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BroadwayRadio Special: Jan Simpson’s 2026 Summer Reading List and Interview with Author Daniel Okrent
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Hiker 1
Awkward time to ask this, but. Hey, did you download the trail map?
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Yeah. No, I don't need to.
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I don't understand. You're trusting your signal out here.
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I'm trusting T Mobile. They have the best network. And if we end up in bumtots nowhere, well, we've got T Satellite for backup. Whoa.
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Hiker 1
I don't trust my carrier that much.
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Hiker 2
We'll just use your phone as a flashlight.
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T-Mobile Announcer
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T-Mobile Legal Voice
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- [01:03]
Singer
oh, Mr. Todd, I'm so happy. I could eat you up. I really could. You know what I'd like to do, Mr. Todd? What I drink. If the business tastes good. Where I really like to go in a year or so. Don't you want to know?
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Hiker 1
Of course.
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Singer
Do you really want to know?
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Yes.
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Daniel Akrent
Yes, I do.
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Singer
By the sea, Mr. Todd, that's the life I can't fit. By the sea, Mr. Todd. Oh, I know you'd love it. You and me, Mr. T, we could be alone in the house. What we'd almost done down by the sea.
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Anything you say.
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Wouldn't that be smashing?
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
It's that time of year getting warm. We have to find out where to get some tea and pull up a chair and sit down on the beach and read a bunch of books. And what better than to read theater books? And so, as we have done for oh, so many years, Jan Simpson is back visiting with us on Broadway Radio to talk about her summer reading list. So, Jan. Hello.
- [02:20]
Jan Simpson
Hi. Hi.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
So, coming up. Well, it's probably past by time we you're listening to this. But on July 3, Friday, July 3, on Broadway and me, you have published your summer reading list. And I thought maybe we would do what we've done. For the last couple years and go through some of the things that have made the list and chat with one of the authors.
- [02:50]
Jan Simpson
So
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
why don't we do that right now? First up, we are going to talk with Daniel Akrent, who wrote the book Stephen Sondheim. Art Isn't Easy. With us today, we have a very special guest. Daniel Akrent is with us. He's a writer and editor, hails from Detroit. Is that true, Dan?
- [03:19]
Daniel Akrent
You came in originally.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Yeah, originally from the city of Detroit,
- [03:25]
Daniel Akrent
where I was, I should say, a Saturday matinee usher at the Fisher Theater when I was 14.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Oh, wow.
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Daniel Akrent
I got the bug early.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
It was in the blood from early. But also, I almost feel like we should have brought Peter Felicia in here because you have such a deep baseball background and theater background at the same time here.
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Daniel Akrent
Yep, yep. Complicated Life.
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Singer
Not.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Your most recent book is Stephen Sondheim Art Isn't Easy. That just came out in 2026 in the last few months. And we thought we would talk about it because it is on Jan Simpson's summer reading list. So, Jan, how did you get to this book and get it on your list?
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Jan Simpson
Well, I've known Dan for a long time, Full disclosure. So there was no way I was not gonna read Dan's book. And it's a book about Stephen Sondheim, so there was no, no way I was not going to read this book. But I do have to start off by asking you, Dan, what gave you the courage to write another book about Stephen Sondheim?
- [04:44]
Daniel Akrent
Well, courage or stupid, I don't know. But I had conversations with the Yale University Press about their series called Jewish Lives, writing about Arthur Miller, whom I knew. But when I had proposed that to them, they said, no, John Lahr. We've already signed him up. So if anything ever occurs to you, give us a call. When Sondheim died, I called my agent and I said, I think it's time to call. I just felt an urge, I was impelled to take a shot at it. Now, I did spend three or four months researching and talking to people I knew who knew him to see if there really was something there that hadn't been said. And I became convinced that there was or that it hadn't been said in the way that I intended to say it.
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Jan Simpson
So then how did you go about researching the book once you decided to commit to it? Because there's a lot in here of quoting from letters and journals and conversations with friends. So how did you research this book, Dan?
