Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim, the most important man in American musical theater, died Friday at his Roxbury, Connecticut, home. He was 91.
The legendary “West Side Story” lyricist’s death was announced by his lawyer and friend F. Richard Pappas, who called it sudden, the New York Times reported. Pappas said Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving the day prior.
Sondheim became legendary for not writing “jazz hands” musicals — he challenged his audiences with complex lyrics and difficult, adult themes that resonated for decades through myriad revivals across the globe. Considered the greatest composer and lyricist of the 20th century, Sondheim is best known for legendary productions such as “Company” (1970), “Sweeney Todd” (1979) and “Into the Woods” (1987).
Beyond his achievements, which were great and many, he loved to laugh.
“I am the best laugher,” he told the Guardian in 2000. “If you write a comedy, hire me to sit in the audience. Although I tend to guffaw, which is not always great.”
Sir Cameron Mackintosh, notably the world’s most successful producer of musicals once described him as “possibly the greatest lyricist ever.” Frank Rich, who earned the nickname “The Butcher of Broadway” during his 14 years as the New York Times theater critic, also once wrote, “He has changed the texture of the musical as radically as Oscar Hammerstein, and may yet leave our theatre profoundly altered.”
“I want people to enjoy what I write,” Sondheim told the London Telegraph in 2014. “I’m a product of Broadway, no matter how pretentious anybody thinks what I write is. I’m not writing for myself. I’m writing to entertain, to make people laugh and cry and think. I want as big an audience as possible.”
“Thank the Lord that Sondheim lived to be 91 years old so he had the time to write such wonderful music and GREAT lyrics! May he Rest In Peace,” Barbra Streisand wrote on Twitter Friday.
Ariana DeBose, star of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming “West Side Story” film adaptation penned, “I am at a loss. Feels like the end of an era. He did indeed set the standard for the American musical. Rest well, sir. #StephenSondheim.”
“Into the Woods” star Anna Kendrick tweeted, “I was just talking to someone a few nights ago about how much fun (and f***ing difficult) it is to sing Stephen Sondheim. Performing his work has been among the greatest privileges of my career. A devastating loss.”
Currently, two recently-revived Sondheim shows are running on the recently-reopened Broadway: “Assassins” at Classic Stage Company and “Company” at Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.
The world-renowned lyricist and composer scored nine Tony Award nominations throughout his extensive career, alongside an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and a Laurence Olivier Award.
The first Broadway show that Sondheim composed both the lyrics and music for proved to be a winner out the gate. He scored a Tony Award for best musical for that show, 1962 comedy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” which ran for more than two years.
The talent took him into the 1970s and 1980s, where he created the tales, “Company” (1970), “Follies” (1971), “A Little Night Music” (1973), “Pacific Overtures” (1976), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Merrily We Roll Along” (1981) and “Sunday in the Park With George” (1984).
He went on to win Tony awards for Best Original Score for “Company” (1971), 1972’s “Follies,” “A Little Night Music” (1973), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Into the Woods” (1988) and “Passion” (1994).
In addition to his many wins, Sondheim racked up scores of Tony nominations starting with Best Musical nods for 1958’s “West Side Story” and 1960’s “Gypsy.”
The composer won multiple Grammys for musical cast show album and won song of the year in 1975 for “Send in the Clowns.”
He also won Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Sunday in the Park with George” in 1985. Over 20 years later, in 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-president Barack Obama at the White House.
Sondheim’s body of work earned him an award at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1993.
A Broadway theater located in New York City’s West 43rd Street, formally known as the Henry Miller’s Theater, was renamed in Sondheim’s honor.
Aside from working on the musical theater stage, the New York native took his talent to the big screen. He wrote music for films, which included the score for the 1974 film “Stavisky.” Warren Beatty’s 1991 comedy “Dick Tracy” included Sondheim’s tune “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” and even won the Academy Award.
Sondheim was immortalized in Lin-Manual Miranda’s recent Netflix a-adaption of “Rent” creator Jonathan Larson’s quasi-biopic, “Tick, Tick … Boom!” Actor Bradley Whitford portrays Sondheim in the musical.
In 2020, Sondheim suffered a fall that left him unable to attend the opening of his namesake theater in London’s West End.
“As I recover from my tumble, I’m impatient to throw away my cane, grab my hat and head across the Pond as soon as I can to see on which cherub Cameron has tattooed my initials,” Sondheim said in a statement at the time. “I am, to put it mildly, chuffed to have my name on a theatre in the West End I have loved visiting ever since my first trip to London almost seventy years ago.”
While he was “in feisty frustrated spirit” after the fall, according to producer Cameron Mackintosh, it didn’t stop the party for his 90th birthday, which was held virtually in April, attended by the likes of Meryl Streep.
Sondheim ruled the theater during the 25-year period, from 1970 to 1995, as the driving creative force in the American theater. While he was in his 20s, he wrote “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” and “Rose’s Turn,” as well as the closing number of Golden Age musicals, “Gypsy.”
Most recently, three film awards contenders featured his music: “Knives Out,” “Joker” and “Marriage Story.” The latter included a poignant scene in which Adam Driver sings Sondheim’s “Being Alive,” from the 1970 show “Company.”
“You can’t believe that one man wrote all of this,” Broadway leading man Raul Esparza told The Post in 2020, celebrating a career that began with the lyrics to 1957’s “West Side Story” and grew monumentally since. “It’s like looking at the Sistine Chapel. Steve would kill me for talking about him like this!”
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