Lifestyle
Stephen Sondheim is cool now
Here We Are was not yet in previews when Sondheim died. It is playing at The Shed in New York.
Emilio Madrid/Here We Are
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Emilio Madrid/Here We Are
Here We Are was not yet in previews when Sondheim died. It is playing at The Shed in New York.
Emilio Madrid/Here We Are
Stephen Sondheim — composer-lyricist for A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and more than a dozen other musicals — is having “a moment” as one of his Into the Woods lyrics might have put it.
Or perhaps a better fit for the Broadway legend, who was widely regarded as brilliant but an acquired taste when he died in 2021, would be a tweak to a lyric from the song “Children and Art” in Sunday in the Park with George:
“There he is, there he is, there he is,
Sondheim is everywhere,
Broadway must love him so much.”
Indeed, the hottest ticket on the Great White Way at the moment, judging from what people are willing to pay for it, is Sondheim’s notoriously troubled musical-that-goes-backwards, Merrily We Roll Along.
Its original Broadway run was a snappily disastrous 16 performances after it opened, and it has never entirely worked until now. But it’s currently playing to SRO crowds and standing ovations at Broadway’s Hudson Theater.
Meanwhile, the hottest ticket Off-Broadway, and already the longest running show ever to play at Manhattan’s new venue The Shed, is Here We Are, the musical Sondheim was still working on when he died.
Also playing to capacity crowds in New York, his penny-dreadful horror tale Sweeney Todd, starring Josh Groban at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. London’s petite Menier Chocolate Factory has Pacific Overtures. And on tour in the U.S. is a gender-reversed revival of Company, the last show the composer-lyricist saw before he died.
Side by Side by Side
All of the revivals were less successful in their original runs in the 1970s and ’80s. As I’ve been catching them, I can’t help thinking how pleased Sondheim would be — pleased and a bit surprised, no doubt — and wishing I could hear him talk about them, especially that new show, Here We Are.
And then, I discovered I could.
“I think the idea,” says his unmistakable growl on a scratchy cellphone recording, “is to do it in the spring of ’18.”
D.T. Max interviewed Sondheim several times in 2017 and 2018 for a New Yorker profile that he turned into a book — Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim was working at the time on what would become Here We Are, or rather, on its first half, which is based on the surrealist Luis Buñuel comedy The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, about three couples searching everywhere for a place to eat.
“There is a complete score [for that first act],” he tells Max in the recording, “but I want to add and tweak. Second act there’s a complete draft of the book [by David Ives based on Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel] and I’ve just begun the score.”
Art isn’t easy
Max had recorded his in-person interviews on his cellphone, and while the sound quality isn’t all one might wish, the conversations are intriguing. For instance, this, about how a producer’s stray remark decades ago planted the seed for Here We Are:
“It stems from a remark Hal Prince made in a cab once,” remembers Sondheim. “We were looking out at night — coming back from the theater or something — and he said, ‘Y’know what the dominant form of entertainment is? Eating out.’ Because all the restaurants were lit up and that’s what people were doing. They weren’t going to the theater, they were eating. And I thought, ‘Gee what an interesting idea.’ And I didn’t immediately think ‘oh that would make a musical’ but somehow, on seeing Discreet Charm…”
A scene from Here We Are.
Emilio Madrid/Here We Are
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Emilio Madrid/Here We Are
What Sondheim put to music and to his characteristically witty lyrics, was the frustration of diners who are perpetually being told they will not be getting food, or even coffee.
“We have no mocha.
We’re also out of latte.
We do expect a little latte later,
But we haven’t got a lotta latte now”
“I’m still feeling my way,” says the songwriter, “because it isn’t the kind of tight story that something like Sweeney or Merrily is. There are six main characters and they interact, but there’s very little plot.”