- [05:59]
Daniel Akrent
Well, you know, I have to say I Began with my friend John Weidman. John and I have been friends for 30 years, 40 years. And I just called him up and said, let's have a drink. I have this idea. And in the process of talking to John, with whom I discussed Sondheim many times over the years, he said a few things that kind of. That's interesting. I never really knew about that. And where might I go with that? From there? I had, of course, like you, Jan, I had read many of the books about Sondheim. I went back and looked at a couple more of them, and then I did what I've done with all of my history books. I'm more a historian than a biographer. And I went into letters. I found something like 30 different archives of letters that had letters from and to Stephen Sondheim. Many of these were archives that had never been open before or that no one had ever plumbed before. In fact, there was an archive that Sondheim himself had given to the University of Wisconsin more than 50 years ago that I don't think anybody had ever seen. And similarly, there was very lengthy oral history that the Columbia Oral History Project did with him right after the failure of Mary Louis Roll along in the early 80s that had only become available for examination with his death. So I was convinced that from all of this I would find things that people had never encountered before.
- [07:30]
Jan Simpson
What most surprised you as you were working on, particularly this new material, what surprised you about Sondheim that you didn't know before?
- [07:43]
Daniel Akrent
Well, so many things, Jan, it's hard to begin without giving away too much of the book, or giving away much of the book, the theme of revenge, which, as you know, having read it, arises in the first few pages. And then I addressed in the. In the last few pages more and more as I did my research and as I interviewed his friends and colleagues, I saw that this was really a motivating factor in his life, which he himself acknowledged. He himself acknowledged in an interview with Meryl Seacrest in 1995. But Sechrest book, as fine as it is, she did not go any further with it. So I felt that this was an opportunity. Then I found a couple papers written by his longtime psychoanalyst that were not specifically about him. You know, they were not. You know, no psychoanalyst would write well, as my patient Stephen Sondheim said, except maybe who didn't have Stevenson. But. But one of these two papers was clearly taken from, if not somebody else as well, from Sondheim's life and experience. That, too, touched on the theme of Revenge. Now, I don't want to overstate. I think I deal with revenge in maybe 10 pages out of 280 or however many pages the book is. But that was the shocker to me. It never occurred to me. And then going back over his work, it became so, so clear that that was the motivating fact, secondarily, his loneliness. He had many, many friends, but he was an incredibly lonely man. He was like George, George in Sunday park, looking through the window, looking at the world through a window. He was also like the little boy in Pacific Overtures on the outside, overhearing what the rest of the world was talking about. And these sort of thematics repeats. And, of course, Bobby and company couldn't be more clearly his experience. And as we all know, he denied throughout his life that he was writing autobiographically. And Frank Rich said it at his memorial service. He denied he was Bobby. He denied he was George. He denied yada da da da da. That was Steve's story, and he was sticking to it. And I thought, okay, Frank says that Steve's story. Here comes Dan's story. I'm going to look into it.
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Jan Simpson
I think I was most struck by the dynamic with his mother. Now it's famous. Everybody who knows Sondheim knows that they had a testy relationship, but your book presents it as so much more complex, the interplay between them.
- [10:42]
Daniel Akrent
Yeah, I mean, nobody ever interviewed Foxy about Steve. We. What we know about Foxy is entirely. Well, not entirely. It's 95% about Steve and 5% from other longtime friends of his, like Dominic Dunn, who was a classmate at Williams and very close with him for many years. Their versions of Foxy, which is to say versions of Foxy, refracted through Steve's sensibility. So I tried to, and I to some degree succeeded in finding people who knew Foxy. And I'm putting two and two together and coming up not with four, but, you know, sometimes five or six. It was what's important about the famous letter in which he said she wrote to him that the only regret I have in life is giving birth to you. A story that he told hundreds and hundreds of, I came to realize was not important whether it was true or not. If it's a story he wanted to tell the world, that's very, very revealing, whether it was true or not. And then right before the book went to press, a Sondheim specialist named Gail Leandar Wright, you may know her, she was in Mary Rogers's papers at the Library of Congress, which had just opened up and Found a letter in which Steve quoted his mother very differently. Not that I regret that I gave birth to you. The only guilt I have in life is giving birth to you. And guilt is many, many miles away from regret. So the complexity of the relationship will never be sorted out. But I think it's fair to say that he told. The version that he told tells us just about everything we need to know.
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Jan Simpson
The other thing that I wanted to ask you about was he didn't fall in love until late in life. And I wondered if finally having a settled domestic life with his husband, Jeff Romley, do you think that affected his creativity?
- [12:54]
Daniel Akrent
Well, I do, and I don't. The reason why I say the reason I say I do is that he fell in love with Peter Jones first. Yeah, that led to passion. I'm not a big fan of passion, although the more I see it or hear it, the closer I get to liking it.
- [13:11]
Jan Simpson
That is my second favorite Sondheim show.
