This 2018 movie roundup has me in a ranking mood!

New perspectives on the same material — AKA: what all revivals should offer, yet too few do — will alter our opinions of that original material.

As such, on the occasion of my favorite working director AND my favorite composer BOTH being represented in productions on New York stages right now — Network on Broadway, and Merrily We Roll Along off-Broadway, courtesy of Roundabout — it’s as good a time as any to list, in order of personal preference, the parts of their oeuvres that I’ve experienced live and in person.

Oh, I should probably specify who I’m talking about. They’re each known by one name:

Ivo + Sondheim.

IVO VAN HOVE

1. Scenes from a Marriage
2. A View from the Bridge
3. Angels in America
4. The Crucible
5. Kings of War
6. After the Rehearsal / Persona
7. Network
8. The Fountainhead
9. Obsession
10. Lazarus
11. Antigone
12. The Damned
13. Hedda Gabbler

STEPHEN SONDHEIM

1. Company
2. Sunday in the Park With George
3. Sweeney Todd
4. Merrily We Roll Along
5. Assassins 
6. Into the Woods
7. A Little Night Music
8. Pacific Overtures
9. Road Show
10. Follies
11. Anyone Can Whistle
12. The Frogs
13. Passion

Note: I refuse to count Gypsy and West Side Story — the latter of which Ivo will mount on Rudinway Broadway in 2020 — as official Sondheim scores, because America’s Shakespeare “only” wrote the lyrics, not the music.