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Summary
Summary
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the iconic musical Sunday in the Park with George
Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George . In 1982, James Lapine, at the beginning of his career as a playwright and director, met Stephen Sondheim, nineteen years his senior and already a legendary Broadway composer and lyricist. Shortly thereafter, the two decided to write a musical inspired by Georges Seurat's nineteenth-century painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte .
Through conversations between Lapine and Sondheim, as well as most of the production team, and with a treasure trove of personal photographs, sketches, script notes, and sheet music, the two Broadway icons lift the curtain on their beloved musical. Putting It Together is a deeply personal remembrance of their collaboration and friend - ship and the highs and lows of that journey, one that resulted in the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning classic.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The making of a Broadway hit requires pratfalls, clashing egos, and grueling artistic struggles, according to this luminous debut by the Tony Award--winning playwright and director. In a captivating oral history, Lapine revisits his experiences writing and directing Sunday in the Park with George--a musical riff on Georges Seurat's 1886 pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte--through interviews with those involved in the show's 1984 debut, including composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, leads Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, producers, financiers, and even stage managers. These conversations explore the project from Lapine's and Sondheim's early, inchoate brainstorming sessions to desperate last-minute rewrites when preview audiences hated the second act. Along the way were innumerable design headaches--Peters required a mechanical gown that opened on its own--actorly meltdowns, and persistent bafflement at Lapine's directing techniques ("I remember saying to you, 'I don't have a character. Where is my character?' And you said, 'You're not a character, you're a color,' " one cast member recalls). There's plenty of entertaining backstage melodrama, but Lapine never plays it just for laughs, instead drawing out the serious devotion to craft and artistic risk-taking that fueled it. This is a fascinating 360-degree panorama of showbiz at its most intense and creative. (Aug.)
Kirkus Review
Conversations with the creators of a landmark American musical. Lapine was "an accident of the theater," an Ohio native whose first Broadway experience was the time when, at age 11, his parents took him to Bye Bye Birdie and he clumsily thrust his souvenir program at star Dick Van Dyke and gave him a paper cut on the nose. He had intended to pursue a career in photography, but he became an off-Broadway playwright, work that attracted the interest of Stephen Sondheim. Their first collaboration, Lapine's debut as a writer/director, was Sunday in the Park With George (1984), a musical inspired by Georges Seurat's pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This delightful book revisits the two years they spent telling a fictionalized version of Seurat's life. Lapine conducted conversations with around 40 people involved with the show to create "a mixed salad: one part memoir, one part oral history, one part 'how a musical gets written and produced.' " Among the participants are Sondheim, stars Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, and musical director Paul Gemignani. The result sometimes feels like a mutual admiration society, with the casting director saying Sondheim was "incredibly generous to all of us," Lapine saying how much he learned from Peters and Patinkin, and so on. But fans will find much to love, including the complete text of Lapine's script and Sondheim's lyrics and reproductions of handwritten notes, sheet music, drawings of costumes, and more. A highlight is the long section in which Sondheim describes his process of composing a song. The author is refreshingly candid about his role in his actors' frustrations--a continuation of his childhood clumsiness--as when he told cast member Brent Spiner, "You're not a character, you're a color," to which Spiner replied, "Would you mind telling me what color?" As Lapine admits, "I wasn't the most popular guy in the room." Art isn't easy, as this entertaining look at the making of a cultural touchstone amply demonstrates. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In Sunday in the Park with George, we watch the creation of painter Georges Seurat's masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. In Putting It Together, we read about the creation of the landmark musical that would start a successful artistic collaboration that continued with Into the Woods and Passion. Bit by bit, in personal reflections and interviews with 40 individuals involved in its production, Lapine, whose awards include Tony, Drama Desk, Pulitzer, and Peabody honors, recounts his first production with Stephen Sondheim and the play's two-year journey from reading to workshop to off-Broadway to Broadway. The interviews in this blend of oral history and theater memoir are frank and friendly; the interviewees include actors, producers, designers, and musicians. It's a captivating story embellished with photographs and examples of blocking sheets, set renderings, costume design sketches, and even some of Sondheim's handwritten notes. To bring it all home, the musical's entire book is appended. Theater fans welcoming Broadway's reopening in the wake of the COVID-19 emergency will enjoy revisiting one of its most glorious productions.
Choice Review
Lapine (author and director) and Sondheim (composer) created the Pulitzer Prize--winning Sunday in the Park with George in 1983. Now, two generations later, Lapine recounts how the musical came about. His method: contact some 40 individuals connected with the show, record their memories, and organize them in chronological order. The interviewees speak of their work on that show and share their thoughts on relationships and techniques employed to get the desired results on stage. Lapine furnishes connecting text. The work becomes an oral history of the Broadway stage. Most previous books about musicals have been written by researchers not connected with the shows. (An exception: production assistant Ted Chapin's rousing Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, 2003). The present volume has an informal tone: no dates for the interviews, no bibliographic or other references, and no index. The book does include many excellent illustrations. This volume merits a place on the shelf beside two Sondheim works: Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat (both 2011). A bonus: the text of the musical ends the volume. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; professionals. --Richard D. Johnson, emeritus, SUNY College at Oneonta
Library Journal Review
Director, playwright, and screenwriter Lapine's vivid oral history details the creation of the musical Sunday in the Park with George, for which Lapine wrote the book and Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics. Drawing on interviews with 40 people involved in the show, including cast members Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, stage managers, designers, and Sondheim himself, Lapine recalls both excitement and skepticism: Would a musical based on a painting, especially one by Georges Seurat, resonate? The narrative shines when Lapine and Sondheim reflect on their weekly planning meetings in 1982. A particular highlight of this book are its reproductions of original notes and sketches, photographs of cast and crew, and the musical's full script. Theater lovers will be drawn in by the details: casting and funding the original off-Broadway production in 1983; nerve-racking Broadway previews in 1984; several Tony nominations; and the success of "Finishing the Hat," as sung by Patinkin. Lapine more than succeeds at putting together the four-decade narrative of the production. VERDICT Beyond its obvious appeal to Broadway fans, this insider guide to creating art, including making mistakes and accepting criticism, will spark the interest of aspiring artists and writers.--Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal