How Sondheim Can Change Your Life
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An “incisive…heartwarming” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of the powerful and universal lessons from the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, the genius behind such musical theater masterworks as Company, West Side Story, and Into the Woods.
Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, but for countless fans around the world, he is “still here,” to quote one of his lyrics. With acclaimed revivals of his landmark shows occurring around the world and introducing new generations to the man who transformed American musical theater, Sondheim’s legacy has only grown.
How Sondheim Can Change Your Life makes the case that Sondheim’s greatness—beyond the clever lyrics and adventurous music—rests in his ability to tell stories that relate to us all. From Louise’s desire for freedom as Gypsy Rose Lee to Sweeney Todd’s thirst for revenge, we as an audience relate easily to Sondheim’s characters. His works understand us as much as we understand them.
“With clarity and accessibility” (Ben Brantley, former theater critic, The New York Times), How Sondheim Can Change Your Life is rich with stories about productions and iconic performers, deep readings of his music and lyrics, and insights into his creative process. But more than that, it reveals how Sondheim’s works can enrich our own lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schoch (The Secrets of Happiness), a professor of drama at Queen's University Belfast, pays affectionate tribute to the late composer Stephen Sondheim and the lessons his musicals offer. Covering the full span of Sondheim's career on Broadway, Schoch posits that Louise's break from her domineering mother to become a burlesque dancer in 1959's Gypsy teaches audiences to live for themselves; that Bobby's apparent victory over his fear of intimacy in the final minutes of 1970's Company reminds viewers that "love isn't there to make our lives less frightening... it's there, if we can find it... to give us more life"; and that 1979's Sweeney Todd forces spectators to grapple with the banality of evil. Here We Are, which was posthumously staged in 2023, reveals that beauty can be found in the unfinished or improvised—as in life itself, Schoch argues, since the "wild, wondrous mystery of ourselves won't ever be fully revealed." While some of Schoch's interpretations can feel like a stretch, he illuminates with appealing and unbridled enthusiasm how Sondheim plumbed the depths of human experience. Musical theater lovers will be delighted.
