R.I.P.: Stephen Sondheim, Theater Royalty Dead At 91

Stephen Sondheim, whose quick-witted lyrics made Broadway audiences sit up and listen in the 1950s and whose cerebral, ground-breaking shows from “Company” in 1970 to “Merrily We Roll Along” more than a decade later thrust the American musical into the modern era, has died. He was 91.

Bloomberg reports his death was announced by F. Richard Pappas, his lawyer and friend, according to the New York Times, saying it was “sudden.” Sondheim had a Thanksgiving dinner with friends the day before, the paper said. Pappas couldn’t be immediately reached in his office in Austin, Texas.

Broadway productions for which he was both composer and lyricist that won Tony awards for best musical included “Passion,” “Sweeney Todd,” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” His “Sunday in the Park with George” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

A student of the composer Milton Babbitt and protege of the romantic lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, Sondheim wrote shows that shimmered -- and sometimes shivered -- in the crawlspace between sentiment and existentialism. He was, as one of his most famous lyrics put it, the quintessential “Broadway baby,” able to please an audience with rousing anthems and plangent ballads.

He was also Broadway’s most fearless innovator, constantly staking out new musical territory, whether or not the audience could be cajoled into joining him on the journey.

Neither as popular as Rodgers and Hammerstein nor the Gershwins, and not a box-office sensation like his younger contemporary, Lloyd Webber, Sondheim nonetheless set the standard for contemporary American musicals.

“Send in the Clowns,” from 1973 Tony winner “A Little Night Music,” was arguably the only standard in his vast catalog of songs. Renditions by Judy Collins and Frank Sinatra became hits.

Others, from “The Ladies Who Lunch” (“Company”) to “I’m Still Here” (“Follies”) and “Move On” (“Sunday in the Park with George”) became mainstays of cabaret singers.

Sondheim also wrote songs for several films, including “Reds,” “Dick Tracy” and “The Birdcage.”

Trained as a composer, he earned his first Broadway billing as lyricist for 1957’s “West Side Story.” His far more experienced collaborators were Leonard Bernstein, who composed the music; Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book; and Jerome Robbins, who staged and choreographed the landmark show.

Two years later, he collaborated with composer Jule Styne on “Gypsy” and the result was another high point in the pantheon of Broadway musicals.

With “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” Sondheim finally got billing as both composer and lyricist. A giddy travesty of comedies by the Roman playwright Plautus that was also staged by Robbins, the hit starred Zero Mostel as a slave desperate for freedom and sex, not necessarily in that order.

But it was Sondheim’s decade-long partnership with producer-turned-director Hal Prince, beginning in 1970 with the musical comedy “Company,” that solidified his place in the first rank of Broadway visionaries.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born March 22, 1930, the son of Herbert Sondheim, a dress manufacturer, and his chief designer, the former Janet Fox. They lived on Manhattan’s Central Park West, until the parents divorced when he was 10.

As a youth, Sondheim became friendly with Jamie Hammerstein. In Jamie’s father, Oscar, he found a lifelong mentor. Oscar Hammerstein’s principles of lyric writing would later take on biblical significance for Sondheim even as he rebelled against the form that Hammerstein and his last great partner, composer Richard Rodgers, had themselves redefined for Broadway audiences.