Peter Stein and Lauren Mayer are members of a very exclusive club: They write and perform parodies of the songs of Broadway great Stephen Sondheim.
Both will show off their musical mimicry at “Simply Sondheim – a 75th Birthday Salute” on Monday, Dec. 5 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.
Also taking part in the event are musical theater and cabaret performers like Lisa Vroman, Andrea Marcovicci and James Brewer (the latter produced the show). They will be singing real Sondheim songs from classic shows like “Sweeney Todd,” “West Side Story,” “Follies,” “Company” and “Gypsy.”
But Stein and Mayer also get to write their own.
When not moonlighting as a Sondheim parodist, Stein serves as executive director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and a more insightful observer of modern cinema one could not find.
Yet whenever he gets the chance, Stein gets up on that stage and belts out Sondheimian quatrains like:
“A revue, sad but true, needs no innovation/A revue, nothing new, just a compilation/Simply quote what he wrote, and perhaps to thrill ya/Now and then, do some juvenilia.”
(That’s a spoof of “By the Sea” from “Sweeney Todd.”)
“I don’t have that many artistic heroes, but Sondheim is one of them,” says Stein. “He’s a remarkable craftsman and a unique voice. It’s now a long-accepted truth that he has furthered and deepened the uniquely American art form [of the Broadway musical].”
Mayer is a professional songwriter, voice teacher and San Mateo musician, and is no less in awe of Sondheim than her friend Stein.
“Sondheim has taken musical theater to a much more intelligent and sophisticated level,” she says. “He single-handedly took it from light and fluffy to really interesting.”
A San Francisco native, Stein has been a Sondheim fan ever since he co-starred in the Lowell High School production of “Follies” back in the 1970s. Later, while a student at Harvard, he wrote a fan letter to Sondheim and, to his great surprise, received a response.
“He was extremely encouraging about my writing and producing,” recalls Stein. “He said, ‘Write whatever you can, get it up on stage and make sure you have people who are not your friends give you honest feedback.’ I’ve kept his watchwords in my head ever since.”
Stein also received two tickets to opening night of the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd,” courtesy of Stephen Sondheim.
Mayer, an Orange County native (“where there were even fewer Jews than there are Democrats”), was a classical pianist who fell in love with American musical theater, Sondheim in particular, while a music student at Yale.
She later moved to the Bay Area (“to meet straight men,” she says), where she got into the local cabaret scene. Sondheim’s music has been part of her repertoire ever since. “I was always blown away by the depth of the writing and the sophistication of the rhyme schemes,” she says.
Mayer has written many Sondheim parodies, including “Ladies Who Lunch,” “Losing My Car” and “The Worst Pies in Hayward,” the latter cribbed from “Sweeney Todd.” For the upcoming 75th birthday tribute, she will sing a medley of her favorites.
Why does Stein take the time to write the parodies? “It’s just fun,” he says. “For me, to dive deep into these incredibly intricate and well-structured songs, you learn more about how to write a song.”
Showing the same chutzpah he needed to contact Sondheim in the first place, Stein has also sent one of his parodies to the master as a courtesy.
“He wrote back,” recalls Stein, “and said he really enjoyed it. Then he proceeded to critique it.”
“Simply Sondheim — a 75th Birthday Salute” takes place at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 5 at Kanbar Hall of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street, S.F. Tickets: $60. Information: (415) 292-1233 or www.a-jproductionsonline.com.
It was “Worst Thighs in Hayward” (at least at the MTLU Birthday party around 1990). At a later even I heard her do “I’m Still Square”.