To fete beloved Stephen Sondheim at 90 in song for two and a half hours, an A-list of Broadway stars zoomed in. Sure, you don’t get the wow production, the pageantry, the costumes and sets of a live musical, but what you do get is that up close emotion that the internet allows, as if you were seated a foot away from say Meryl Streep’s face as she carouses with Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald for a drunken rendition of “Ladies Who Lunch.” This is what the split screen was meant to do, just as Beanie Feldstein and Ben Platt’s duet from Into the Woods and Annaleigh Ashford and Jake Gyllenhaal from Sunday in the Park with George keeps them in the same frame, even as they, and we are, well, apart and elsewhere.

In all, Stephen Sondheim’s outstanding oeuvre makes for thrilling listening: Katrina Lenk performing “Johanna,” and Josh Groban doing a medley of “Children Will Listen”/ “Not While I’m Around.” Some surprises for me were Maria Friedman belting “Broadway Baby” and Linda Lavin singing a Sondheim Brazilian sendup, “The Boy from . . .”. Introducing himself as the “other” Stephen, Steven Spielberg spoke about the great joy he experienced working with Sondheim on his let’s-hope-soon-to-be-seen movie of West Side Story. No one sings from that classic; others remember what they learned working with the master, and how they were turned on to theater after seeing their first Sondheim musical. With the hope of turning on the next generation, the event brings attention to ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty).

And Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti, Bernadette Peters, Neil Patrick Harris, Brian Stokes Mitchell, etc. etc. etc. keep the party going: Happy Birthday, Stephen!