Composer of the Week - Stephen Sondheim (1930-) - Follies, A Little Night Music and Pacific Overtures

Continuing our series in which Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim talks to Donald Macleod. This programme features three shows that in typical Sondheim fashion expanded the notion of what the musical could be, with razor-sharp language and cracking tunes to boot: Follies, in which a reunion of Ziegfield-style Follies stars in a derelict theatre becomes a metaphor for the death of the American dream; A Little Night Music, a musical about relationships written almost entirely in waltz-time, that spawned Sondheim's most famous song, 'Send in the Clowns'; and Pacific Overtures, a 'kabuki musical' with an all-Japanese cast - an exploration of the 19th-century westernization of Japan, seen from the Japanese perspective. Produced by Chris Barstow.