If you subscribe to SiriusXM, I hope you’re familiar with Bill Rudman’s weekly program, ON THE AISLE (you’ll find it on channel 69, ON BROADWAY, which is around-the-clock show tunes). Since 2008, Bill has given listeners the best seat in the house for an hour of songs you love from the musicals you can’t forget,
Listen to my conversations about Sondheim Read More »
My friend Stuart Brown produces SOUNDS OF BROADWAY, a 24/7 online radio station playing the music of Broadway, Off-Broadway, the London stage and much more. Yesterday he sent out a message about an upcoming program that included a notice about a program we recorded several years ago. It was part of our series (20 episodes!)
“Evening Primrose” – The Lost ‘On Broadway” Episode! Read More »
MERRILY: IT’S A HIT … ON NETFLIX If you missed seeing the 2023-2024 Tony Award-winning, record-breaking Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along during its sold-out run — or you couldn’t afford a ticket — you can get a sense of it via Sony Pictures Classics’ live stage recording (formally called a “ProShot”) now available
Sondheim Update #35 Read More »
Following the publication last October of my recent book, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: Behind the Bloody Musical Masterpiece, I was recruited by Vincent DeGeorge, Patricia A. Corbett Distinguished Chair of Musical Theatre and the Joseph Weinberger Chair of Acting for the Lyric Stage, to serve as dramaturg in support of his April 2026 staging of
GETTING TO KNOW SONDHEIM An important new biography, Daniel Okrent’sStephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy, was published on March 17, 2026, by Yale University Press. He elaborates on Sondheim’s difficult relationship with his mother, who once wrote to him in a letter, “The only guilt I can think of is giving you birth.” For years, Sondheim
Sondheim Update #34 Read More »
MERRILY KEEPS ROLLING The Tony Award-winning 2023 revival of Merrily We Roll Along that starred Jonathan Groff as Frank, Daniel Radcliffe as Charley and Lindsay Mendez as Mary, was a huge success, staged at the Hudson Theatre by British director Maria Friedman. (It was more or less the same production she staged with a different
Sondheim Update #33 Read More »
I launched my Sondheim blog entries in the summer of 2021, just a few months after the publication of The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia. When I edited The Sondheim Review for more than a decade, I assembled miscellaneous “News & Notes” for each issue. There is no shortage of material and news to share: This blog
Sondheim Update #32 Read More »
Following on the 2021 publication of my STEPHEN SONDHEIM ENCYCLOPEDIA, I was invited by Rowman and Littlefield (which became Bloomsbury Publishing in May 2024) to undertake another Sondheim volume. R&L was acquired by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2024, and that’s who has released my book-length, in-depth study of SWEENEY TODD:https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/stephen-sondheims-sweeney-todd-9781538196441/ is now available for ordering. Here’s
A book entirely about Stephen Sondheim’s “Bloody Musical Masterpiece”! Read More »
SWEENEY TODD (and Halloween) ARE HEADED YOUR WAY! In the concluding chapter to my new book, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: Behind the Bloody Musical Masterpiece (released on Oct. 2), I point out, “Sweeney Todd marked an inflection point in musical theater that invited greater experimentation in subject matter told with seriously composed music — stepping
Sondheim News for September 2025 Read More »
SONDHEIM’S BLOODY MUSICAL MASTERPIECE My next dive into the world of Stephen Sondheim will be published by Bloomsbury on October 2. Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: Behind the Bloody Musical Masterpiece is an in-depth study of every possible aspect of the show. I begin with the tale’s gruesome literary origins in the Penny Dreadfuls of the
Sondheim News for August 2025 Read More »
