Some have claimed, with good reason, that Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021, is America's Shakespeare, a person who didn't invent his art form so much as take it to a new level. Richard Schoch, a U.S.-born historian and Shakespeare scholar at Queen's University Belfast in Ireland, no doubt agrees. In How Sondheim Can Change Your Life, a book as delightful as its title, he argues that tributes to Sondheim didn't address a key question: "What do his music and lyrics bring into focus?" To fill this void, he has written a book that is "not so much about Stephen Sondheim as about what we can learn from him" and is designed to prove that "Sondheim's works can change your life."
Whether these engaging essays on 13 of Sondheim's musicals, from 1959's Gypsy to 2023's posthumous Here We Are, constitute useful lessons or are just a lot of fun will be up to each reader. But they're undeniably fun. Schoch distills each work to what he believes is its instructive essence. Company, he writes, demonstrates that "loneliness is not a personal defect, not a weakness of character, and certainly not anything to hide or to feel embarrassed about." Follies, "a story about middle-aged people stuck in the past," is about learning "to accept with a good grace what the years have made of us." And so on. Attend the text of Richard Schoch, for he knows his stuff and makes his points with enviable panache. Sondheim fans will love it. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer