ABSTRACT
Mel Brooks, co-author, composer, lyricist, and co-producer of The Producers, made repeated trips to the podium to accept his share of the show's record-breaking twelve Tony Awards in 2001. Brooks expressed his gratitude to many people, but one of the first he thanked was Stephen Sondheim, for not writing a show that year. Even though The Producers was one of Broadway's biggest commercial hits ever, Brooks knew that when it came to artistic achievement, no one could outdo Sondheim. In fact, some regard Sondheim as the most influential figure in the history of musical theater. With each new production, Sondheim virtually reinvented himself as a composer and writer, creating a series of shows that were radically different from one another and that pushed musical theater to even greater heights. Sondheim and Lapine were pleased as well, and it was not long before they settled on a new subject: fairy tales.
