Why does Sondheim always FLOP?

Been loving the increased output of videos lately? We can only keep making these videos this often with support from our wonderful backers on Patreon! Come hangout with me on some video hangouts, get behind the scenes resources on the videos, and make a bunch of lifelong friends! patreon.com/witw

What's amazing is that despite Sondheim never hitting those 1,000 performances, his shows have had more of an impact on our popular culture and on the theater community than perhaps any other single person's staged work in history. He doesn't need that milestone because he's already accomplished far greater things.

Basically for Sondheim, the people that get it get it, the people that don’t don’t

Sondheim is great. Great musical. Great music. Great everything. But I get why the musicals aren’t that popular. They are weird AF. His presence is felt throughout the musical world because so many composers were influenced by him. And you can TELL.

Man, hearing the stories of seeing these actors watching the recorded versions of the shows to eventually play the characters in them. If that's not proof that pro shots keep a show alive for years in the future I don't know what else.

In the 1970s, I got a book about Broadway musicals. 300 performances was considered a hit until the 1960s with 500 performances considered long-running and 1000 performances considered extraordinary. It's not until the 1980s that 1000+ performances was considered a standard length run for a musical.

Stephen Sondheim is the only Broadway composer to be made into an NPC character in a Dimension 20 actual play D&D campaign. If that doesn't illustrate how influential he is on the whole, I don't know what does. 😊

In his book Hal Prince wrote that Sweeney did finally turn a profit for the original investors. That makes it a hit. Also: Into the Woods also paid off due to income from the tour, making it a hit. So his hits were: West Side Story,, Gypsy, Funny Thing, Company, Night Music, Sweeney & Woods. Not a bad track record. Rogers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Jerry Herman, and Weber all had their share of flops.

I’ve never heard more applause for an overture than I did at Merrily this month. 10:39 Phantom is the longest running Broadway musical but The Fantastiks ran 42 years off Broadway. Incidentally I’d love to see a wait in the wings on that. It seems kinda forgotten.

i met sondheim twice. once when i was 6, and the other when i was 14. though we only spoke briefly, he gave me so much joy in life and inspired me to always pursue what I love, and that was theatre. now i go to an ivy league for drama. i couldn't have done it without him, and i really wish he knew that. so glad his legacy is living on with two shows on broadway right now, it means the world as a fan of his. <3

While I haven't seen many, Into the Woods is my favorite Sondheim musical. I think the humor matched with the depth in all the relationships of each character were brilliant (of course, I mean the stage version)

Sondheim liked to point out that West Side Story was never a big hit till the movie, but I would challenge that. It turned a profit on Broadway (relatively quickly,) it had a successful tour and return engagement (which pushed the original productions' Broadway run to just under 1000 performances) and the cast album charted very well on Billboard, although of course not to record numbers like the film soundtrack would. Furthermore, the original London version (opening in 1958, so still well before the movie came out) was an even bigger hit running 1048 performances, but Sondheim never mentioned that ;)

Sondheim writes plays that are a joy to produce. From a performer's and designer's standpoint, they're super challenging, complex, and fun. But from an audience standpoint, they don't bear the same weight: they're weird, sometimes hard to follow, and often impossible to sing along with. And they're not too spectacle-oriented either. I think this is a major factor as to why they don't "sell out." The true audience for these shows isn't the average theatre-goer, its the average theatre-practitioner. For that reason, they're never going to stop getting produced-- but they're not going to roll in money the same way a show by Rodgers and Hammerstein or Andrew Lloyd Webber might.

You raise an excellent point. The undeniable truth is that if you set aside the sevenish classic shows with his name on it, the critical acclaim, the legions of dedicated, slavish fans, the pile of Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, the frequent high profile revivals, the hundreds-per-year regional productions, the eight film adaptations, the perennial soundtrack recordings and his universal regard as one of the all-time geniuses of his chosen medium, Sondheim's career is quite the cautionary tale. I mean, according to a single aribtrary metric in a single market. You know, scoring the BIG money as opposed to medium-sized money and ever-flowing ancillary cash for the next century or so.

His music didn't click for me until I was a stagehand for a local production of Sunday in the Park with George without knowing the show. "Finishing the Hat" rewired my brain, watered my crops, and converted me fully. It moved me so suddenly I had to avoid dripping tears into the champagne flutes for Act 2!

My opinion: Lloyd-Webber became popular cause he wrote showtunes - stuff with simple melody that an average person can sing in the shower. He writes songs that stick in your head, and deliberately allowed some of the songs to be released as singles on the pop charts. Sondheim writes music - complex, multi-layered songs that, for an average person, do not become earworms and are not easy to sing in the shower. This is not to say that he wasn't capable of that, as Send In the Clowns proved, its just that he tended to write songs to fit the story and the musical, rather than songs that could be generic pop hits.

I think, as you alluded to in another video you did, Broadway and regional/community theatre are two different animals. Some shows really come into their own in regional theatre and just don't really work on Broadway. I think perhaps one of the reasons Sondheim may be finding more "success" now (even so the runs are still not super long) is because his legendary status, which probably was not as marked when the original shows came out. People are also likely more familiar with his work due to the movies and the regional theatre circuit, which would also not have been the case originally. I highly suspect the revival of Merrily-We-Roll-Along has $900 ticket prices because the hype surrounding it and the fact they had stars in the show. One thing I will say about Sondheim is regardless of whether you think his musicals are pretentious, he was a surprisingly unpretentious person. I watched an interview with him and he was very down to earth and basically wrote his music and shows because he enjoyed it...which says a lot, because a lot of creatives nowadays seem to take more pleasure in being arrogant than joy in the work they do.

Not crossing 1000 performances (which is a weird if not too specific number) doesn't always equate to a flop.

the impact seeing the recorded version of into the woods as a middle schooler had on me was so strong, I was entranced. I also got to see Sweeney Todd on Broadway recently and I was hit with that feeling again

My parents were huge fans of Sondheim. I remember when CDs were becoming a thing, we always got the Original Broadway Cast recordings and Sondheim was a priority. I grew up listening to Sondheim so to me I never found his music "odd" or "difficult". I'm not saying I'm a genius (far from it) but it's what I was exposed to first so Sondheim was the benchmark to which I compared all others to. And I was not an objective judge! 😅 I'm just happy that Sondheim was recognized as the genius he was while he was still alive. So many great artists, we only appreciated them too late for them to know.