Stephen Sondheim is an artist with many contradictory facets: he is an avant-garde composer and lyricist working in the populist art form, an apparently dry and acerbic critic who captures all the ambivalent pain of passion, an intellectual whose work contains some of the funniest bawdy lines on the Broadway stage. He has chosen to confront an audience that is usually looking for escapist literature with the very issues it has fled to the theatre to avoid. This collection of original essays takes particular pains to present Sondheim's diversity in a chronological plan that illustrates how each new work grew out of the previous one. Some of the topics covered are the evolution of Sondheim's female characters, who take us far beyond the usual sweet ingenues; the Roman farce antecedents of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the resemblances between Sondheim's chorus and the chorus in ancient Greek drama; Sondheim and the concept musical; and Sondheim's maturing philosophy. All students of the modern theatre and the modern musical will want to read this book.
- 272 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Information
Subtopic
TheatreIndex
A
A Chorus Line 81, 190, 191
Abbott, George 43
Albee, Edward 5, 70
Allegro 6, 27, 158–167
American Dream 72, 75, 76, 79, 83, 188, 191, 193, 194, 198–200, 202, 246
Antigone 224, 225
Anything Goes 226
archetype 7, 23, 215, 216, 218
Arena Stage 167
areté 223–225, 229
Aronson, Boris 72
Atkinson, Brooks 159
Ayers, Lemuel 2
B
Babbitt, Milton 2
Bacharach, Burt 48
Banfield, Stephen 80, 183
Barnes, Clive 43, 162
Beauty and the Beast 205, 209
Bennett, Michael 72, 73, 78, 80, 94, 203
Bergman, Ingmar 90
Bernstein, Leonard 2, 160, 248
Billington, Michael 71
Birch, Patricia 94
Blanchard, Dorothy 162
Bond, Christopher 129
Brecht, Bertolt 184, 188
Brigadoon 53, 225, 226
Brustein, Robert 36
C
Cabaret 188–194, 198
Carmen Jones 158
Carousel 14, 19, 30, 158, 203
Chaplin, Charles 220
Chicago 188, 189, 191
chorus, Greek 7, 129...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- General Editor’s Note
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Broadway Babies Images of Women in the Musicals of Stephen Sondheim
- Comedy Tonight! A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Company—25 Years Later
- Nixon’s America and Follies Reappraising a Musical Theater Classic
- The Last of Sheila Sondheim as Master Games-Player
- On Performing Sondheim A Little Night Music Revisited
- “More Beautiful Than True” or “Never Mind a Small Disaster”: The Art of Illusion in Pacific Overtures
- Psychology, Evil, and Sweeney Todd or, “Don’t I Know You, Mister?”
- Sondheim: The Idealist
- “Let the Pupil Show the Master” Stephen Sondheim and Oscar Hammerstein II
- Portraits of the Artist Sunday in the Park with George as “Postmodern” Drama
- Assassins and the Concept Musical
- Passion Not Just Another Simple Love Story
- Revisiting Greece The Sondheim Chorus
- Contributors
- Index
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Yes, you can access Stephen Sondheim by Joanne Gordon in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Theatre. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.