William Finn

With his mix of societal awareness, humor, complex rhymes, and playful chromatic melodies, composer and lyricist William Finn was considered a successor to Stephen Sondheim. He established this reputation with an off-Broadway trilogy of one-act shows about the queer Jewish character Marvin (1979's In Trousers, 1981's March of the Falsettos, and 1990's Falsettoland), and later became best known for the Tony-winning Falsettos (1992) -- a combination of the second and third Marvin musicals -- and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005). With his career spanning five different decades, his final projects included a stage-musical adaptation of the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine and The Royal Family of Broadway (2018), a musical based on George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's play about the Barrymores.