You decide what's right, you decide what's good

Another sparkling diamond in the vocal world has "booped" her last "doop" and departed for Fabulon, to join the pantheon of jazz greats - Dame Cleo Laine!

Famed for her long, long professional as well as personal relationship with husband Johnny Dankworth as much as for her singing, together they carved out a niche for themselves in the oft-fractious world of post-war British jazz, she with her remarkable multi-octave voice and he with his musical talent and business savvy. She successfully straddled classical and pop cross-overs, as well as the scat-jazz vocalese for which she was famed, made numerous guest appearances on TV over the years [indeed, on hearing of her death today in the office I reminisced that she was probably the first prominent black person I remember seeing on telly apart from on children's programmes like Play School], became successful Stateside, and together in 1970 the couple founded the Stables Theatre at the back of their family home near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, which has helped develop the careers of many generations of performers.

By way of a fitting tribute - and a prime example of why we adored her so much - here is a selection of the divine Miss Laine's interpretations of the work of house fave Mr Stephen Sondheim:

Cleo Laine - No One Is Alone

Cleo Laine - Losing My Mind

Cleo Laine - Anyone Can Whistle

Cleo Laine - Everybody Says Don't

Cleo Laine - I Remember

Cleo Laine - Liaisons

Cleo Laine - Send In The Clowns

Cleo Laine - Not While I'm Around

RIP, Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth DBE (born Clementine Dinah Hitching, 28th October 1927 - 24th July 2025)

And finally... What on earth?

Eartha Kitt, Phyllis Diller and Cleo Laine playing cricket!

Ever felt trapped?

"You can never accuse Stephen Sondheim of being boring in his lifetime, and Here We Are is a fitting addition to his legacy. Innovatively realised and refreshing in its nature, I’m not sure this is one room I’d want to be stuck in for days at a time but it is certainly a room I'd gladly visit multiple times." - Daz Gale, All That Dazzles

We are inclined to agree.

The night before our jaunt to Spain last week, Madam Arcati, Hils, History Boy and I ventured off to see the wildly-anticipated UK premiere of the posthumously-completed final musical work by the much-missed Stephen Sondheim Here We Are in the imposing surroundings of the National Theatre.

When talking about the genius who thought nothing of making musicals from such oddly-disparate stories as Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night [A Little Night Music], the Victorian "Penny Dreadful" anti-hero Sweeney Todd, Grimm's fairy tales [Into The Woods] or a work by Aristophanes [The Frogs], it was no great surprise that this work was largely adapted (by playwright David Ives) from not one, but two surrealist films by avant-garde producer Luis Buñuel [The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel]. And why not, indeed?

As one might expect, given its source material, this is not a "conventional" musical by any stretch of the imagination - but then again, Sondheim didn't do many of those anyway. The first act introduces us to the main cast of characters, all of them spoilt nouveau riche types - self-obsessed hedge-fund billionaire Leo (Rory Kinnear), his not-quite-with-it wife Marianne (the brilliant Jane Krakowski), her sister and pseudo-anarchist Fritz (Chumisa Dornford-May), and their friends, shouty interior designer Claudia (Martha Plimpton), her plastic surgeon husband Paul (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and the ambassador of "Moranda", Raffael (Paulo Szot) - who venture out to seek a restaurant to have brunch. That venture is repeatedly (and farcically) doomed to failure. The inaccurately-named "Café Everything" has absolutely no food or drink on offer - which leads to a profuse (and hilarious) musical apology from its waiter (the mesmerising Denis O'Hare):

Denis O'Hare - Waiter's Song [Here We Are (Original Cast Recording)]

The torture doesn't end there, of course. At the "French deconstructivist" restaurant Bistro à la Mode, the funeral of the chef is taking place - cue the wonderful Tracie Bennett as that emporium's maître d', singing, à la Piaf, possibly the show's best number:

Tracie Bennett - It Is What It Is [Here We Are (Original Cast Recording)]

In their final attempt to get that elusive brunch (by now it's heading for dinner time), at Italian brasserie Osteria Zeno, their longed-for "meal" is interrupted by an army colonel (Cameron Johnson) and soldier (the gorgeous Richard Fleeshman)...