Opening Doors
There’s plenty of plot in his other shows — almost too much sometimes. Back in 1981, audiences got confused by the time-going-backwards thing in Merrily We Roll Along, and also couldn’t keep its characters straight. The original production tried to clear up who-was-who with T-shirts saying things like “Best Pal.”
The current production has a better trick: It cast Harry Potter‘s Daniel Radcliffe as the best pal; it’s easy for audiences to keep him straight. He’s playing a budding writer of musicals in the 1950s and ’60s — exactly what Sondheim was back then.
Lindsay Mendez, Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe in Merrily We Roll Along.
Matthew Murphy/Merrily We Roll Along
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Matthew Murphy/Merrily We Roll Along
“It relates to my life,” Sondheim tells Max. “It’s not about my life but it relates.” When asked how seeing a Merrily production generally hits him, he says that remembering the frantic, gotta-put-on-a-show craziness of his youth gets to him every time, especially the deep-in-rehearsal-panic lyric, “We’ll worry about it on Sunday.”
“I always cry,” he tells Max. “‘We’ll worry about it on Sunday’ always makes me cry.”
That song is called “Opening Doors,” and its next lyric is “we’re opening doors, singing ‘here we are’….”
And here we are, four decades later, with his final show — called Here We Are — feeling like a valedictory victory-lap, filled with references to his earlier work.
Finishing the hat
The man who wrote a song (and a book of lyrics) called “Finishing the Hat,” never finished that second act — in librettist Ives and director Joe Mantello’s hands, music disappearing from the characters’ lives becomes a plot point — but his legacy is secure. He talks in Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim about feeling low energy, and even old-fashioned.
“The kind of music I write has nothing to do with pop music since the mid-’50s,” he notes.
When gently reminded that he’s regarded as a genius who’s altered an art form, he deflects the compliment by citing “Stravinsky, Gershwin, Picasso” and saying he doesn’t belong in their company.
He may have been the only person who thought that. But anyway, it’s not up to him — posterity gets to decide who belongs in the genius pantheon.
And with stars and directors clamoring to do his shows and audiences embracing them as never before, the early verdict is clear: Stephen Sondheim’s work — all of it — is, as Merrily‘s characters sing of the show that came out of all those frantic rehearsals…
“a surefire, genuine,
Walk-away blockbuster,
Lines down to Broadway,
Boffola, sensational,
Box-office lollapalooza,
gargantuan hit!”
This story was edited for broadcast and digital by Jennifer Vanasco, and produced for radio by Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento.
Actor Peter Greene at a press conference in New York City in 2010.
Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
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Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
Actor Peter Greene, known for playing villains in movies including Pulp Fiction and The Mask, has died. Greene was found dead in his apartment in New York City on Friday, his manager and friend, Gregg Edwards, told NPR. The cause of death was not immediately provided. He was 60 years old.
The tall, angular character actor’s most famous bad guy roles were in slapstick and gritty comedies. He brought a hammy quality to his turn as Dorian Tyrell, Jim Carrey’s nemesis in the 1994 superhero movie The Mask, and, that same year, played a ruthless security guard with evil elan in the gangster movie Pulp Fiction.
“Peter was one of the most brilliant character actors on the planet,” Edwards said.
He went on to work steadily, earning dozens of credits in movies and on TV, such as the features Judgment Night, Blue Streak and Training Day, a 2001 episode of Law & Order, and, in 2023, an episode of The Continental, the John Wick prequel series.
At the time of his death, the actor was planning to co-narrate the in-progress documentary From the American People: The Withdrawal of USAID, alongside Jason Alexander and Kathleen Turner. “He was passionate about this project,” Edwards said.
Greene was also scheduled to begin shooting Mickey Rourke’s upcoming thriller Mascots next year.
Rourke posted a close-up portrait of Greene on his Instagram account Friday night accompanied by a prayer emoji, but no words. NPR has reached out to the actor’s representatives for further comment.
Peter Greene was born in New Jersey in 1965. He started pursuing acting in his 20s, and landed his first film role in Laws of Gravity alongside Edie Falco in 1992.
