period and had, of course, all the back issues for it. So, that was a great resource. It also had put me in touch with all sorts of people who were knowledgeable about Sondheim, had that kind of expertise, and then periodically put me in touch with Sondheim himself. So, when I got approached by a publisher who had done a number of other kinds of encyclopedias about people in the arts and pop culture and that sort of thing, they came to me, and they knew a little bit about my history and thought that I might be a good candidate for this.

And my first reaction was, okay, well, I know a number of people who can be contributors to this. That would, you know, be perfect. And they said, we really had in mind that you would write the whole thing. I said, oh my gosh, are you sure? And they said, well, that's what we're thinking that we really want. My contract was for 300,000 words, and I pretty much worked right up to that number. So, that's more or less how it came about. So, I had the background. I had the experience. I'd been a Sondheim fan for well before I began writing for the magazine, but that was when I really began to dive in.

[6:22] David Armstrong: Well, tell us a little bit about that. How did you become a Sondheim fan? What was your first exposure to Sondheim, your first understanding that this was this man writing these things that you liked?

[6:26] Rick Pender: I will answer that in two ways. One is that I loved some of the songs before I knew they were by Stephen Sondheim. I was a young teenager when the movie of West Side Story came out. And I just thought that some of those songs in there, Something's Coming, and some of those, I thought, these are fantastic lyrics. I was 13 or 14 years old. It wasn't like I had a lot of expertise. I just loved what it sounded like. Then the film of Gypsy came out, and I thought there was a lot of fun to that. I lived in Northeast Ohio at the time. I wasn't able to come to New York and see shows. So, it was more movies that were my initial experience. Really, the first time that I became very aware of Sondheim as a creator was with Company.

This would have been in about 1971. I was working part-time as a box office manager for a theater at a university in the Cleveland area, and they produced a production of Company. And I thought, wow, this is amazing music. So then, suddenly, Sondheim was on my radar. Follies came after that, and then A Little Night Music. And A Little Night Music just swept me away. The music in that is so charming and beautiful that I thought, I've got to find out more.

[8:06] Rick Pender: Slowly crawling towards the twilight, Brick is crawling the past the spring. The nightingale's waiting to sing. The rest of us wait on a string. The petunial sunset is rather an unsettling thing. So, those are really the things that drew me in.

[8:32] David Armstrong: Give us a sense of what this encyclopedia is all about. What does it encompass? How many entries? What's the scope of this book?

[8:37] Rick Pender: When I started, I brainstormed lots of things for potential entries, and I had well more than 200 possibilities. Things, people, shows, things about Sondheim that should be included. I whittled that down, and what I've ended up with is 131 entries. All of Sondheim's shows are covered. His contributions to works by others are encompassed in maybe in a singular entry. And then lots of things about people that worked on his productions, people who performed in them as actors and singers, designers, directors, his collaborators, of course, book writers, and those sorts of people. So, all of those are included, in addition to a goodly amount of biographical material about Sondheim himself. Of course, I'm sure the hardest part was figuring out what you were not going to include, what you had to leave out. How did you wrestle with that?

[9:31] Rick Pender: Well, that's a dangerous area, of course, because a lot of it involves the egos of performers and others who think that they should be included. But I would say that what I used as some of my criteria were people who had been maybe in multiple productions or people who had been nominated for Tony Awards. And those were the sort of fundamentals. Or if it was a singular performance but was particularly well received. So, like Donna Murphy in Passion. She's not done a lot of other Sondheim. That was the only role she originated, but I thought she has to be included.

[10:22] ♪ Musical number: "Loving You" — performed by Unknown artist ♪

[10:53] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Broadway Nation will be back right after this short break.

