Good To Have Sondheim On Our Side Of The Question

Stephen Sondheim is upset by director Diane Paulus's project to mount what would be tantamount to a Eurotrash Regietheater version of the Gershwin opera Porgy And Bess and made his displeasure known in a letter to The New York Times in response to a New York Times story on the project by reporter Patrick Healy. Wrote Mr. Sondheim:

In the interest of truth in advertising, let it not be called “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” nor even “The Gershwin-Heyward Porgy and Bess.” Advertise it honestly as “Diane Paulus’s Porgy and Bess.” And the hell with the real one.

Just so.

Mr. Sondheim's suggestion is remarkably similar to a suggestion of our own concerning Eurotrash Regietheater productions titled, "A Suggested Solution To The Regietheater Problem", which we wrote in February of this year wherein we had this to say:

Let a law be established internationally that would make it a criminal offense, punishable by a stiff fine and/or imprisonment, to bill, advertise, or in any way promote a Regietheater production of a work as a production of that work of the same name by the work's original creator. That would leave Regies perfectly free to do whatever their self-involved, self-serving little hearts desired as long as their creations were clearly identified as their creations and not the creation of the work's original creator.

Good to have Mr. Sondheim on our side of the question.