Mr Fleeshman in the flesh

...who are concerned that an anarchist overthrow of society is imminent (in which, behind the scenes, Fitz has been naively involved, by funding an organisation with the not-so-subtle acronym of PRADA), and all the sumptuous dishes served turn out to be plastic. At this point the show "breaks the third wall" - and as the spotlight turns on the audience, the cast appear mesmerised (especially Marianne) and flustered. This is when the conceit of the plot dawned on us (if not on the characters on stage): these people are trapped inside their own play! That surreal moment is over almost as soon as it began, when the ambassador makes one final suggestion - they should all go and eat at his embassy instead...

All this takes place on a stark white stage, lined by mirrors (appropriate for the vanity of the characters) and occasionally punctuated by the neon marquees of the various purported eateries, which is a superlative design idea by set designer David Zinn. As is the choreography (by Sam Pinkleton) - especially the way that in the gaps between attempts to eat, the whole cast repeatedly lines up (a bit like an earlier Sondheim show Assassins), ostensibly to show that they are travelling by car, but in effect it's rather wonderful - especially when any one of them tries to "break ranks", and is unable to cross an invisible barrier...

If you think all that's surreal enough, part one concludes with the arrival of a bishop (Harry Hadden-Paton) at the door, in full regalia, seeking alternative employment!

Part 2 opens within the grand setting of the embassy's salon, our protagonists suitably sated and relaxing in armchairs or chaises. Happy at last? I wouldn't bet on it. The manservant (Denis O'Hare again - he and Tracie Bennett play every waiter/servant role in the whole thing, and masterfully hold it all together as a result) turns out to be the enigmatic "Inferno", head of PRADA - and the feared incursion seems to be taking place outside, as explosions are heard. The gang, on trying to leave, find they are perpetually making excuses not to do so and decide to bed down in situ. The bishop turns out to be a foot-fetishist. Fitz - who had previously told everyone she was gay (probably for attention) - has a romantic relationship with the soldier (even disappearing for a shag in a cupboard). The piano the bishop is playing stops working. There is no water until Ms Bennett's mute, hunched maid bursts a (magical?) pipe. They resort to eating the books for sustenance. In the middle of the room (on day four or five; nobody's quite sure) it starts to snow - oh yes, and Marianne dances for some incomprehensible reason with a bear!

And the dénouement of all this? Marianne suddenly realises that they had somehow, somewhere, missed a line of this nightmarish play. When they go backwards, and recite all their recent lines in the correct order, strangely they find themselves free - and once again on their travels, seeking food.

This mind-boggling musical-cum-play (as is fitting since Sondheim never finished it, the songs peter out early in the second half), directed by Tony-award winner Joe Mantello, is not for the faint-hearted, admittedly - you're not going to find yourself tapping your toes or humming the tunes when you leave - but as a lasting final legacy to Sondheim it works brilliantly. We absolutely loved every crazy moment of it!

Here We Are is playing at the Lyttelton Theatre at the National Theatre complex until 28th June 2025.

Could I wave the years away? With a quick goodbye?

Very sad news, just as 2023 draws inevitably to its close - one of the greatest of all interpreters of Stephen Sondheim's songs Mr David Kernan has departed for the glittering halls of Fabulon.

Originally an actor (he indeed appeared in Zulu, as well as some tackier stuff later on like Carry On Abroad), Mr Kernan's fame was sealed when he became a fixture on the cult 60s satirical programme That Was the Week That Was.

However, that show's producer and impresario Ned Sherrin had other plans for his talents when TW3 was over, and so it was that he became best-known for his singing, not least in the world premiere of the Sondheim revue Side By Side By Sondheim.

By way of a tribute, from that show, these...

[You'll need to adjust the volume on this first clip; it's very old...]

Millicent Martin, David Kernan, Julia McKenzie - Side By Side By Side

David Kernan & Julia McKenzie - The Little Things You Do Together

Millicent Martin, Julia McKenzie and David Kernan - You Could Drive A Person Crazy

And my favourite [no video, more's the pity]:

David Kernan - Could I Leave You?

Leave you? Leave you?
How could I leave you? How could I go it alone?
Could I wave the years away? With a quick goodbye?
How do you wipe tears away when your eyes are dry?

