Last night we saw a preview of Road Show, the Sondheim musical, at the Public Theater. Road Show has been bouncing around for more than 10 years as Sondheim has tweaked and revised it, under the names Wise Guys, Gold, Brotherhood, and Bounce, but it has never made it to Broadway.

Just before the lights went down, who slipped into the end of the row right behind us?

The master himself — Stephen Sondheim.

I couldn’t believe it. Stephen Sondheim is sitting in the row right behind us, I thought. We’re at a Sondheim musical and Sondheim is here.

And this was not a big theater.

I’m surprised Matt remained calm — Sondheim is a god to him. And by the eyes of the people around us, I could tell we weren’t the only ones who realized we were in The Presence.

Then the show began, and we watched it and enjoyed it. It was 1 hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission.

At the end of the show, Sondheim and his colleague got up from the seats. They’d been sitting right next to the door to the emergency exit, so they decided to unobtrusively slip out that way. But an usher ran over and yelled at them, “Excuse me! Excuse me! You can’t go out that way!” Everyone turned to look.

There was some general low-key conferring as Sondheim explained to the woman who he was. The doors closed behind all three of them, and then we and everyone around us burst out laughing.

As we reached the end of our row and made our way up the aisle, the usher reappeared from the emergency exit door. Several of us smiled at her as if to share in the hilarity, but she had a pissed-off, defensive look on her face. “I’m not lettin’ people out that door,” she said. “I don’t care who you are.”

Matt and I continued walking up the aisle and I said softly, to no one in particular, “I don’t care if you’re Stephen Sondheim!”