Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber

"The New York Times called Stephen Sondheim "the greatest and perhaps best known artist in the American musical theater." The same paper referred to his contemporary, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Whatever their individual achievements might be, it is agreed by most critics that these two colossi have dominated world musical theater for the last quarter century and hold the key to the direction the musical stage will take in the future." "Beginning with Sondheim's lyrics-only works - West Side Story, Gypsy, and Do I Hear a Waltz? - through his scores for Saturday Night, Company, Anyone Can Whistle, Follies, Pacific Overtures, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park, Into the Woods, Assassins, and Passion, all these milestones of musical theater have been explored. Lloyd-Webber's musical contribution from his early works, The Likes of Us and Joseph, to Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, Starlight Express, Aspects of Love, By Jeeves, The Phantom of the Opera, Song and Dance, Mass, and Sunset Boulevard, to Whistle Down the Wind are also thoroughly analyzed." "The works of these two splendid artists are clarified for the casual or professional reader in context with their contemporaries. Complete with a quintuple chronology (Sondheim, Lloyd-Webber, US theater, British theater, world events), copious quotations from their works, and many never before published illustrations, the future of the art-form that is the crowning achievement of the twentieth century is made eminently clear in this book. Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber is a must-read for anyone interested in the contemporary theater."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.