Geraldine Turner Remembers Stephen Sondheim

Geraldine Turner reminisces about the late, great Stephen Sondheim, his songs and his shows, with Neil Litchfield.

Geraldine Turner first met Stephen Sondheim in 1977 when she was part of the International Music Theatre Forum at the Sydney Conservatorium, for which director Hal Prince, My Fair Lady lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and Steven Sondheim came to Australia.

After singing in two musicals at the Australian Musicals Day – the title role in That Mrs Langtry and a musical version of Ruth Park’s novel The Harp in the South - Geraldine received a note from Hal Prince asking if she would like to have supper with them.

“When I walked in, Steve Sondheim was sitting there with a huge didgeridoo which he didn't let go of all night. He’d just bought it from the Sydney Opera House, where he’d done a tour.

“That began my acquaintance with both Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim, and over the years they've been very kind to me, writing notes about various performances, etc., etc."

What was it like meeting Stephen Sondheim as a young performer?

“It was just like having a dinner party with anybody, except this was a giant of the American musical theatre.”

Geraldine had recently played Petra in the Australian premiere of A Little Night Music.

“Stephen knew I'd done that because he always kept abreast of whatever productions of his shows were going on. I found him to be charming and terribly kind – they both were actually, and very formal in that kind of American way. When I walked into the room, they both stood. They were charming, told great stories and we laughed all night. It was just a great evening.”

Fast forward to the early 80s when Geraldine recorded her first Sondheim album - Old Friends - The Songs of Stephen Sondheim.

“I didn't know when I recorded it, but I was the first artist in the world to record a solo Sondheim album. Soon after that Cleo Laine brought one out, then Julie Wilson, then Barbra Streisand brought out her Broadway album, which had lot of Sondheim on it. I found myself on the cover of the American magazine ‘Show Music’ with Julie Wilson and Cleo Laine, with Stephen Sondheim in the middle, and we were called ‘Sondheim’s Ladies’.”

Not everything was coming up roses, though, when Geraldine recorded volume two.

“We recorded a couple of early songs that Stephen wrote when he was in college. I wasn't going to release them without his permission, so I got in touch. He wrote back and said, ‘definitely not’. Then he started writing back and forth about how he didn't like some of the chord structures and arrangements that we changed. I wrote back and said, of course I want to honour your work but who's going to buy my album if I do the original Broadway arrangements. People would rather buy the Broadway cast. I'm not a famous person like, say, Barbra Streisand.

“He wrote back and said, but Barbra respects me, why can't you Geraldine. I didn't know whether to be flattered or upset. I think I felt flattered to be quoted in the same sentence as Barbra Streisand. So, we just had to agree to disagree, but it didn't ruin our friendship. Every time I went to New York I would call him or he would call me and sometimes we’d have coffee.

“Along with everyone else, I feel that the world's never going to be the same now.

“I remember Steve saying years ago, ‘now that Disney's moved into Broadway, Broadway will never be the same’.

“He was a fantastic person and I'm so privileged to have known him over the years.”

For a musical theatre performer, what is it that makes Sondheim so great?

“I guess it's appealing to the actor in you because he's done it all for you, unlike some other composers where you might have to bring something to it. Of course, you have to bring your talent to it. You’ve just got to look at the text, play it honestly and follow the punctuation marks. It's all there. He's written the character into the song and you just have to do it the way he wrote it. That's the way to sing Sondheim.”

He wasn’t just a songwriter, then, but a dramatist of songs, I suggest.

“And a wonderful observer of humankind. His songs of longing are particularly wonderful. Passion springs to mind in that way.”

When I asked about a favourite Sondheim role or song, Geraldine was reluctant to choose.

“I did a Mrs Lovett that I think was very different from other readings, and I'm proud of that. It’s probably the best all-round role of my career, apart perhaps from Nancy in Oliver! It just fit me like a glove, but all the Sondheim roles I've played have been absolutely wonderful.

“When I first saw Sweeney Todd on Broadway I adored it - it was at the Uris Theatre, in that huge barn of a place and had that huge set, because they had to fill the stage, but in fact it’s a small story.

