Stephen Sondheim's Contributions to Musical Theatre

Stephen Sondheim, hailed by many as a genius, has had a long and illustrious career in Broadway musical theatre spanning five decades. During those fifty-some years, Sondheim has essentially reinvented the Broadway musical. The Sondheim canon shows three distinct ways Sondheim has contributed to musical theatre. First of all, the difficulty of Stephen Sondheim's music has raised the standard of musical theatre. Actors simply cannot stand onstage and sing as they used to in the …

…his footsteps. To conclude, Stephen Sondheim has changed the path of the Broadway musical through the difficulty of his music, through the great variety of his subjects, and through his innovations in plot. Although he has not enjoyed the same commercial success as some of his contemporaries (his latest musical, Bounce, 2003, was critically panned in previews in Washington, D.C, and Chicago), Stephen Sondheim has changed the Broadway musical for the better through his genius.