The actor battled drug addiction through much of his adult life. But according to Edwards, Greene had been sober for at least a couple of years.
Edwards added that Greene had a tendency to fall for conspiracy theories. “He had interesting opinions and we differed a lot on many things,” said Edwards. “But he was loyal to a fault and was like a brother to me.”
Acute solution
The method sometimes works for triangular prisms too. Measuring the height of the triangle at the end of the prism packaging, doubling it and adding it to the overall length of the box gives you the perfect length of paper to cut to cover its triangular ends with paper three times for a flawless finish.
To wrap a tube of sweets or another cylindrical gift with very little waste, measure the diameter (width) of the circular end and multiply it by Pi (3.14…) to find the amount of paper needed to encircle your gift with wrap. Then measure the length of the tube and add on the diameter of one circle to calculate the minimum length of paper needed. Doing this should mean the paper meets exactly at the centre of each circular end of the gift requiring one small piece of tape to secure it. But it’s best to allow a little extra paper to ensure the shape is completely covered or risk spoiling the surprise.
Circling back
If you have bought anyone a ball, then woe – spheres are arguably the hardest shape to wrap. It’s impossible to cover a ball smoothly using a piece of paper, not only because the properties of paper stop it from being infinitely bendable, but because of the hairy ball theorem, says Sophie Maclean, a maths communicator and PhD student at King’s College London. The theorem explains it is impossible to comb hair on a ball or sphere flat without creating at least one swirl or cowlick.
“If you think about putting wrapping paper round a ball, you’re not going to be able to get it smooth all the way round,” says Maclean. “There’s going to have to be a bump or gap at some point. Personally, I quite like being creative with wrapping and this is where I would embrace it. Tie a bow around it or twist the paper to get a Christmas cracker or a present that looks like a sweet.”
If paper efficiency is your goal when wrapping a football, you may want to experiment with a triangle of foil. An international team of scientists studied how Mozartkugel confectionery – spheres of delicious marzipan encased in praline and coated in dark chocolate – are wrapped efficiently in a small piece of foil. They observed that minimising the perimeter of the shape reduces waste, making a square superior to a rectangle of foil with the same area.
Krampuses take part in the annual Krampuslauf or “Krampus Run” on the evening of the Feast of St. Nicholas in the Austrian city of Salzburg. The tradition is centuries-old in the eastern parts of the European Alps.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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Rob Schmitz/NPR
SALZBURG, Austria — As you approach Salzburg’s Max Aicher Stadium on the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas, you’d be forgiven if you thought that, from a distance, there appeared to be a Chewbacca convention underway. As you got closer, though, you’d realize the few hundred mostly men dressed in furry brown costumes were not from a galaxy, far, far away, but had instead assembled for a far more traditional, Earth-bound reason: to play, en masse, the alpine character of Krampus, the monstrous horned devilish figure who, according to custom in this part of Europe, accompanies St. Nicholas as he visits children and assesses their behavior from the past year. While St. Nick rewards the good boys and girls, his hairy, demonic sidekick punishes the bad children.
“It’s basically a good cop, bad cop arrangement,” says Alexander Hueter, self-proclaimed Überkrampus of Salzburg’s annual Krampus Run, an event when hundreds of Krampuses are let loose throughout the old town of Salzburg, where they terrorize children, adults, and anyone within the range of a swat from their birch branch switches they carry.
Members of Krampus clubs throughout Austria and the German state of Bavaria gather at a local soccer stadium to change into their Krampus costumes.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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Rob Schmitz/NPR
When asked to explain why people in this part of Europe take part in this centuries-old tradition, Hueter skips the centuries of Roman, Pagan and early Christian history that, together, morphed into the legend of the Krampus figure and instead cuts straight to the chase: entertainment.