[11:05] David Armstrong: Hi, this is David Armstrong. And if you're enjoying this episode, I strongly suspect that you will want to read my new book, Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish, Queer and Black Artist Invented the Broadway Musical. On sale now wherever books are sold. And I'm very happy to report that the early reviews have been terrific. The esteemed author Jeffrey Bloch says that Broadway Nation is a fascinating, comprehensive and timely gem of a book that more than lives up to its promise of delivering no less than five books in one. Kudos to David Armstrong. And Tony Award winning lyricist David Zippel says that David Armstrong's insightful history of the evolution of the Broadway musical and its creators is captivating and comprehensive as well as indispensable.

The book is, of course, available on Amazon, but I recommend that you go to the publisher's website, bloomsbury.com, where you will currently receive a 10% discount. Again, like the podcast that inspired it, the book is titled Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish, Queer and Black Artist Invented the Broadway Musical. Now back to the show.

[12:15] David Armstrong: You mentioned that you wrote this all yourself, and that's unusual. Usually encyclopedias are done by a number of collaborators. Many, many people will contribute to it. Why did the publishers want it to be done this way?

[12:21] Rick Pender: Well, I'm going to be honest, and I think it's probably a product of the budget. If we had spread around the money that they were offering me, nobody would have made very much. So I think that was part of it. I do want to say this, though. I had one particular support that I have to single out. Mark Eden Horowitz, who is the music theater librarian at the Library of Congress and has written his own book about Sondheim, he was an immense help to me. He was a big help with the magazine. He was on our advisory board for that and constantly helped us. And then when I started working on this, he was actually involved. He had been in conversation with the publisher about possibly doing this, and he didn't have time.

But he said, why don't you talk to Rick Pender? He edited this magazine. He knows what he's doing. So Mark became involved more as a cheerleader for me, I guess. However, he had done a series of articles for the magazine called Biography of a Song. And he would take one song and wander through it in the most extraordinary detail. He would talk about the music theory behind the composition. He would talk about the choice of words for the lyrics. He would talk about how the song played a part in a show. And he often spoke about subsequent recordings beyond cast recordings of them. And I asked Mark if I might possibly use some of that material. Those pieces that he wrote were extraordinarily long, sometimes 5,000 or 6,000 words.

I cut most of them down to what I thought were the essentials and what would be useful for the encyclopedia to maybe 1,500 words. So I can't take full credit. And in fact, in every entry that is based on Mark's work, I give him due credit for his assistance with that. Here's a short excerpt from one of those entries, this one concerning the song Finishing the Hat. An enormous effort and Sir Rock.

[14:14] Rick Pender: Like obsession went into Sondheim's creation of this song. For "Finishing the Hat," Sondheim wrote 27 pages of notes and lyric sketches, generated 11 pages of typed lyric sheets with annotations, and produced 7 pages of music sketches and a 17-page final copy of the completed song. That's much more material than normally stands behind a song of such modest length and straightforward structure. The song was completed at 4 p.m. one day in the middle of Sunday's workshop production at Playwrights Horizons. Mandy Patinkin sang it in rehearsal between 5 and 5:30 p.m. After a strong, positive reaction from the cast, Patinkin delivered it in that evening's performance. I'm assuming that you had to draw from a lot of sources in addition to Mark for this book.

What kind of research did you have to do as you're putting this together? You obviously came in with a tremendous amount of knowledge, but as I found in putting this podcast together, everything I think I know, I do know a lot about it, but that leads to a whole bunch of things that I don't know anything about.

[15:04] David Armstrong: Well, I did have all the back issues of the magazine, but I will tell you the way I actually started was that I went to Washington. I went to the Library of Congress and met with Mark there, and he provided me with an astonishing resource. He had been keeping what he called scrapbooks, which were like clippings, reviews, feature articles, not actual archival material, but background material, and he loaned all of that to me. I spent about a week in Washington working at the library and going through some of these materials, and I think I got through maybe 10% of it. I said, "Mark, would you possibly lend this stuff to me?" He said, "You want to take it back to Ohio with you?" I said, "I promise I'll treat it with great care."

