William Finn, Falsettos Composer, Dead at 73

William Finn, the musical-theater composer best known for his groundbreaking work on Falsettos, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and A New Brain, is dead at 73, Finn’s agent confirmed to Vulture. The cause of death is currently unknown.

Finn introduced the character Marvin, a closeted man who leaves his wife for the male Whizzer, through his first musical, 1979’s In Trousers. When it premiered, the New York Times called the show “a bare germ of an idea.” Finn iterated on that “bare germ,” alongside director and collaborator James Lapine, in both 1981’s March of the Falsettos and 1990’s Falsettoland, which expanded Marvin and Whizzer’s world and updated their life through the AIDS crisis. The shows were later combined into the 1992 musical Falsettos — Finn’s Broadway debut and the first Broadway musical to tackle the AIDS crisis. “I realized that I was obsessed with these characters,” Finn explained to Time in 1992. “I still am. I am not interested in writing about anyone else. Everything that moves and grips me in the theater can be told through these people.” He won Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book for his work, though the musical lost Best Musical to Crazy for You.

Finn was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a conservative Jewish family. “I used to dance around the living room to Guys and Dolls, which is a frightening, frightening thing,” Finn told Playbill of his early interest in musical theater in a 2004 interview. He got a guitar for his bar mitzvah, then started playing piano once he arrived at Williams College, where he began composing music. Finn’s later work included the autobiographical musical A New Brain, which introduced the modern standard “I’d Rather Be Sailing.” For his Broadway hit The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, he was nominated for another Tony Award for Best Score. The Times noted that Finn “vividly captures the voices of his smart youngsters” in its 2005 review. In 2016, the much-acclaimed revival of Falsettos, starring Christian Borle and Andrew Rannells, was nominated for Best Revival at the Tony Awards. “Finn isn’t a pinner-downer, he’s a mixer-upper,” Jesse Green wrote in his review for Vulture. “He shakes the soda cans and lets them spritz and effervesce.”

Related

• Theater Review: Falsettos
• Theater Review: William Finn Reveals A New Brain