Composer William Finn's musicals, particularly the trilogy of shows about the bisexual character Marvin (In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, and Falsettoland), excited hope among musical theater aficionados that he was a major songwriter for the stage and a possible successor to Stephen Sondheim. Diverted by a medical emergency in the 1990s, he recovered to write a show about his ordeal, A New Brain.
Finn grew up in Natick, MA, and attended Williams College, where, upon graduation, he was awarded the Hutchinson Fellowship for musical composition. (Sondheim earlier attended t...