Sweetheart, lover, could I recover?
Give up the joys I have known?
Not to fetch your pills again every day at five
Not to give those dinners for ten elderly men from the UN

How could I survive? Could I leave you
And your shelves of the world's best books
And the evenings of martyred looks, cryptic sighs
Sullen glares from those injured eyes?

Leave the quips with a sting, jokes with a sneer
Passionless lovemaking once a year?
Leave the lies ill-concealed and the wounds never healed
And the game's not worth winning and wait, I'm just beginning

What, leave you, leave you? How could I leave you?
What would I do on my own? Putting thoughts of you aside

In the south of France, would I think of suicide?
Darling, shall we dance? Could I live through the pain
On a terrace in Spain? Would it pass? It would pass
Could I bury my rage with a boy half your age
In the grass? Bet your ass!

But I've done that already or didn't you know, love?
Tell me, how could I leave when I left long ago, love?
Could I leave you? No, the point is, could you leave me?
Well, I guess you could leave me the house, leave me the flat

Leave me the Braques and Chagalls and all that
You could leave me the stocks for sentiment's sake
And ninety percent of the money you make
And the rugs and the cooks, darling, you keep the drugs

Angel, you keep the books, honey, I'll take the grand
Sugar you keep the spinet and all of our friends and
Just wait a goddamn minute!

Oh, leave you? Leave you? How could I leave you?
Sweetheart, I have to confess, could I leave you?Yes
Will I leave you? Will I leave you?

Guess!

Sheer perfection. We'll miss him.

RIP, David Stanley Kernan (23rd June 1938 – 26th December 2023)

End of an Era

West Side Story
Gypsy
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Anyone Can Whistle
Do I Hear a Waltz?
Company
Follies
A Little Night Music
The Frogs
Pacific Overtures
Sweeney Todd
Merrily We Roll Along
Sunday in the Park with George
Into the Woods
Assassins
Passion
Road Show

RIP, The Maestro; the man whose creative genius was behind every one of these musicals.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim (22nd March 1930 – 26th November 2021)

We at Dolores Delargo Towers are distraught at the loss of our icon.

A spark to pierce the dark

Sharing her birthday with another odd assortment of names that includes Dame Patricia Routledge, Gene Pitney, Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage), Lola Montez, Ed Sheeran, Rory Kinnear, Ron Goodwin, Ruth Rendell, Brenda Fricker, Karl Jenkins, Nicholas Ridley, Rene Russo, Dame Angela Eagle, Michael Jordan and - erm - Paris Hilton, the very lovely Miss Julia McKenzie is (gulp) 80 years old today!

Seemingly a "permanent fixture" on our screens since the late 1970s (particularly considering the endless repeats of her stolid performance as the most recent incarnation of Miss Marple), the not-yet-a-Dame Julia began her career in the theatre, winning awards for her performances as "Miss Adelaide" in Guys and Dolls and as "Mrs Lovett" in Sweeney Todd, as well as for her more serious role in Alan Ayckbourn's Woman in Mind ("about an emotionally neglected middle-aged woman's descent into madness").

Indeed, despite her success in television series such as Fresh Fields/French Fields, Blott on the Landscape, Cranford and the aforementioned Marple, and big-screen roles in Shirley Valentine, Bright Young Things and Notes on a Scandal, it is for her enduring and hugely successful relationship with the works of the great Stephen Sondheim we love her the most!

Performances such as these...

Julia McKenzie - Broadway Baby

Millicent Martin, Julia McKenzie and David Kernan - You Could Drive A Person Crazy

Kit & The Widow - People Who Like Sondheim (part 2)

Facts:

• Miss McKenzie went to school a mere stone's throw away from Dolores Delargo Towers #4, in what is now known as Woodside High School, Wood Green.
• When Ned Sherrin's revue Side by Side by Sondheim transferred from the West End to Broadway in 1977 it was a massive hit, and she received a Tony Award nomination for her part in it.
• As Patron of the Society, she is a member of the judging panel for the annual Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year competition.
• It was Miss McKenzie who doubled for Her Maj in various scenes in the famous "HM-The-Queen-meets-James-Bond-and-jumps-from-a-helicopter" segment from the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Many happy returns, Julia Kathleen Nancy McKenzie, CBE (born 17th February 1941)!