“When we did the Melbourne Theatre Company production, we had a pared down orchestra. I was a little a little young to play Mrs Lovett, though now with the film with Helena Bonham Carter, you can be young and play it. Roger Hodgman directed and Peter Carroll was Sweeney. We decided together that the show is about obsession and that Mrs Lovett was obsessed sexually with Todd - that she was in love with him - so that was a great clue to me to playing the character. By the time you get to the end act one, when we did 'A Little Priest', we played the black comedy in the song, but by the end of it, it’s as if the song turned us both on and we had this huge passionate kiss … then the blackout. Then by the time you get to “By the Sea”, where she's rabbiting on about wanting to go and live by the sea in this lovely place, and we can do this and we can do that - by then he's bored with her sexually. That interpretation of the whole show worked very well.”

Geraldine as Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd.

I encouraged Geraldine to take me down a path of other Sondheim songs or roles and her interpretation of them.

“You approach any song in the same way if you're playing a character - you know where you're up to in the story, what your character is doing, and your motivation for singing that song. Sondheim said that the difference between musicals and plays is that the emotion gets so much, the stakes get so high, that you have to move into music. It's a heightened reality - rather than speaking you must sing. If a musical is not written like that it's not a good musical.

“Then sometimes it's different again. If everyone's left the stage, and you're singing a monologue - that's real inner thoughts, which he’s very good at writing - like “Moments in the Woods”, the Bakers Wife’s song just before she gets stomped on by the giant. That is totally internal monologue, and he manages to make it funny as well, even though it’s tragic.”

In fact, Geraldine’s first Sondheim song on a commercial stage was an internal monologue too, ‘The Miller’s Son’ in A Little Night Music.

“It's a fabulous song - a gift - and to give it to a minor character is a really interesting and brave thing to do.

“I love A Little Night Music. It's his most perfect musical. I never get tired of it. I did it again for the Sydney Theatre Company, playing Désirée, in 1990 - and played the same role 13 years later in New Zealand for an opera company. It was interesting because I'd never repeated a role before. Opera singers play roles again all the time, but musical theatre people usually don't. It was strange, because I found that I didn't really have to relearn the dialogue. It was all there. I found it comforting, that all the roles you play in your life are probably somewhere in your brain. You think you've forgotten them, but you’ve just pushed them into a little vault in your brain and once you open that door it all floods back. I was doing a totally different production, but the lines were there.

“It's a great, great part and he wrote it for a non-singer, Glynis Johns, which is why you don't have to hold a lot of notes in ‘Send in the Clowns’. He's written that on purpose for a non-singer, but gee, for a non-singing song it's pretty bloody good.”

Geraldine as Désirée in A Little Night Music.

In the end, what makes Steven Sondheim so fabulous as a composer / lyricist for musical theatre performers?

“He writes with such layers - not that I'm suggesting someone like Irving Berlin did that any less. Berlin was a great tunesmith, wrote wonderful lyrics and was fantastic in an entirely different way, but Sondheim is a great observer of life. He stands at the side, like Joanne does in Company, and watches life and comments on it, and comments on the nuances and the follies in relationships, and that's all very good fodder for a singing actor.

“I think Sunday in the Park with George is brilliant - writing songs about making art is such a fantastic thing to have done.”

Irving Berlin wrote ‘standards’, though, very much to a set formula for lyric and melody, but Sondheim likes to break formula doesn't he?

“A lot of people say he doesn't write good melody. I disagree. I think he writes terrific melodies, and the way he sits the lyric on the musical phrase is perfection.”

Could you share a favourite example or two of the way he does that?

“I love – ‘then you career from career to career’ - in ‘I’m Still Here’. What a great notion that is. And in the song ‘Johanna’ from Sweeney Todd – ‘I feel you, Johanna. And one day, I’ll steal you’ – that’s the most perfect lyric, and the way it sits on the music is beautiful.”

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Geraldine Turner has recently published her memoir Turner's Turn.

Click here to buy your copy of Turner's Turn at Book Nook.