SOURCE: Lahr, John. “Sondheim's Little Deaths.” Harper's 258, no. 1547 (April 1979): 71-8.

In the following essay, Lahr views Sondheim's musicals as emblematic of American disenchantment, inertia, and spiritual emptiness in the late twentieth century, deeming him “an entrepreneur of modern anxieties.”

How is it you sing anything? How is it you sing?(1) 

—Sweeney Todd

Musicals celebrate two things: abundance and vindictive triumph. Tall tales of the urban middle class, musicals revel in the spectacle of material well-being. They cajole the audience that if you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true? In its combination of script, song, and comic turn, the musical's formula meets the restless need of the American public for action and enchantment. The musical is mythic. People don't walk, they dance. Problems exist only to be sung or hitch-kicked away.

Until the mid-Sixties, the best popular songs came out of the American...