By age 27 he had already written the lyrics for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy.” His future as an heir to Hammerstein seemed assured.Īnd yet instead Sondheim spent his career resisting many of the tropes of traditional American musical theater in favor of exploring just how far and wide a musical could go. And so he became a composer and lyricist. Sondheim grew to admire Hammerstein so much, he later admitted if Hammerstein had been a geologist, Sondheim probably would have become one, too. His salvation was the family of musical theater lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who more or less raised him. “The only regret I have in life is giving you birth,” she once told him. His childhood was a difficult one, as his parents divorced and his mother took her pain out on him. Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, in New York City, the son of a dressmaker who liked to play the piano and a clothing designer who wanted to be a celebrity. “Mother cannot guide you,” we sang from “Into the Woods.” “Now you’re on your own.” Even in his death, Sondheim had the right words, and they both stung and reassured us. I heard much the same silence on Friday night as I sat at a piano bar with a hundred others mourning Sondheim’s death. Sondheim’s stories and lyrics always seemed to be addressing you personally. Whether he was writing about fairy tales or Ziegfeld Follies girls, his stories and lyrics always seemed to be addressing you personally. It is a reaction that many audiences have had to Sondheim’s work. As we walked out I could see them trying to process what they had just seen. And killing a giant is fine until you have to deal with his grieving, rampaging widow.īy the end of the show, at which point nearly half the characters have been killed by the Giant’s Wife and the story’s survivors are trying to learn from their mistakes and start over, my nephew and nieces had gone silent. Being chased by a prince is far nicer than contending with a husband with a restless eye and no real job. You can follow him on Twitter.A few years ago my sister, her family and I spent a night at the Hollywood Bowl watching a production of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s fairy tale musical “Into the Woods.” While my sister’s teenage children certainly knew characters like Cinderella or Red Riding Hood, who are featured in the show, they had no knowledge of the show itself, in which the cast spends the first act struggling to get their wishes, only to then be forced to confront the consequences of those pursuits in the second. Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. Ryan went on to say that Sony was "exploring the mobile market with some wonderful PlayStation franchises," though it wasn't clear at the time as to which of the studio's numerous IPs would be making their debut on the platform.įor more on Sony's patenting activities, make sure to check out this article detailing how the company has patented the PlayStation 5's faceplates after threatening legal action against a number of other companies for creating them. Earlier this year, Sony set to expand further into the realm of smartphones as it surfaced that the company was looking to appoint a Head of Mobile.įollowing news of the vacancy, the company further showed its interest in the sector via comments made by Sony Interactive Entertainment president, Jim Ryan who stated that PlayStation’s roster of first-party IPs “can transition to smartphone gaming and complement our AAA games or live service games”. Sony's decision to seemingly take out a patent on a controller compatible with mobile devices may not come as a shock to many eagle-eyed fans of the company. While PlayStation controllers can already be used alongside compatible Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices at present, the patent seems to suggest that the device would resemble something similar to third-party mobile controller grips such as the iPhone compatible Backbone One. The controller is described as having "a left-side grip portion and a right-side grip portion" that users can position their hands around as well as a "shaft portion that can be tilted by the user, and detect the tilting direction and tilting amount of the shaft portion."
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