He said, "Okay." I believe I had five cartons of ring binders of material that came back and lived with me for about two years, and then beyond that, because of the work that I'd done on the magazine, I had a bookcase full of several shelves of all the kinds of things that I would be able to look up, most particularly, of course, Sondheim's two lyric study volumes, which were a fabulous resource with lots of first-person remarks by him about things. So those were the things that I drew upon particularly. I should also say that Meryl Seacrest's biography of Sondheim, which came out in '98 and covered most of his most active career, was a tremendous resource for me also.

[16:41] Rick Pender: And did you seek out other experts or the people themselves involved? Did you do firsthand interviews with people?

[16:46] David Armstrong: I did not extensively do that. There was plenty of material available, and because encyclopedias tend to be factual, I didn't want to plug a lot of opinion in. As I wrote about each show, I would try to capture some of the critical response to the original production, but that was about the only of that kind of commentary that I would draw into it. But there were times when I would reach out to various people and ask to clarify things, including Sondheim himself, who was always quite helpful to me.

[17:18] Rick Pender: Well, that was, of course, my next question. What has your interaction with Sondheim over the years been, and during this process, how often did you speak to him or reach out to him?

[17:24] David Armstrong: Well, let me rewind to when I took over the magazine back in the early 2000s. I was working as the arts editor at a weekly newspaper here in Cincinnati, and my deadline day was a Wednesday afternoon, and I had pretty well trained all my local contacts not to call me then because I was busy proofing pages and that sort of thing. One afternoon, my phone rang, and I answered it, and this voice said, "Hi, this is Steve." I'm thinking, "Steve who?" And he says, "Steve Sondheim." And I almost said, "Yeah, and I'm Abraham Lincoln." But that was indeed Sondheim. I had emailed him a question about something. I think that was during the time that "The Frogs" was being produced on Broadway with Nathan Lane in it.

And I think he was calling me with a clarification of something that I wanted to know a little bit more about. So that was the first time we talked. But then not long after that, I got invited to go to New York City, an organization there called the Young Presidents Organization. It's for business people, I believe are under 40. They had obtained Sondheim's presence for an after-dinner event. And Steve does not like to do public speaking. He's happy to sit on stage and have a conversation with somebody, but he doesn't want to prepare remarks and stand up and speak. So he suggested that I be the person. Now, I had not really, other than a few phone calls, had had no experience with him. I was a little daunted by the whole thing.

And I knew we'd be in front of a crowd, not necessarily of theater enthusiasts, but of young achievers, let's say. And we were at a dinner club that was in the theater district. And Steve arrived a little early. There was a reception beforehand. And he pulled me aside and said, "I'd like to have a little bit of time just to talk with you." I had tried in advance to propose some questions to him that I thought we might talk about. And he said, "No, I really would rather that you just ask me questions and then I can respond off the cuff. I'm not going to prepare a lot of remarks." But the other piece of that that was truly delightful was that the organizer of the event had lined up and let me know that there would be a couple of performers to do some music as interludes between our conversations.

So the first person who they had lined up was Raúl Esparza. Before he was terribly well-known, it was before he did the production of "Company." In fact, he was at that moment in time auditioning for John Doyle's production that was going to happen here in Cincinnati, where I live. So I got to see that production very early on. So here's Raúl. He was accompanied by Mary Mitchell Campbell, who was the person who orchestrated that production for John Doyle. I did get an advance notice as to what he would be performing, including "Franklin Shepard, Inc." And that was just a delightful one to listen to. And it was fun to talk to Sondheim a little bit about that. And then the program concluded with two other performers. It was Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley. They have a Sondheim medley that's on one of their recordings. It's their recording called "Opposite You."

