SOURCE: Lovensheimer, Jim. “Stephen Sondheim and the Musical of the Outsider.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, pp. 181-96. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

In the following essay, Lovensheimer argues that Sondheim dramatizes the figure of the outsider or outlaw in American musicals using “popular song styles in ways that subvert the connotations they have carried for a century or more, he is taking a drastic stylistic step, one that cannot but disturb and unsettle American audiences.”

In a New York Times Magazine interview with Frank Rich, Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930) told an anecdote as revealing as it was charming. Reminiscing about the New Haven opening of Carousel in 1945, when he was fifteen, the composer/lyricist recalled the emotional impact of the first act's closing moments. ‘I remember how everyone goes off to the clambake at the end of...