SOURCE: “The Dream Shattered: America's Seventies Musicals,” in Journal of American Culture, Vol. 12, No. 3, Fall, 1989, pp. 31–37.

In the following essay, Fraser discusses the re-evaluation of American ideals in the seventies—specifically marriage, the women's movement, injustice of American society, and Western imperialism—and how those ideals are expressed throughout Sondheim's works.

Every year high school, community theatres, colleges, and universities produce old American musicals because audiences flock to see them, and because actors love to perform in them. The musical is probably the most often attended theatrical form by the American people.¹

The musical theatre is commonly regarded as America's single unique contribution to the field of theatre,² and yet comparatively little substantial research has been conducted in this area. Existing research has been from a theatrically introverted point of view. The theatre is analyzed in terms of the play script, newspaper, magazine, and journal reviews of productions...