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Daniel Akrent
You are not alone. And I, you know, I saw. Well, you know, I saw the original. I saw it in previews, and there's a long story about my being at with you at Time, Inc. And I was going to write a piece about it and ended up not doing it. And I. I really couldn't bear it then. Now when I saw the production with Judy Kuhn at Classic Stage, I thought, oh, there's. There's something here that I was missing. My point being that he wrote that when he was 63, he had just fallen in love. From then on, he was all but unproductive. He and John Wideman worked on many different versions of the show that became known as Wise Guys. And of course, here we are. Came out of his long, many, many years working with Joe Mantello and eventually David Eyes on that one. But they are not top quality Sondheim. So there are two reasons. One is, I think he was content in his life, and I do think his art had been driven by internal demons with an enormous talent behind. You know, that's. That's the key thing. But there were internal demons getting to him. By the time he had fallen in love, first with Peter and then more deeply and permanently with Jeff, he was a happy man. Everybody says the Sondheim of his last 15 years was the best Sondheim they'd ever known. These are people who knew him all of his life. However, it's also true that Sondheim said, could no one over 60, or at times he says 65, has ever written a great musical. And I think he proved it.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
He was somebody who loved puzzles. And, you know, you can see through all the examples of various anecdotes that people tell about knowing Sondheim, all the different puzzles. I wonder if the last 15 years of his life, he had solved the puzzle, if he had gotten to the happiness.
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Daniel Akrent
Yeah, I think that that's. That's a very astute observation. I think he did. He had solved the large puzzle. He, of course, remained interested in puzzle puzzles, but.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Yeah, no, no, yeah, no.
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Daniel Akrent
And he, you know, he often said that writing lyrics was like solving a puzzle. Puzzles were a way that he.
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T-Mobile Announcer
He.
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Daniel Akrent
He encountered the world through the prism of puzzles. I think that's very smart, James. I wish I had said that more directly in the book. I'm gonna have to rewrite it, I'm afraid. But the other thing that surprised me, the other thing that surprised me a lot. I had known a great deal. I had known that he was. He liked to drink. I had no idea to what extent he liked to drink and how and. And drug taking. And this was a theme that came up from the early 60s until really the last decade of his life. Though I think he may have dialed back a little bit on the drinking. He drank prodigious amounts. People could not believe that he could do that and still walk down the street. But I have a couple of incidents, one related to me by John Guare and one by John Wideman and confirmed by James Lapine, in which the drinking was far, far more severe than I thought. Now, people drink. I say this as I'm sitting here with my martini, people, here, I'll click the ice for you. People drink for all sorts of reasons, but among them, and I think this is why we hear so much about creative people who drink, is it breaks down your inhibitions. He was a deeply inhibited person. He was shy and diffident, and he. He was on the fringe of things until he became the incredible center of everything. And at times he preferred to be on the fringe. But I believe. And he at times said. Alluded to how alcohol loosened him up. It enabled him to say things, do things, create things that he had found it hard to do without the help of alcohol and then late and then also marijuana. And during the creation of into the Woods, James Lapine, who loved him as much as any human being on the world, in the world, could love another person. James said, we wrote that show on cocaine. And I stopped after. I was worried about my health. And Steve just kept on going with mounds of the best cocaine money could buy. This is when he's in his late 50s, he's had at least one, I think two heart attacks. And he's writing about children, ostensibly, but he was doing it fueled by cocaine.
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T-Mobile Announcer
Wow.
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Jan Simpson
Well, Dan, that just shows some of the things that even those of us who have read about Sondheim and revered Sondheim and thought we knew everything about Sondheim. What? There are things that we didn't know that we can find in your book. And so thanks for writing it.
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Daniel Akrent
Thank you for saying that, Jen. That means a great deal to me, knowing you and knowing your familiarity with the subject and knowing your critical acumen. Acumen. That means a great deal. Thank you so much.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
So, Daniel Ockrent, his book is called Stephen Sondheim. Art Isn't Easy is available wherever finer books are sold. And we'll have a link to that in the show notes. Dan, thank you so much for joining us on Broadway Radio.
- [19:24]
Daniel Akrent
Well, this has been a great pleasure. It's nice to talk to people who really know the subject so well. And I feel gratified, comforted, and kind of thrilled that people who know the subject as well as the two of you do could feel so positively about my book. So thank you very much.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
All right, so that's the first must read. But wait, there's more. Wait till you hear this,
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Singer
kids.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Kids, wait till you hear this. So Liza Minnelli's memoir is out there, and it has made the list. So tell us about her latest book.
