- The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Sondheim’s Genius
- Sondheim and Postmodernism
- “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: Oscar Hammerstein’s Influence on Sondheim
- “Old Situations, New Complications”: Tradition and Experiment in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Anyone Can Whistle as Experimental Theater
- The Prince–Sondheim Legacy
- “Growing Pains”: Revising Merrily We Roll Along
- “Give Us More to See”: The Visual World of Stephen Sondheim’s Musicals
- Orchestrators in their Own Words: The Sound of Sondheim in the Twenty-first Century
- “Nothing More than Just a Game”: The American Dream Goes Bust in Road Show
- “It Takes Two”: The Doubling of Actors and Roles in Sunday in the Park with George
- “Something Just Broke”: Assassins after the Iraq War—A Production and its Reception
- Sondheim on the London Stage
- “And One for Mahler”: An Opera Director’s Reflections on Sondheim in the Subsidized Theater
- Evening Primrose: Sondheim and Goldman’s Television Musical
- From Screen to Stage: A Little Night Music and Passion
- More Sondheim: Original Music for Movies
- Attending the Tale of Sweeney Todd: The Stage Musical and Tim Burton’s Film Version
- A Little Night Music: The Cynical Operetta
- Croaks into Song: Sondheim Tackles Greek Frogs
- Sweeney Todd: From Melodrama to Musical Tragedy
- “Careful the Spell You Cast”: Into the Woods and the Uses of Disenchantment
- Keeping Company with Sondheim’s Women
- Follies: Musical Pastiche and Cultural Archaeology
- Narratives of Progress and Tragedy in Pacific Overtures
- Queer Sondheim
- Sondheim’s America; America’s Sondheim
- Bibliography
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Stephen Sondheim’s most recent musical was based on one of his oldest ideas. As early as 1952 the composer-lyricist became fixated on the real-life misadventures of Addison and Wilson Mizner, misfit brothers who became legendary for their colossal business failures in the early twentieth century. Road Show, the musical Sondheim and librettist John Weidman finally wrote about the Mizners, underwent many transformations between 1999 and 2008 (including the adoption of two other titles: Wise Guys and Bounce). But the most significant changes were tonal, from an initially vaudevillian travelogue comedy to an antiromantic one-act chamber musical. This final, now authoritative version delivered an emotional impact exceeding most previous works by this notoriously “all head, no heart” dramatist and offered a harsh vision of the materialist mania of the American Dream.
Keywords: Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman, Addison Mizner, Wilson Mizner, John Doyle, Harold Prince, American architecture
Garrett Eisler is Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at Ithaca College. He earned a PhD in Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center, as well as an MA in English from NYU and an MFA in Directing from Boston University. In addition to essays for several academic journals (including Studies in Musical Theatre) he has contributed chapters to the Best Plays Theatre Yearbook series (Limelight Editions) and written on contemporary theatre for the Village Voice, Time Out New York, and American Theatre magazine.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Sondheim’s Genius
- Sondheim and Postmodernism
- “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: Oscar Hammerstein’s Influence on Sondheim
- “Old Situations, New Complications”: Tradition and Experiment in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Anyone Can Whistle as Experimental Theater
- The Prince–Sondheim Legacy
- “Growing Pains”: Revising Merrily We Roll Along
- “Give Us More to See”: The Visual World of Stephen Sondheim’s Musicals
- Orchestrators in their Own Words: The Sound of Sondheim in the Twenty-first Century
- “Nothing More than Just a Game”: The American Dream Goes Bust in Road Show
- “It Takes Two”: The Doubling of Actors and Roles in Sunday in the Park with George
- “Something Just Broke”: Assassins after the Iraq War—A Production and its Reception
- Sondheim on the London Stage
- “And One for Mahler”: An Opera Director’s Reflections on Sondheim in the Subsidized Theater
- Evening Primrose: Sondheim and Goldman’s Television Musical
- From Screen to Stage: A Little Night Music and Passion
- More Sondheim: Original Music for Movies
- Attending the Tale of Sweeney Todd: The Stage Musical and Tim Burton’s Film Version
- A Little Night Music: The Cynical Operetta
- Croaks into Song: Sondheim Tackles Greek Frogs
- Sweeney Todd: From Melodrama to Musical Tragedy
- “Careful the Spell You Cast”: Into the Woods and the Uses of Disenchantment
- Keeping Company with Sondheim’s Women
- Follies: Musical Pastiche and Cultural Archaeology
- Narratives of Progress and Tragedy in Pacific Overtures
- Queer Sondheim
- Sondheim’s America; America’s Sondheim
- Bibliography
- Index
