Stephen was my best teacher in musical theatre. His notes were very concise and specific and he could sometimes be harsh. He told me once not to slide up to the note, that I wasn’t doing my cabaret act. Another time he said I sounded like monotonous mush. It was harsh, yes, but if it had been any less harsh I would probably not have learned. That is probably the most important thing I can take away from him: he made me better.

His music is complicated, his lyrics intensely complicated, so to feel as though he had given his approval was pretty remarkable. There’s nothing like it. The first time I was ever in a rehearsal room with Steve was for Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic. I was afraid because I didn’t believe I was a natural for the role of Mrs Lovett. I actually asked my agent to find me something else. It was never a role that I imagined I would play. But then I thought, okay, well, I have a task in front of me. I was very nervous for that first rehearsal. But when I had Steve’s approval, I felt I had accomplished something important. 

Company was groundbreaking when it was originally performed because it wasn’t the kind of typical musical comedy that everyone had come to expect. It was revolutionary. I think Marianne Elliot [the director of the current revival; which premiered in London’s West End] has done a phenomenal job in making it gender-bent and the production itself is so exciting to look at. In our first preview here in New York, she said it was the antithesis of what we’ve just gone through with Covid. It’s about company, it’s about inclusion, it’s about being alive. I think it resonates more because we’re finally back in the theatres.

Steve had a wicked sense of humour. I got to know him personally in Connecticut because we lived in the same county and we would be at social events together. I can’t say it was easy being his friend because I was also an interpreter of his work and properly scared of him. I was never not intimidated by Steve.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer

Whenever I met him I was always slightly in awe of him. Nonetheless, we had a smile backstage at the celebration of [the director] Hal Prince at the Majestic theatre, New York [in 2019]. He was a little frail. He was sitting at the back, and I walked past because it was dark. He said “Hi Andrew, it’s Steve!” 

I feel that many people are going to be talking about him as a great lyricist. He’s peerless in that regard. And when I was young people thought of him as a lyricist, because of West Side Story and Gypsy, two classic musicals for which he wrote the lyrics alone – and, let’s face it, West Side Story is the best musical of all time. But I want to raise my hand up about him as a composer and I think he always regarded himself first and foremost as a composer.