- [20:07]
Jan Simpson
Well, I mean, what is there to say other than it's by Liza Minnelli, who turned 80 this year. Big celebration, lots of people performing to just celebrate the fact that Liza has survived to be 80. And her book is really about her, her struggles to survive both her triumphs and her difficulties. It's also a lot about her mom and her relationship with her mom, which was a lot more complex than it seemed on the surface. I listened to the audiobook, and I'm a big audiobook listener. And it's terrific because she reads it herself. And she wrote this book, probably dictated this book in collaboration with her. Very good. I think she has said her best friend, Michael Feinstein, and they are very, very close. And it's all the vulnerabilities that make people really root and cheer for Liza throughout her career. And let's face it, she's lived her entire life in the public eye from when she was born to her mom, Judy Garland and her dad, Vincent Minnelli, right up until now when she's celebrating her 80th birthday so publicly and all of that as you're listening to her and she's fighting through the drug use and alcohol abuse and the relapse and triumphs and then failures. You just keep rooting for her. It's a very touching memoir.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Oh, that's great. And then also from our friend Marc Shaiman. Never mind the happy showbiz stories from a sore winner. I mean, I just, I laugh when I saw that headline because I'm like, I can totally hear Mark saying that.
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Jan Simpson
I listened to this one too, and I really.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Did he narrate it?
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Jan Simpson
He did. And not only did he narrate it, but I really want to urge people to listen to the audiobook because, I mean, Mark Shaiman is irrepressible. He's totally self deprecating. He's always telling stories where he comes out as sort of the butt of the joke of the story. But one of the things that he does in his audiobook is that he keeps breaking out into song. And he of course, can do it because he wrote the songs, so he has the rights to the songs. But not only does he break out in song, but he invites friends to sing with him and, and so on. The audiobook are people like Christian Borl and Megan Hilton, Catherine McPhee. And I mean, it just goes on and on. On who he's telling a story and then he stops and he goes, well, let's sing this so and so. Come on in. And they do. And so it's like this mini review on the audiobook. I think reading the stories would be fun too. His career stretches from when he was a teenager at about 16, 17, arranging music for Bette Midler, which is where he got his start. And he's done movie scores and of course stage musicals and of course smash, both the TV series and the stage musical. And it's just a delight. It's like being invited to a party at Marc Shaiman's house and just having a great time. And there's no one, it seems, in show business that he doesn't know, hasn't worked with, and doesn't have an anecdote about.
- [25:03]
James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
That is wonderful. So going from the nonfiction realm into our novels, you have found a handful of interesting novels that are theatrically related. And the first one that you have here is Bring the House down by Charlotte Runcy, a novel set during the An Edinburgh Fringe Festival. An Edinburgh or the Edinburgh to Questions. It could be. This could be a comedy. This could be a tragedy, this could be a mystery, a drama. Tell us about this.
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Jan Simpson
Well, it's set at the festival and it's a London paper sends its two theater critics, one really their lead critic and one a feature writer, to cover the festival. And the critic pans one of the performance art, one of the performance artists. And this turns into a big cause celeb at the festival. The book is charming, but it's also a piece, a novel that's taking a look at what is the role of criticism. And I think today that's a big question that a lot of us are. Are playing around with, particularly those of us who do theater criticism. And so it's. It's really a delightful novel. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody bought it and turned it into a movie.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Oh, interesting. So another novel on the list here is She's a Lamb by Meredith Hambrook. It's satire about an actress with delusions of grandeur. That's. This is a novel, an actress. Oh, loosely based upon.
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Jan Simpson
Okay, no, no, this is not loosely. I hope not loosely based upon anyone, because I've been describing it as what if Norma Desmond and Tom Ripley had a love child? It would be the main character in this novel. This is a young actress who lives in. She's in Canada. She's not in a major city in Canada either. She's in a. Some small ish city in metropolitan area in. In Canada. And there is going to be a local production of the Sound of Music. And she is determined that she is going to play the main role of Maria in this show. And she will do anything and she does do anything and everything to clear the path of the other actresses who are in her way. It's a hoot. It's just a hoot. So people who are looking for just a real, you know, chuckle on the beach or at the park, on the terrace, on the subway. This would be a great read for them. It really would be. Another one, I think, though, that some people may enjoy is the dramatic life of Jonah Penrose. This is by not their name, Robin Green. And I've been describing this as a heated rivalry. Style rom com. It's about two actors in London who. They're both interested. Well, yeah, they're both interested in the same part. A musical of the odyssey on the London stage. And they start off as rivals. They start off, they can't stand one another, but as the novel goes on, they can't deny the attraction they have for one another. And so it's another sort of heated rivalry, only this time backstage.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Okay, and I'm going down the list here, and I'm like, hey, that's a familiar name. Alexis Solofsky.
