Stephen Sondheim lyrics for a musical version of "The Exception and the Rule"; according to Robbins, Bernstein would not work without Sondheim. When Sondheim agreed, Guare asked: "Why haven't you all worked together since "West Side Story"?" Sondheim answered, "You'll see". Guare said that working with Sondheim was like being with an old college roommate, and he depended on him to "decode and decipher their crazy way of working"; Bernstein worked only after midnight, and Robbins only in the early morning. Bernstein's score, which was supposed to be light, was influenced by his need to make a musical statement. Stuart Ostrow, who
Stephen Sondheim parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As the only child of well-to-do parents living in the San Remo on Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography ("Stephen Sondheim: A Life") as an isolated, emotionally-neglected child. When he lived in New York, Sondheim attended ECFS, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School known simply as "Fieldston". He later attended the New York Military Academy and George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where he wrote his first musical, "By George," and from which he graduated in 1946. Sondheim spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.