Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021)

Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

A.G.’s journalistic triumphs over 25 years at The New York Times include drinking with Bea Arthur (at a Trump hotel), Wendy Wasserstein (at an Italian restaurant) and Peter O’Toole (in his trailer on a mini-series set near Dublin). It is sheer coincidence that these people are now dead.

At The New York Times, she has been Arts & Leisure television editor and co-film editor, a theater reviewer on WQXR Radio, a film columnist for the Times TV Book and an editor in the Culture, Book Review, Travel, National, Foreign and Metro sections. Her first theater review for The Times appeared in 1997, assessing “Mrs. Cage,” a one-act about a housewife suspected of shooting her favorite supermarket box boy. The review was mixed.

Outside The Times, A.G. has been the author of four nonfiction books; a longtime writer for travel magazines, women's magazines and travel guidebooks; a lecturer at universities and for women’s groups; and a moderator for theater, book, film and television panels at the 92nd Street Y and the Paley Center for Media.

If she were a character on “Mad Men,” she’d be Peggy.

“So here’s to the girls on the go/Everybody tries/Look into their eyes/And you’ll see what they know/Everybody dies.”

– Joanne, “The Ladies Who Lunch,” Act II, “Company” (1970)

Be sure to read Bruce Weber’s Sondheim obituary in The New York Times. And to check out The Times’s “The Last Word” video feature on him. Be sure to watch the “CBS Sunday Morning” segment. And take in these particularly, yes, gratifying words from “There Will Never Be Another Stephen Sondheim,” by Peter Marks of The Washington Post.

“We were in awe of the deftness of Sondheim’s grasp of character, of plot, of music genres, and how he could take all these threads and spin them with such a *refinement of intellect**. Never does a Sondheim show sing down to an audience. Maybe that is why he became such a hero to me.*

But Sondheim’s words and music live on a whole other plane of invention — and that was *what dazzled us**, show after show. He understood to stunning effect the* unique gratification of the ideal syllable landing on the perfect note.”

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Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

Dec 1 Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021)

“So here’s to the girls on the go/Everybody tries/Look into their eyes/And you’ll see what they know/Everybody dies.”

– Joanne, “The Ladies Who Lunch,” Act II, “Company” (1970)

“We were in awe of the deftness of Sondheim’s grasp of character, of plot, of music genres, and how he could take all these threads and spin them with such a refinement of intellect. Never does a Sondheim show sing down to an audience. Maybe that is why he became such a hero to me.

But Sondheim’s words and music live on a whole other plane of invention — and that was what dazzled us, show after show. He understood to stunning effect the unique gratification of the ideal syllable landing on the perfect note.”

Dec 1 Can't Get to the Theater? See/Watch 'Tick, Tick ... Boom!'

Sep 2 BEANIE FELDSTEIN, BEANIE FELDSTEIN, BEANIE FELDSTEIN

“We were in awe of the deftness of Sondheim’s grasp of character, of plot, of music genres, and how he could take all these threads and spin them with such a *refinement of intellect**. Never does a Sondheim show sing down to an audience. Maybe that is why he became such a hero to me.*

But Sondheim’s words and music live on a whole other plane of invention — and that was *what dazzled us**, show after show. He understood to stunning effect the* unique gratification of the ideal syllable landing on the perfect note.”