[20:22] ♪ Musical number: "Move On" — performed by Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley ♪

[21:37] Rick Pender: So that was sort of where I first got involved with him. Then it was about a year later, Sondheim came to Cincinnati for a couple of the tech rehearsals of "Company." And knowing that he was going to be here, I asked if he would come to our local public radio station where I did interviews for the local arts program. And he said, sure, he would. We talked for almost an hour. And when we finished, he said to me, "You were incredibly well prepared for this," which I think is probably the highest piece of praise I could ever hope for. Absolutely. He came back a few years later. He was being given an award by our local United Arts Drive. And then he was back again when Doyle directed another actor-musician production, this one of "Merrily We Roll Along."

And I did a briefer interview with him then. So those all sort of laid a foundation for me working on this. And he also, I guess I should mention, as the lyric studies came out, I did phone interviews with him about those for the magazine. So I can't say that we were back and forth a lot. But when I did the biography of him, which is the longest entry in the book, I did go back and forth with him a number of times about details in that that I wanted to be sure were accurate about awards that he had won, a bit about his personal life. He was always astonishingly responsive to me. I would send him an email, and within 24 hours, I would typically have a response from him.

[23:23] Rick Pender: What was his reaction to having an entire encyclopedia devoted to him? Did he have any response to that when he first heard about it?

[23:27] David Armstrong: He didn't say it to me in so many words, but I certainly had the feeling that he was pleased about it. I mean, it wouldn't be. You know, I mean, the fact that I'd already edited a quarterly magazine about him, you know, I suspect when that started, which was before my involvement, he was pretty pleased about that. Although I will also say about the whole run of that magazine, he read it very thoroughly. And there were times when he would amplify something that was said. There were times when he would take exception with something that was said. He was not at all hesitant to send us a correction or say, "Well, that was totally wrong." And we always put that in the magazine. And we felt it was great that he was paying that kind of attention. He had no stake in the magazine other than that he was the subject of it. But it was great to have that kind of feedback from him.

[24:20] Rick Pender: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's any other Broadway creator who has had a magazine devoted to their work and now an encyclopedia devoted to their work. What about Sondheim rates this kind of attention, this kind of scholarship, this kind of delving so deeply into his work, his life and his work, really?

[24:33] David Armstrong: Well, the simple answer to that is the body of work. I mean, the man has created 18 shows that have been on Broadway one way or another, and many of them revived. So that in itself is a body of work that is well beyond almost anyone else. Add to that the fact that he is both the composer and the lyricist. So many long, successful teams, Kander and Ebb, Rodgers and Hammerstein, you know, had a lyricist and a composer who worked together. So there's another reason. The other thing that I always think is the case is that you can't see one Sondheim show and say, "Well, if you've seen one, you've seen them all," because everyone is different. If you didn't know that he was the man behind them, you'd been living somewhere on another planet and came back and heard several of those shows.

You'd think, "Well, who did this and who did that? These don't sound the same." "Pacific Overtures" following on "A Little Night Music" or "Assassins," these shows are so different from one another. And it's because of the way that he created music that was suitable to tell the story and to portray the characters. And not that there aren't other people in musical theater who do that, but he did it so successfully and so thoroughly and with so much detail. I think that's the other reason that justifies this kind of scholarship around his career. And I also think the depth of his shows and the complexity of each individual show, you can spend hours, weeks, years discovering how he's layered these shows.

I've had the pleasure of directing "Sweeney Todd" now three, four times, and I could do it once a year, every year for the rest of my life and never feel like I exhausted all the possibilities. All of his shows have that kind of depth. The humanity that comes through them, I think, is such a marvelous thing. That is a through line in all of these. He so gets inside the heads of these characters and creates them in memorable ways. I should also say that he's very quick to want to brush aside being singularly credited for his shows. His book writers are so important to him, and the music that he has composed, the songs that he has created, are derived from material that his book writers have written or that he's asked them to write. Write a monologue for this character, and then he will take phrases from that and create a song.

[27:00] Rick Pender: You mentioned that the biography of Sondheim is the longest entry in the encyclopedia. What's the shortest entry in the encyclopedia?

[27:04] David Armstrong: The one I like to single out is called "Pencils and Paper." He has some rather idiosyncratic notions about the paper on which he writes. He likes to write on the yellow legal pads, lined legal pads. He writes on every other line because then he can put little notes in between or maybe jot down some musical notation if he chooses to. But most interestingly are the pencils that he loves. They are called Black Wings. They are a very soft lead, often more used for illustrators. He likes them because they're soft. He says it causes him to get up and sharpen them periodically so he can fiddle around more. And it's an interesting story. Those came available in the 1930s around the time that Sondheim was born and were available until the late '90s. But then the company went out of business.

But Bert Shevelov, who was one of his collaborators on "Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," told him that he might want to think about stockpiling some of these kinds of things. So he said he had a whole closet full of Black Wing pencils. They've gone back into production. Another company picked them up and are reproducing them. They're fatter than normal pencils, and the lead is somewhat softer. But they also have a sort of squashed square eraser in a metal holder on the back end. And he said that that way they don't roll off his table or his couch when he's laying down to write something.

[28:24] Rick Pender: That's funny. During this process of putting this book together, how long did it take you to do it?

[28:29] Rick Pender: Writing altogether was about 18 months, from early 2018 to the fall of 2019. The plan originally had been for the book to come out somewhat earlier, but a certain little pandemic got in the way, and there were a lot of delays with the publisher. But it was about 18 months of work. I would still say that seems amazingly fast for the scope of what's in there. I'm quite surprised it was that quickly. I thought you would say three or four years. I didn't eat or sleep throughout that whole period and stuff.

[28:56] David Armstrong: But you had another job you had to do.

[28:58] Rick Pender: That's true.

[28:59] David Armstrong: In talking to Sondheim, or really in anything with all of your entries, are there things out there that are not true, that have been generally accepted? And how often did you have to fact-check the things you were discovering, or even things that Sondheim himself says? Is he always accurate in his memories of what happened?

[29:17] Rick Pender: He is frighteningly accurate. He has the most amazing memory. I mean, you can talk to him about working with Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins and Arthur Lawrence on West Side Story, and he'll remember almost like day to day. So he's particularly good with that. I never felt the need to fact-check him. Sometimes I would read accounts of things written by someone else where they differed, and he could clarify those for me pretty readily. But beyond that, I don't think there's a lot of untruths that are commonly spread around out there about him. The only thing that occurs to me is that I think that for a while he had a reputation of being rather aloof and not willing to be interviewed and that sort of thing.

I never experienced that with him. He did all those stage interviews with Frank Rich some years ago. He loves to talk about his shows. I mean, early in his career, perhaps he was a little more private personally. But I think as fame overtook him, he decided that there was value in getting out there and talking about things. And he never said to me, no, I'm not going to do an interview with you. I had the same experience when he came to Seattle with Frank Rich to do a big lecture series here. I was asked to introduce them because of my position at the theater. We'd done a lot of Sondheim work. I'd met him on a couple of occasions, but especially that night, we spent about an hour ahead of time at a cocktail reception.

And he couldn't have been more personable, not just to me, but to everyone who was there. He was very engaging and very willing to share himself and his work and his thoughts with everybody. I do think that reputation did precede him at some point, and maybe there was a period he went through. I also have to say, I think as he became more comfortable, at least I surmise, I don't know this for a fact, but that he became more comfortable with his sexuality, he also relaxed in many, many other ways in his life. I think so. And he says that in some ways, there's a little bit of reflection of it in Seacrest's book, in her biography. And also, I did have to ask him a few questions. You know, he was married in 2017, and I didn't have any reporting about that. So I pretty much had to go to him and said, Oh yeah, Jeff and I were married on New Year's Eve in 2017.

[31:40] David Armstrong: So there's no trying to hide any of that any longer.

[31:55] Rick Pender: Let's go back to your personal experience with Sondheim. What is your favorite Sondheim show?

