‘He was a god for us’: actors on being side by side with Stephen Sondheim

Jenna Russell: ‘The songs are ridiculously rich’

So much of his work is about love. People talk about it being cold but as a teenage girl all I could feel from it was warmth. The songs are ridiculously rich. I’d play the original cast recording of Company again and again, in the front room. I remember my mum came in with her rubber gloves on and tears streaming down her face. She said: “Oh my god, I get it!” The song was Being Alive.

Steve understood the human condition like no one else in musical theatre. , from Sunday in the Park With George, encapsulates that for me. To understand that