Sondheim Tribute: Send In the Crown

NEW YORK — Stephen Sondheim--the Broadway poet of love and longing (“Send in the Clowns,” “Not a Day Goes By”) and sophisticated satire (“Company,” “A Little Night Music”)--was honored Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall with a tribute to his contributions to American music. In contrast to a legendary 1973 Sondheim tribute that featured Angela Lansbury, Chita Rivera and other stars re-creating songs from their roles in Sondheim shows, “Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall” emphasized unusual casting choices and a lighthearted approach to Sondheim’s music and lyrics.

The tribute, a benefit for Carnegie Hall, will be televised next spring on PBS’ “Great Performances” series.

Performing underneath the gilt-edged arches onstage at Carnegie Hall, the Harlem Boys Choir joined Broadway performer Betty Buckley in songs about children from two Sondheim shows, “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Into the Woods,” while Glenn Close sang “Send In the Clowns” and the high-haired female pop group Betty did a rock ‘n’ roll version of “I Never Do Anything Twice,” from the movie “The Seven Percent Solution.”

Liza Minnelli, dancing atop a grand piano, joined cabaret pianist Billy Stritch and a chorus line of dancers in “Back in Business,” from the movie “Dick Tracy.” Broadway star Dorothy Loudon delighted the audience with a comic, schizophrenic combination of two Sondheim songs, “Losing My Mind” from “Follies” and “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from “Company.”

In addition to the offbeat approaches to Sondheim’s work, the tribute, directed by Scott Ellis, also included performances of vintage Sondheim songs by Broadway stars Madeline Kahn, Patti LuPone and Bernadette Peters. In a number that illustrated Sondheim’s use of overlapping voices and witty rhymes, Kahn as a reluctant bride (joined by Mark Jacoby as her groom and Jeanne Lehman as an ironic commentator) sang about how she was definitely not “Getting Married Today,” speculating hopefully, “Perhaps I’ll collapse in the apse.”

At the end of the concert, which ran more than two hours, Sondheim himself appeared briefly, to a standing ovation. The 62-year-old Sondheim seemed boyish and shy as he thanked the performers and producers of the event and praised Carnegie Hall. The evening, he said, was “ostensibly about my music but is really about this building,” a wedding-cake-style arena that Sondheim compared to a musical cathedral.

Sondheim, who recently turned down the prestigious National Medal of Arts award because of what he called a climate of “censorship and repression” at the National Endowment for the Arts, made no mention of his views on the NEA. But, in his comments about Carnegie Hall, he noted that it was fitting for the last number of the evening to be about an artist. The finale: the title song from “Sunday in the Park With George,” Sondheim’s musical based on a painting by Georges Seurat.