"Brek-kek-kek-kek"

Simon Russell Beale and Daniel Evans - Invocation and Instructions to the Audience (BBC Proms 2010)

From the very opening number, whereby we were instructed: "Please don't fart. There is very little air and this is art", we just knew we were in for a good evening. And so it was, indeed - as a little gang of us huddled into the teensy-tiny confines of the fabulous Jermyn Street Theatre in Mayfair last Friday for not just any old show, but the première of a Stephen Sondheim musical!

The Frogs is not the best-known of the modern-day Master's work, of course. It began as a short art-house-piece way back in 1974, for which Mr Sondheim had merely been asked by its "creator" Burt Shevelove (who "freely adapted" it from Aristophanes, of all obscure sources) to contribute a few songs. It was not a huge success even in those experimental times, despite its semi-aquatic staging (in a swimming baths!), and despite the presence in the chorus of a couple of young gals who were definitely destined for greater things - Miss Sigourney Weaver and Miss Meryl Streep! However, that other theatrical maestro Mr Nathan Lane had other ideas, when he "even more freely" re-worked it (with the collaboration of Mr S, who wrote more songs for it) back in 2004...

We had no water in our theatre of course, but we did have a fabulous cast with fabulous voices, energetic choreography, a (very) quirky storyline and even quirkier score (typically Sondheim: hints of Brecht & Weill, hints of Gershwin and even of Lerner & Loewe in places; lots of staccato and overlapping harmonies) to entertain us. That doyenne of all things arty, Miss Libby Purves [recently treated like shit by the BBC as they axed her Midweek Radio 4 programme after 33 years] (writing in her Theatre Cat blog) has the lowdown:

Here’s the god Dionysus, deprived of his Noël Coward smoking jacket and unconvincingly disguised as Herakles in a lion skin. He’s having a panic attack on a ferry across the Styx while a chorus of marauding frogs sings a menacing staccato and Charon the ferryman sleeps off a spliff. The frogs represent apathetic conformity – “Brek-kek-kek-kek! Brek-kek-kek-kek! Whaddya care the world’s a wreck? Leave ’em alone, send ’em a check, sit in the sun and what the heck?”.

The Frogs

But as the God of theatre, our hero is on a quest to bring back a great playwright – George Bernard Shaw of all people – to improve the world with questioning.

There are many fingers in this mad frog pie. Aristophanes, the Ancient Greek playwright who wrote, for the feast of Lenaia, about a journey into Hades to bring back the dead Euripides. Then Burt Shevelove who updated it to include Shaw and Shakespeare in debate, and Stephen Sondheim who wrote the music and lyrics, and had it performed in the unfriendly acoustic of the Yale swimming pool. Now add Nathan Lane, who fell for it as if for “a little homely rescue dog”, messed about and wrote new bits. And here it is at the ever-adventurous Jermyn.

Rarely have I been in a more Marmite show. A couple left furiously at the interval, not getting it at all: another woman rhapsodised in the interval expressing surprise that they didn’t adore it like her, then unaccountably picked up her many bags and left ten minutes in making the rest of the row stand up for her. Me, entrancedly amused mainly by the Sondheim lyrics, I stayed and enjoyed the character of Pluto the underworld king as a leather queen with a whip, the assorted choruses, and the very funny advent of Martin Dickinson as George Bernard Shaw himself, pompous, emitting his famous epigrams and excoriating the frivolity of Shakespeare and his "Purple patches on borrowed rags".

Dionysius holds it together, the affable Michael Matus alternately alarmed, determined, and nicely gushy as the top Shaw fanboy, praising his “gravity of subject and levity of manner”, which actually describes this whole show quite nicely. The duel of quotations between Shaw and Shakespeare is wonderful, with quite the right winner.

So I enjoyed it, crazy as it is, and the music – piano, woodwind, trumpet and cello, is beautifully Sondheim, and Grace Wessels directs with cheerful speed. It feels more like a clever college romp than anything else, but it is a romp composed by a genius, an eloquent wise clown. For Sondheimites, it has the buzz. Or croak.

