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
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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
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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
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SONDHEIM ARCHIVES NOW AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS The biggest Sondheim news this month for scholars, admirers and fans is the Library of Congress’s acquisition of his vast and monumental personal archives containing manuscripts, drafts and ephemera. Here’s a video in which Horowitz discusses the treasures now included in the Library’s collection. In 1993 Sondheim
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HEY, OLD FRIENDS! Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends began as a one-night gala in London on May 3, 2022. More than a year late in October 2023, producer Cameron Mackintosh brought it back in a very successful three-month West End run ending early January 2024. It featured numerous British musical theater stars, plus Broadway veterans Bernadette
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MORE LIAISONS. A decade ago pianist Anthony De Mare thrilled Sondheim fans with recordings of Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano, a three-disk set of adaptations he commissioned from an array of composers using Sondheim’s songs. The numbers, performed by De Mare, were fascinating, and Sondheim himself was intrigued. “They’re fantasias responding to the melodic
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