“If St. Nicholas comes to town on his own, it’s nice,” says Hueter with a polite smile, “but there’s no excitement. No tension. I mean, St. Nick is all well and good, but at the end of the day, people want to see something darker. They want to see Krampus.”
And if it’s Krampus they want, it’s Krampus they’ll get, says Roy Huber, who’s come across the border from the German state of Bavaria to take part in this year’s Krampus Run. “The rest of the year, I feel like a civilian,” Huber says with a serious face, “but when the winter comes, you have the feeling under your skin. You are ready to act like a Krampus.”
Huber stands dressed in a coffee-colored yak and goat hair costume holding his mask which has a scar along the left side of its face, two horns sticking out of the scalp, and a beautifully waxed mustache that makes his monstrous avatar look like a Krampus-like version of the 1970s Major League Baseball closer Rollie Fingers.
Roy Huber, from Bavaria, holds his Krampus mask prior to the Krampus Run. “When the winter comes, you get the feeling to be Krampus,” he says.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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Rob Schmitz/NPR
Behind Huber stands a Krampus with a red face and several horns that make up a mohawk. Benny Sieger is the man behind this punk version of a Krampus, and he says children are especially scared of his get-up.
“Very scared,” he says, “but if I act like a sensitive Krampus, it can go well. In fact, our hometown Krampus club hosts an event called ‘Cuddle a Krampus’ to ensure that we are not so scary.”
Sieger, though, says he shows no mercy for young adults, especially young men, who he says “are basically asking to be hit” if they come to a Krampus run. He shows off a long switch made up of birch tree branches that smarts like a bee sting when hit with it.
Normally Nicklaus Bliemslieder would be one of those young adults asking for it at the Krampus run — he’s 19 years old — but his mother boasts of how her son gamed the system by playing a Krampus for 14 years straight since he was 5 years old.
“I was never scared of being a Krampus,” he says, “but I was scared of the Krampus. The first time I put the mask on, I wasn’t scared anymore.”
Blieslieder, Siger, Huber and dozens of other Krampuses pile onto a row of city buses that will take them to Salzburg’s old town, singing soccer songs on the way to rile themselves up. In the town center, they put their masks on, the bus doors swing open, and dozens of Krampuses empty into the streets of downtown Salzburg, lunging at shoppers, swatting them with switches, their cowbells a-clanging. At the front of the procession dressed in a white and gold robe is St. Nicholas, holding a staff, handing out candy with a serene smile, and blissfully oblivious of the cacophony of blood-curdling chaos behind him.
After a city bus drops off more than 200 Krampuses at the entrance to the old town of Salzburg, the Krampuses start to put their masks on and get into character.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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Rob Schmitz/NPR
Salzburg resident Rene Watziker watches the Krampuses go by, his 4 1/2 year-old son Valentin perched on his shoulders, his head buried into the back of his father’s neck, and his oversized mittens covering his eyes in terror. As Valentin shakes in fear, his father tries to coax him out of it — unsuccessfully.
“He’s too scared of the Krampuses,” says Watziker, laughing. “This is great, though, because this is my childhood memory, too. I want him to have the same good memories of his childhood. He’s going to look at the video I’m shooting and then he’ll be very proud he came.”
Salzburg resident Rene Watziker watches the Krampuses go by, but his four-and-a-half year-old son Valentin perched is too scared to look at them.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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Rob Schmitz/NPR
Further down the pedestrian street, Krampuses hit onlookers with handfuls of branches and smear tar on people’s faces. Onlooker Sabeine Gruber, here with her 13-year-old daughter, manages to crack a smile at the spectacle, but she says the Krampus Run has gotten tamer with time. She points to the stickers on the backs of these Krampuses exhibiting numbers in case you want to complain that a particular Krampus hit you too hard.
“When I was a child,” says Gruber, “this was far worse. You were beaten so hard that you woke up the next day with blue welts on your legs. These days the Krampus run is more like a petting zoo.”
Esme Nicholson contributed reporting.
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