It should be noted that, when he was alive, Mr. Sondheim was aware of and amused by rampant tendencies to deify him.
Consider this sardonic ditty from a show called “Sondheim on Sondheim,” a 2010 Broadway revue commemorating his 80th birthday.
He wrote the song in response to a 1994 headline in New York magazine that asked, “Is Stephen Sondheim God?” His musical answer: “You have to have something to believe in.
There’s a half-voiced fear among musical acolytes, understandable in a time in which theater itself is newly under siege, that on some level Stephen Sondheim represents the end of the line for a once-flourishing art form.
Yet none, with the qualified exception of Mr. Miranda, seem likely to engender the kind of enduring, passionate cult that Mr. Sondheim has inspired.
Persons:
Shakespeare, Auden’s, Yeats, Mr, Sondheim, ”, “, Stephen Sondheim God, I, Stephen Sondheim, Lin, Manuel Miranda, Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, Michael R, Jackson, Jeanine Tesori, Miranda, Sondheim’s
Locations:
”, New York, There’s