Sondheim and Stoppard

In 1957 Stephen Sondheim made his Broadway debut at the age of twenty-seven as a lyricist for West Side Story, a retelling of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set in the midst of two warring street gangs in New York City, featuring lush but edgy music composed by Leonard Bernstein. While songs like “I Feel Pretty” and “Tonight” linger in the romantics’ mind, Sondheim’s true debut of his lyrical dexterity comes in the rapid-fire explosion of “Dear Officer Krupke,” in which a gang of American boys depict the hot-potato culpability game of adults abdicating responsibility for a teen’s delinquency (the song, notably, was the closest a musical had gotten at that time to dropping the F bomb, with the final lyric being “Gee, Officer Krupke – / Krup you!” – this after Sondheim’s plan to have the boys yell “Fuck you” was vetoed by his collaborators). It’s clever.