The link is to the remarkably healing YouTube video of the 90th Birthday Tribute To Stephen Sondheim, in Support of ASTEP. I have it cued up to ‘The Flag Song,’ sung by the incomparable Brian Stokes Mitchell. But I encourage Patient Viewer to watch the whole thing. (Mask and Wigger Chip Zien singing “No More Giants” from Into The Woods, is another tear-jerking highlight.)

Freshman year of high school, 1978, I nagged Dad into ponying up what was even then a chunk of change, to take us all out to see “Sweeney Todd” at the Uris Theatre. This, on the strength of “word-of-mouth,” meaning I had been hearing from Andrew Ely, who had seen it, about how great the show was. All through Mr. Perka’s biology class he would slice up the frogs and push a piece at me, singing, “Have A Little Priest,” and we’d laugh and laugh.

Dad was game, and we all got dressed up, which you did, and saw the show. After the (admittedly) cathartic finale, we all settled into a table at the Bavarian Inn in Yorkville, everybody’s favorite Manhattan restaurant. As I, wide-eyed and flush with excitement at the ravishing score, passed him the basket of Bauernbrot, I asked him how he liked the show. And he said — “Well Andrew, it was really great, but honestly, I was expecting a “Cheerio, matey” show about tap-dancing Cockneys in London.”

I especially love the story because Mom and Dad had a similar experience when they took Granny to see West Side Story: ashen-faced after the curtain, she turned to my folks and said, “I thought you were taking me to a musical!”

I had never heard ‘The Flag Song’ before, but as I listened I thought this was one Sondheim song he would have loved.