[32:01] Rick Pender: You could ask me that question next week, and I would probably tell you something different. Often, it's the one I've most recently seen a production of or listened to the cast recording of. For a long time before I got so deeply engaged in Sondheim's work, I said A Little Night Music. It's such an approachable, lovely, charming show. It matches up with my sense of humor, I guess. So for all of those reasons, it was a favorite. But then Sweeney Todd came along. Oh my gosh, what an amazing show. And then Assassins. And I just love, I mean, I could say I love and fill in the blank with any Sondheim show. And there's one or two. I just recently got the newly released recording of Anyone Can Whistle, and I listened to that. Have you had a chance to?

[32:43] David Armstrong: I haven't heard the new one yet.

[32:45] Rick Pender: Well, it's interesting, but it's one wacky show. And I would never list that one as my favorite. And apparently that's true of a lot of people. People ask me what my favorites are. As you just said, it's the hardest question, and it changes all the time. But I think it's also very different from what I think the best shows are. So what do you think is the best Sondheim show?

[33:01] Rick Pender: Well, again, that depends on your criteria, I suppose. I think that the most magnificent accomplishment is Sweeney Todd. I think that's the one that people will most remember years and years and years from now. But I also profoundly admire Pacific Overtures, which apparently he and several of the other collaborators sort of had to be dragged into kicking and screaming because they said, what do I know about people from Japan and history and all of that sort of thing? And yet, he created music that seemed entirely appropriate for that story. And so to me, that's a magnificent accomplishment. To go back and listen to a show, though, one that I always respond to, I guess, because of my own artistic interests, is Sunday in the Park with George.

And there's so much in that about the creative process. And although a lot of people want to try to construe some of the things in that as Sondheim making statements about himself. Well, I don't much buy into that. I mean, his feelings about art and creation have to inform some of that sort of thing. But he was writing for the characters, for them to engage and reveal themselves. So I'm not answering your question very specifically, because there's so many ways of looking at them. And I admire the early work that he did with others. But I think the things that I am most impressed with that will last longer are those works mostly from the 70s and early 80s that were his own creations. By far the most popular show was Into the Woods. I mean, when we did listings in the time review of upcoming productions, the section listing Into the Woods usually had as many as all the other shows combined.

[34:47] David Armstrong: So I'll make it even harder. What's your favorite Sondheim song?

[34:53] Rick Pender: I would prefer to answer what is my favorite Sondheim song from name the show. He always says that one of his favorites is Someone in a Tree from Pacific Overtures. And I've gone back and listened to that one repeatedly. And it is a fascinating piece with the differing perspectives. I see everything. I was someone in a tree. Tell him what I see. Some of them have gold on their coats. One of them has gold. He was younger then. Someone crawls around passing notes. Someone very old. He was only 10. And there's someone in a tree. Or the day is incomplete. Without someone in a tree, nothing happens here. I am hiding in a tree. I'm a fragment of the day. If I weren't, who's to say? Things would happen here the way that they happened here.

It's the fragment, not the day. It's the pebble, not the stream. It's the ripple, not the sea. Not the building, but the beam. Not the garden, but the stone. Not the tree. Someone in a tree. So I would say that. But then there's a little priest from Sweeney Todd. I mean, who doesn't love that? It's like picking your favorite child. I just can't do it.

[36:31] David Armstrong: I knew it would be hard. What's your favorite song? My favorite Sondheim song? The one that popped to my head first was A Weekend in the Country. I knew that you might be asking me this question, and I wrote that one down. But then I thought, lots of people know that. He objects to the people who have said, nobody can hum his songs. Well, for God's sake, you go to see that one, and that gets stuck in your head. And he said, it's because it's got like 17 choruses to it. You hear it over and over again. And that's why so many people, it registers with them. It's also just a brilliant piece of storytelling, which is why I admire it. You know, if you look just like a standalone song, Anyone Can Whistle is one of my favorite songs. But there's so, so many. It would be almost impossible to pin it down.

