SIX BY SONDHEIM

US, 2013, 86 minutes, Colour.
Directed by James Lapine, Autumn de Wilde, Todd Haynes.

This is a very interesting entertaining documentary by Home Box Office. It is an introduction to any audience wanting to know about Sondheim. Those who are well aware of him, of his career, of his music and lyrics, of stage and screen performances, will know this material already.

On his personal life, the film fills in quite a dramatic background, about his family, and his non-– relating with his mother, of the family friendship with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein (Showboat with Jerome Kern, and all the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals), and Hammerstein being a mentor to Sondheim.

There is information about his early career, moving into such musicals in the 1950s as Gypsy and his collaboration with Leonard Bernstein for West Side Story.

The film then moves backwards and forwards in time in his career, and draws on very wide range of interviews with him over the decades. We hear his observations on his life, on his work, on different productions. Because the interviews range over the decades, we see and hear him as young, middle-aged, up to the age of 80 when this film was made.

We also hear a number of people paying tribute to him.

The title of the film indicates that it focuses on six of his songs.
1. "Something's Coming" (West Side Story),
2. "Opening Doors" (Merrily We Roll Along),
3. "Send in the Clowns" (A Little Night Music),
4. "I'm Still Here" (Follies),
5. "Being Alive" (Company) and
6. "Sunday" (Sunday in the Park With George).

James Lapine, who directed the whole film, directed the part on "Opening Doors" which features Darren Criss, Jeremy Jordan, America Ferrera; Todd Haynes directed the film on "I'm Still Here" which has Jarvis Cocker; and Autumn De Wilde directed McDonald? and Will Swenson in "Send in the Clowns."[

This enjoyable film can be seen as an entertaining introduction to one of the significant composers of the American musical and of production on Broadway.