Steve Couldn’t “Just Criticize Myself”
Stephen Sondheim, whose new book, “Finishing the Hat,” should be on your must-read or at least your must-buy-for-show-queen-friend list, has given an interview to Terry Gross of NPR. (Audio here.) Of the book’s mission he says: “”I thought, ‘I can’t just criticize myself,'” he explains. “So I looked very carefully at the dozen best musical writers in the American musical theater who preceded me, and looked at their work and talked about it a little bit. … I go into a little detail on what I think are the flaws or weaknesses or lazinesses of some of those people, and then [I talk about] the people, the bulk of whose work is solid and skillful and pointed.”
