An act of love to the master of musicals
Stephen Sondheim (New York, 1930 – Connecticut, 2021) changed the history of musical theater forever. A lyricist and composer of extraordinary lucidity, he took the genre beyond entertainment and turned it into a space for exploring the emotions, contradictions and vulnerability of the human being. Author of titles like company, follies, In Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George or Into the WoodsSondheim gave the musical a new emotional and intellectual density, without losing its humor or elegance.
“Sondheim’s greatness lies not only in the scores, but in the stories he tells us,” he explains Mario Gaswho has studied and represented him like few directors in our country. “Through farce, satire, lyricism or drama, he always aims at the same target: the human being and his contradictions as an individual and as a cog in an implacable society”.
A complicity that has made history
The relationship between Sondheim and Gas is part of the memory of Catalan musical theatre. The director from Barcelona has signed some of his most remembered productions, such as Gulf of Rome (1993), Sweeney Todd (1995), In Little Night Music (2000) or follies (2012). In one of those functions of Sweeney ToddSondheim himself applauded enthusiastically from the audience, an image that Gas still remembers with emotion.
“Without Sondheim, musical theater would perhaps be something else. He advanced it with masterful precision and inspiration”, says the director, who defines his universe as “unattainable, monumental, a monument to intelligence and human sensitivity”.
Now, three years after the composer’s death, Mario Gas remembers him with Sondheim x Sondheima musical evening at La Fàbrika Theater which brings together some of the artists who have accompanied it in this trajectory: Mónica López, Pep Molina, Vicky Peña, Xavier Ribera-Vall, Muntsa Rius, Teresa Vallicrosa, Xavi Fernández, Pep Pladellorens i Ferran Oltrawith Gas himself on stage.
“This concert is an act of love. An act of love towards a person who has allowed us to enjoy everything by interpreting, directing, participating – in short – in stagings of his extraordinary theatrical work”, explains Gas. “We will be a great tribe celebrating Stephen Sondheim. We want his music, his lyrics and his mark to travel to you contemporaneously, to reach you with emotion, with intensity and with all the humility we have.”
with Sondheim x Sondheim, The Factory it becomes a kind of secular temple of musical theater these days: a celebration of the genius who reinvented Broadway and left an indelible mark on our home as well.
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