Nov. 25--Theater icon Stephen Sondheim was given the Carl Sandburg Literary Award on Oct. 21 by the Chicago Public Library Foundation. Sondheim was interviewed on stage by Scott Simon of National Public Radio and, predictably enough, the question came up as to what Sondheim was working on at present.
That same question came up when I interviewed Sondheim at Symphony Center in 2011 when he was promoting his collection of lyrics and authorial musings, "Look, I Made a Hat." After all, there has not been a major new Sondheim musical since 2008 and "Road Show."
Following director Gary Griffin's definitive 2014 revival of that title at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, I became convinced that, years from now, "Road Show" will be seen as the most personally revealing of the Sondheim musicals. Indeed, I think you can see the entire show as one long metaphor of the great man's journey through life and art. But Sondheim's answer to any and all questions of biographical reference has been the same for years: he writes characters, not about himself.
Sure. Until "Road Show."
The answer to that matter of what Sondheim is working on first leaked out in 2014 -- it is a musical, seemingly at least somewhat comic, based on two surrealist movies by Spanish director Luis Bunuel, "The Exterminating Angel" and "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." His collaborator is the accomplished playwright David Ives, who just happened to be knocking around Chicago the other day, watching rehearsals at Chicago Shakespeare Theater for his adaptation of "The Heir Apparent," the 17th-century farce by French writer Jean-Francois Regnard, a farceur whose works usually are passed over in favor of something more popular by Moliere.
So I got to ask Ives about the Sondheim project.
Ives grinned and talked about how the two films likely will work together -- in the first, a group of people are looking for somewhere to eat dinner together; in the second, they find themselves locked in a hellish room with each other. Sondheim is hard at work, Ives said. The possibilities would seem endless.
"It's rather like Verdi or Mozart calling me up at 7:30 each night and I tell Mozart 'sure,' and then he sings to me each night," said Ives of the creative process. "He also keeps apologizing that his hands are not what they used to be."
That's hardly a problem, of course. Then again, Ives said, "you get in a room with a genius like Steve and it's also exactly like working with anyone else. He is really no different from all the other people in the theater. He loves to be amused."
In the case of "The Heir Apparent," which Ives calls a "transadaptation," the writer has brought back to life an amusement very rarely seen in English -- it's only been translated a couple of times, the last of which was about a century ago. Then again, Ives knows his way around classic French farce -- his previous endeavor was "The Liar," an adaptation of a play by Pierre Corneille. "I like to think of these things," Ives said, "as a showcase for comic actors."
Ives also talked at some length about the role of the "transadaptor" of these old plays in French. In essence, he said that the key is not so much to come up with specific world equivalents in a different language, but to "think like a playwright" and come up with the right theatrical equivalent. That, he said, is what most honors the original writer. (He described "Heir Apparent" as "a French 17th-century version of 'You Can't Take It With You,' " which, incidentally, you can see at the Northlight Theatre in Skokie.)
On Navy Pier, Ives is working with director John Rando, best known as the original director of "Urinetown." Over lunch that day, Rando seemed to be enjoying himself, describing Ives as a true genius of the American theater and someone who takes these forgotten old plays and "turns them into crowd-pleasers all over again." So it may well be that Sondheim is enjoying working with Ives as much as Ives is enjoying working with Sondheim.
Before that, though, Ives is clearly having fun with Rando and a wacky old comedy, which begins performances Sunday and opens Dec. 8 starring Nate Burger, Emily Peterson, Paxton Whitehead, Jessie Fisher and Linda Kimbrough.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@tribpub.com