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Jan Simpson
Yes, yes.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
She wrote a novel.
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Jan Simpson
She wrote a novel, I believe. I don't know if this is her first novel or not, but this is a culture writer for the New York Times who does a lot of features about theater. And this is a literary thriller about a cult like theater troupe in the 1970s. It's framed by this woman who gets these mysterious messages that are referencing her time in this troop and a mystery associated with a death and some disappearances that happened as this troupe was on a European tour. And the novel is her remembering what happened, trying to keep whoever is sending her these mysterious messages from interfering with her current life. As I said, a literary thriller.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Wow.
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Jan Simpson
Called Flash Out. I don't think we gave the title. It's called Flash.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
All right.
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Jan Simpson
And I think the last one that. That I would talk about is the Mother act by Heidi Reimer. And this is a novel about a famous feminist actress who. And her relationship to her daughter. And it's really about the struggle between the personal and professional lives of ambitious women, women who are. Who really feel as though they have a call to a profession, as many actors do. And she feels this has to be the most important thing in her life. And she's willing to sacrifice many things in her life, including her daughter. And so the novel looks at the repercussions of. Of what happens to her career, what happens to her daughter, and what happens to her daughter when her daughter decides to follow in the footsteps of her mother and go in to the theater.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Wow. Yeah. All right, so we have given everybody their summer reading assignments. We want to hear back from all of the listeners out there, what they thought about these things or if you have something that you think you should suggest to Jan and the other listeners.
- [33:06]
Jan Simpson
Yes, do.
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James Lapine (Broadway Radio Host)
Yeah, so you can email us. All the contact information is in the show notes. Of course, Jan has her ongoing all the drama and stagecraft podcasts that are happening. And you can find Jan at Broadway and me. So all sorts of great things happening there. Jan, thank you so much for putting this together for yet another year. It's always a thrill to do this over the summer.
- [33:42]
Jan Simpson
Well, thank you, James, for helping to publicize the list and get it out there. And yes, listeners, if there are books, particularly novels that you love that are set in the theater world, please let me know about them. I'm always on the hunt for one.
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Singer
Entering the world of the hat. Reaching through the world of the hat like a window. Back to this one from that studying a faith Stepping back to look at her face Leaves a little space in the way like a window but to see it's the only way to see and when the woman Matthew Wandin goes you can say to yourself, well, I give what I give but the woman along Wake by your know that however you live, there's a part of you always standing by Mapping out the sky. Finishing a hat Starting on a hat.
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T-Mobile Legal Voice
Foreign.
- [35:16]
Hiker 1
Awkward time to ask this, but hey, did you download the trail map?
- [35:20]
Hiker 2
Yeah, no, I don't need to.
- [35:22]
Hiker 1
I I don't understand. You're trusting your signal out here?
- [35:24]
Hiker 2
I'm trusting T Mobile. They have the best network. And if we end up in bumtots nowhere, well, we've got T Satellite for backup.
- [35:31]
Jan Simpson
Whoa.
- [35:31]
Hiker 1
I don't trust my carrier that much.
- [35:34]
Hiker 2
We'll just use your phone as a flashlight.
- [35:37]
T-Mobile Announcer
With America's best network and T Satellite, we're keeping you connected in places you never thought possible. And if you switch today, you get free phones for zero down and only 25 bucks a month per line for four lines. Find out more@t mobile.com or visit your local store.
- [35:53]
T-Mobile Legal Voice
Best Mobile Network Based on analysis by Ooklab speed test intelligence data 2H2025 with 24 month and bill credits and 4L eligible port ins on essentials for well qualified customers with autopay plus taxes, fees and $35 connection charge per line credits and imbalance too. If you pay off earlier, cancel contact US Finance Agreement example 29999 Moto Edge 5G required T satellite available with compatible device in most outdoor areas in the US where you can see the sky. Included with experience beyond are $10 a month. However. News Monthly Cancel anytime Visit T mobile.
- [36:16]
Singer
Com.