For the record, nobody left halfway through the show when we went. Nobody farted to my knowledge, either. In fact the audience was generally, as we were, enraptured.



Like Miss Purves, we loved the interplay between the somewhat effete Dionysus (god of drama and of wine) and his slightly-nerdy slave Xanthias (George Rae) that holds the story together (with some funny throwaway lines such as “Viagra - the god of perseverance”), the humour of the dominatrix Pluto (Emma Ralston) complete with Cage Aux Folles-style fan-dancers, the hilarious Beetlejuice-esque Charon (Jonathan Wadey), and the sheer camp effect of the ensemble cast playing not only the central Greek Chorus roles but also myriad other characters (Chris McGuigan plays both the macho Herakles and a handmaiden to Persephone(!), Martin Dickinson plays Shaw, Nigel Pilkington Shakespeare, Li-Tong Hsu plays "Virilla" the highly-sexed Amazon, and Bernadette Bangura is Dionysus' love Ariadne).

There is a lot to take in in this show, and it certainly is unlike anything else in Sondheim's repertoire (aside from the fact that some of the "hooks" herein sound somewhat familiar to anyone who may have seen his much later Into The Woods). It is definitely not like anything else currently showing in the West End. And for that, we are somewhat thankful.

The Frogs at the Jermyn Street Theatre is now completely sold out, and closes on Saturday 8th April. However, it is definitely worthy of a run at a bigger (not too big, hopefully) West End Theatre, fingers crossed.

Where ya going?

Bernadette Peters and Richard Chamberlain - Barcelona [from Sylvia Fine Kaye's Musical Comedy Tonight, 1979]

Bobby: Where ya going?
April: Barcelona.
Bobby: Oh.
April: Don't get up.
Bobby: Do you have to?
April: Yes, I have to.
Bobby: Oh.
April: Don't get up.

April: Now you're angry.
Bobby: No, I'm not.
April: Yes, you are.
Bobby: No, I'm not.
Put your things down.
April: See, you're angry.
Bobby: No, I'm not.
April: Yes, you are.
Bobby: No, I'm not.
Put your wings down and stay.
April: I'm leaving.
Bobby: Why?
April: To go to-
Bobby: Stay.
April: I have to-
Both: -Fly
Bobby: -I know-
Both: -To Barcelona.

Bobby: Look, you're a very special girl,
Not just overnight.
No, you're a very special girl,
And not because you're bright...
Not just because you're bright.
You're just a very special girl...June!
April: April!
Bobby: April!
April: Thank you.

Bobby: Whatcha thinking?
April: Barcelona.
Bobby: Oh.
April: Flight Eighteen.
Bobby: Stay a minute.
April: I would like to.
Bobby: So?
April: Don't be mean.

Bobby: Stay a minute.
April: No, I can't.
Bobby: Yes, you can.
April: No, I can't.
Bobby: Where you going?
April: Barcelona!
Bobby: So you said.
April: And Madrid.
Bobby: Bon voyage.
April: On a Boeing.

Bobby: Goodnight.
April: You're angry.
Bobby: No.
April: I've got to.
Bobby: Right.
April: Report to-
Bobby: Go.
April: That's not to say...
That if I had my way...
Oh well, I guess, OK.
Bobby: What?
April: I'll stay.
Bobby: But...oh God!

We're not on a Boeing.

Neither Bernadette Peters nor Richard Chamberlain are going to be there.

Nor Sylvia Fine. Unfortunately.

There is no-one else remotely as good as either of them

Two significant theatrical birthdays coincide today, as Michael Coveney observes in WhatsOnStage:

Happy Birthday to the grand old men of musical theatre, and I'm not talking Rodgers and Hammerstein. It's almost freakish that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim, the transatlantic giants of the genre, share the same birth date, 22nd March, though ALW is a mere stripling at 67 years, Sondheim a justly venerated 83.

Both composers, both geniuses in their own individual ways, tread warily and respectfully around each other, but their supporters, mostly on the Sondheim side, are like rival fans of the two Manchester football teams: vociferous, bitchy and unaccommodating. Lloyd Webber, in their eyes, always wants to please the public whereas Sondheim wants to change an art form. Guess who most critics prefer.