[37:16] David Armstrong: Yeah. I think you're going to benefit greatly from Sondheim fans tend to be completists. They want to have everything Sondheim. But why do you think Sondheim fans, or even interested occasional fans, what is it about this encyclopedia that makes it something you want to have on your bookcase?

[37:35] Rick Pender: Well, if you've seen three Sondheim shows that you've enjoyed, and then you hear that Sunday in the Park with George is being produced in Chicago, well, you could go to this and read about it. You'll get a synopsis of the show. You'll get commentary about it, comments about some of the music, its critical reception, some of the actors who originated roles. So it's a good reference tool to have for that. If you want to know more about Sondheim himself, you don't have to read a whole book. I mean, there's a wonderful biography out there. Although there's 20 more years of his life that I hope somebody sets out to write about. But we've got that kind of information in there. And the book includes information about a lot of different people who've worked with him, who have played important roles in the theater.

He worked with 10 different directors, from Jerome Robbins, who scared him. Sondheim was the youngest guy working on that production, and Robbins gave him grief all the time about things. Then he worked so successfully with Hal Prince for many of his greatest works. But then after the lack of success of Merrily We Roll Along, he almost thought about getting out of the business and then met with James Lapine. And Lapine is an interesting combo package because he's written the books for some of the shows and then staged them. So these are all people who had careers that were, of course, important to Sondheim, but beyond Sondheim. So if you care about musical theater in general, I think you will find things.

I've also got pieces in it about performers who were known for Sondheim shows, but for other things like Ethel Merman, for instance. I got a fairly long piece about her. She's quite the character. And she didn't want a young, inexperienced composer working on her show, even though Arthur Lawrence lobbied for Sondheim to do it. She wanted somebody that she'd worked with before. So Julie Stein got brought in. Sondheim sort of grudgingly said, well, all right. Hammerstein sort of coaxed him to do it as he had done on West Side Story. And he and Arthur Lawrence and Stein had a fabulous time working together. And they cranked that show out in about three months. I mean, it's one of the great Broadway shows and they had a great time working on it.

So to read about Julie Stein, who did lots of other great work, it's a book that would give you that kind of background. There's nothing more fun than a book you can page through and not necessarily read from the beginning to the end, but just turn to any page and find an entry and be fascinated by it. I think that's part of the joy of this kind of book.

[40:04] David Armstrong: I agree. I mean, I like flipping open a dictionary. I go looking for the right word and suddenly I'm three pages beyond it reading, I never heard of that word before. So yeah, I hope that it will have that impact. One other thing I will say is that if you're interested in Broadway as an industry, I've got lots of stuff about the creatives, people who designed the sets, orchestrators. I have a whole entry about orchestrators and Jonathan Tunick did a lot of that stuff, but there's other people, especially some of the earlier works, fascinating people to read about. So it's all there. 300,000 words of it.

[40:40] Rick Pender: 300,000 words. Wow. So thank you, Rick Pender, for joining me today. It's been a great pleasure talking to you about the Sondheim Encyclopedia.

[40:46] Rick Pender: Well, your pleasure is only matched by mine and more for the opportunity to do this. So thank you so very much.

[40:55] ♪ Musical number: "Invitation" — performed by the cast of A Little Night Music ♪

[41:17] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. If you would like to hear more about Stephen Sondheim, I invite you to check out episodes 12 and 13 of Broadway Nation that outline the direct connection between Oscar Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is available in hardcover and ebook from Rowan and Littlefield. However, if you go to Rick Pender's website, rickpenderwrites.com, you can find a code that provides you a 30% discount. I've included that link in the show notes. Special thanks to Gayle Leander-Wright for her assistance with this episode, and to everyone at KVSH 101.9 FM, the voice of beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

If you enjoyed this podcast, I invite you to join my Broadway Nation Facebook group, where there's a large and lively community of musical theater enthusiasts. We have a great deal of fun, and I feel certain that you will too. See you there!