Sondheim and the Expansion of the Musical

Stephen Sondheim expanded what a Broadway musical could think, feel, and structurally dare to do. The cards in this gallery isolate works in which complexity, moral ambiguity, and formal experiment became the point—not a decoration around a conventional plot.

These productions ask audiences to follow ideas as closely as melody: obsession and injustice in Sweeney Todd, the cost of making art in Sunday in the Park with George, the ethics inside fairy tales in Into the Woods, and the darker side of American myth in Assassins. Together they show how Sondheim and his collaborators made musical theatre a form that could hold contradiction without resolving it too quickly.