Side by side with Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim will take part in a conversation at Northeastern University tonight. (Fred Prouser/Reuters/file 2007)

Seven Tony Awards. Seven Grammys. One Oscar. One Pulitzer. In his 50-plus year career as a composer and lyricist for stage and film, Stephen Sondheim has amassed accolade after accolade, making him the preeminent voice of musical theater and beyond. Tonight at 8 he will take part in a conversation with Sean Patrick Flahaven at Northeastern University.

"It's not a lecture, it's not a concert," says Flahaven, editor of the Sondheim Review and vice president at Warner/Chappell Music. "Stephen doesn't do them."

So this evening, Flahaven plans to keep it loose and personal. He'll ask Sondheim about his life and career as creator of such famous musicals as "Company," "Follies," "Into the Woods," and "Sweeney Todd." Acclaimed vocalist Kate Baldwin, whose Broadway credits include "Thoroughly Modern Millie," "Wonderful Town," and "The Full Monty," will sing. And fans will have the opportunity to ask their own questions.

"It's very exciting. I have done this before with Steve," Flahaven says. "He's always been very warm and friendly."

Information: 617-373-4700, www.centerforthearts.neu.edu

The war on the ground

Colin Teevan wrote "How Many Miles to Basra?" before the invasion of Iraq in 2001.

"I suppose like everyone else I didn't know what to think," he says by phone from England. "I wasn't satisfied with the antiwar perspective or the prowar one. While Britain was very vociferously antiwar, I became more and more intrigued by what it was like to be a soldier fighting an impossible war."

"Basra" runs at the Stoneham Theatre starting Thursday.

It was a radio play at first. Teevan got a commission from the BBC's Radio 3, which made sure he had access to many journalists who were embedded at checkpoints. Most of the play is based on fact: It's about four soldiers, a journalist from Northern Ireland, and a translator who take a dangerous unauthorized journey deep into Iraq to make amends for the deaths of local men at a checkpoint. The examination of their psyches and of the way truth and responsibility can get blurred in times of war is stark.

"When the radio play was broadcast in 2004 it caused a bit of a stir," Teevan says. "It was so accurate, people thought it must have been written by a soldier."

To prepare for her part as the journalist, Eve Kagan listened to BBC broadcasts, studied Irish accents, and absorbed a recent talk by a British soldier and an American Marine about how to be a loyal comrade and how to survive by not thinking about the politics but the task at hand.

"I am feeling good," she says. "My character's a complicated woman. She's in maniacal pursuit of the truth, and she'll do anything to get it, even lie."

Information: 781-279-2200, www.stonehamtheatre.org

Megan Tench can be reached at mtench@globe.com