The truth is they both seek popular approval, of course, and they have both been revolutionary innovators. Lloyd Webber's two major musicals written with lyrics by Tim Rice, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, will remain in the repertoire for as long as Puccini's Tosca and Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow and, who knows, Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. Cats and Starlight Express are brilliant eclectic vaudevilles, exploring every kind of rock musical and operatic style in effervescent pastiche, while Sondheim's best shows - my favourites (not necessarily the same thing) are Company, A Little Night Music and Into the Woods - reinvent the genre as urban satire, fairy-tale, operetta; and of course he rewrites his own brilliant lyrics.

Although the first productions of Company and Night Music each ran a year here, neither was a commercial smash, nor was (or is) Assassins, for all its mordant vitality. ALW's Phantom of the Opera runs for ever because it touches a nerve about the music of seduction, the agency of love and the splendour of its rock romantic expression; and the music is on a constant switchback between that romance and the heart of darkness in the Phantom's labyrinth, while Sondheim does a similar thing in combining surface atmosphere with ghoulish revelation in Sweeney Todd.

Both write "proper" music to put it mildly. The first half of the finally disappointing Stephen Ward contained some of Lloyd Webber's best continuity, or underscoring, while Sondheim's Passion, which I can live without, has some of his finest arioso and harmonic moments. If there's a musical context for Lloyd Webber's inspiration you find it in Prokofiev as well as Puccini - it's worth remembering that when Dmitri Shostakovich, arguably the greatest composer of the 20th century, saw Superstar in London shortly before he died (twice, on successive evenings) he lamented that he could not have written something similar himself, admiring particularly the writing of a core rock band orchestration overlain with full symphonic strings, brass and woodwind. And Sondheim hails from the greatest days of the Broadway musical and indeed wrote lyrics for three of them - West Side Story, Gypsy and (music as well) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Both writers owe a lot to Cameron Mackintosh. Mackintosh produced Cats and Phantom and Side By Side By Sondheim, the 1976 cabaret that really put Sondheim on the map in this country. And when Cameron celebrated his 30 years in show business in 1998, ALW and "Steve" (as I called him by the end of our one and only chance encounter in a London pub, when I had the privilege of buying him two very large gin and limes) collaborated for the first and only time at a royal gala in the producer's honour.

On film at that gala, they shared the same piano and an item (devised by Sondheim) which wedded the tunes of "Send in the Clowns" and "Music of the Night": "Isn't he rich? Isn't he square? Isn't he working the room, somewhere out there? Send in the crowds... Acts on his whims, took a big chance, seeing his anagram said: Cameron, Romance. He went to France. Send in the crowds." The tune shifted to 4/4 time: "Night time falling, Cameron keeps calling. Posing questions, questions with suggestions... suddenly appearing, always interfering; but here we are, and cheering as we might, the man who flogs the music of tonight."

Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber - Duelling Pianos (Hey, Mr Producer!, 1998)

About the only other thing they have in common is having written an Oscar-winning film song for Madonna (ALW in Evita, with Tim Rice, and Sondheim in Dick Tracy), and both are struggling to adjust to the changing musical theatre scene. One problem they share is that there is no-one else remotely as good as either of them, nor do they have the benefit of a great musical theatre producer like Mackintosh, last of a breed, I reckon. ALW's influence has been immense in terms of the industry and side issues like sound systems and orchestration, while Sondheim has unwittingly created a more baleful legacy in his imitators and American musical theatre writers who simply can't get out from under his skin, or his shadow.

Still, with two Sweeney Todds coming up - one at the ENO with Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson (semi-staged, for 13 performances only, hardly an auspicious launch for the supposedly money-making ENO deal with Michael Grade and Michael Linnitt), one in a pop-up pie and eel shop on Shaftesbury Avenue, cheekily gazumping ENO on Cameron's patch - and Gypsy soon to storm the Savoy, Steve ain't going away... nor is ALW, though I'm not the only one to worry about space songs for Sarah Brightman, his muse and inspiration on Phantom, and his unlikely-sounding collaboration with Julian "Downton Abbey" Fellowes - the Downton chief location, Highclere Castle, is handily close to ALW's country pile on the edge of Watership Down - on Jack Black's School of Rock.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim (born 22nd March 1930)

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22nd March 1948)