Stephen Sondheim was a self-confessed “world-class procrastinator,” and he left behind evidence in the form of an unfinished show, Here We Are, that might have otherwise opened in his lifetime. Here We Are—which ends its 17-week run Jan. 21 at The Shed’s Griffin Theater—draws from two films by master surrealist Luis Buñuel: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, both stinging satires of the corrupt upper-crust. But, says David Ives, who wrote the book for Here We Are, Sondheim didn’t have Buñuel in mind when the two first began working together.

That would have been around December of 2009. Ives—one of the most prolific and comical playwrights around (Venus in Fur, Lives of the Saints, Babel’s in Arms)—remembers meeting with Sondheim at the Manhattan townhouse in Turtle Bay. “I knew him the way one knows people in the theater, so we were casually acquainted to begin with,” Ives tells Observer. “Then, one day, out of the blue, he asked me if I wanted to come over for a drink and said that he wanted to talk to me about something—but that it wasn’t important. I said, ‘Sure.’ I had never been to his house, so we set a date.”

The two drank and chatted........

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