By Marilyn Lester***This is the story of a young girl, a girl who lived in Ohio and who, like many persons of talent and aspirations of a show business career, can feel mighty out of place in the circumstances of their birth. That young girl was Mardi 
Millit, and what she did was so precocious and extraordinary that she’s telling her story now in Sorry-Grateful: One Sondheim Story in Letters and Song, performed at Don’t Tell Mama.
Yep, Mardi wrote a letter to Stephen Sondheim when she was 13—and he wrote back; and the relationship continued into adulthood, even till Mardi made her way to New York to live her dreams. Imagine having Stephen Sondheim as a lifelong pen pal! Good stuff, and so was this endearing, thoughtful cabaret, produced and performed with Millit’s husband, Michael Garin at the keys and in vocals. It was a winning combination, as is their long-enduring partnership (first performing together) and in marriage. He’s a wizard on the keys and she’s an A-1 interpreter of song. Together they both have ironic wit and a mutual sense of comedy that combine into a perfect chemistry of entertainment.
Naturally, they began with SS’s “The Little Things You Do Together” (Company) with a side helping of “Send in the Clowns” (A Little Night Music). In this introduction we came to understand that this was Mardie’s show alone. Amen. Plus, that Mardie was “a geek” who completely and astutely “got” Sondheim as an adolescent. While her contemporaries were listening to Top 40 radio of the mid 1980s, she was obsessing on Sweeney Todd. An “alien in her own ho
me,” Millit adds to the soundtrack of her life with the title song, “Anyone Can Whistle.” As she delves deeper into the penned relationship with Sondheim, we’re reminded this all began before the internet and email, thus, actual written letters, and that when the correspondence began, the Maestro had not yet achieved god-like status.
Sorry-Grateful: One Sondheim Story in Letters and Song artfully interweaves the stories and destinies of both letter writers. Millit was pressured to pursue an operatic career and then rebelled and was working in regional musical theater before settling in New York: “Everybody says Don’t” (Anyone Can Whistle). She wrote poems and sent them to Sondheim. He wrote back, comparing them to the works of W.H. Auden. She stuck by him when friends in New York were cutting him off. His early shows weren’t successes, notably Merrily We Roll Along, from which she sang “Our Time.”
Time moved on and as happens in life, situations evolve. The letters were less often, and often were “catch-ups.” Eventually Millitt met her pen pal, first seeing him in his home where he 
was friendly and a happy rapport was confirmed. And she would run into him now and again, singing “I Remember” (Evening Primrose).
Now, post-pandemic and with Sondheim gone, Millit reflects that 91 is good run. “Goodbye for Now” (Reds) says it nicely. And because she’s Mardie Millit, the show wouldn’t be complete without a comedic twist. She performs the Patti Lu Pone version of “The Ladies Who Lunch” (Company), with pointed accuracy. Laughter fills the room. And for an encore, the duo of Millit and Garin exit on the perfect philosophical contemplation of death, “Fear No More” (The Frogs). The music is Sondheim’s but the lyrics are by another genius and creator of words, William Shakespeare. “Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.” It was a touching farewell to Stephen Sondheim, of whom Millit earlier said, “He’s everywhere, just not here.”
