"Perhaps no one more than Sondheim contributed to just keeping the form alive of what had been the classic Broadway musical. Frank Rich is a columnist for New York Magazine and former drama critic for The New York Times. Over the course of a career which stretched for more than 60 years, Sondheim received both critical praise and brickbats for his adventurous work. Sondheim looked at contemporary marriage – and ambivalence – in Company, the culture clash between 19th-century Japan and the United States in Pacific Overtures, the dark side of fairy tales in Into the Woods, and even surveyed presidential Assassins. Sondheim's shows, with their intricately crafted scores, reflected his restless curiosity about human nature – from the barber exacting murderous revenge in Sweeney Todd, to the struggling painter Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George. As a teenager, he learned about theatrical songwriting from a master – Oscar Hammerstein, the author of Showboat and Oklahoma!, among others – and, by the time Sondheim was twenty seven, he had his first show, West Side Story, on Broadway.Įven though he only wrote lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's music for West Side Story, it was the beginning of a remarkable career in which Sondheim – as lyricist and composer – elevated what was, essentially, a lighthearted, optimistic commercial entertainment into an art form.
Sondheim would have been the first to tell you he was a Broadway baby.
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