Finn was a heavily autobiographical writer; he always wrote his own lyrics. His topics included the gay and Jewish experiences in contemporary America, and also family, belonging, sickness, healing, and loss. According to a 2006 article, "
The Washington Post called him 'the composer laureate of loss.'"
Falsettos, the combination of the latter two parts of his Marvin Trilogy (
March of the Falsettos and
Falsettoland), opened on
Broadway at the
John Golden Theater on April 29, 1992, That musical,
A New Brain, starred
Malcolm Gets,
Kristin Chenoweth and
Chip Zien, and premiered at the then
Off-Broadway venue, the
Lincoln Center Theater in 1998. The musical won the 1999
Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. The UK premiere was at the
2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. At the 2006
Elliot Norton Awards Ceremony, Finn brought his high school drama teacher, Gerry Dyer, onstage with him to present an award. Finn said of Dyer that he "imbued us with a ridiculous sense of our own self-worth." Another student of Gerald Dyer,
Alison Fraser, found fame on Broadway, collaborating with Finn in the original casts of
In Trousers and
March of the Falsettos. Finn had another Broadway success with
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, for which he wrote both music and lyrics. The show won two
Tony Awards in 2005-one for
Best Book of a Musical, and another for the
Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. It ran Off-Broadway, then on Broadway in 2005 and toured the United States in 2006. The show was first workshopped and produced at
Barrington Stage Company (BSC) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where Finn later created The Musical Theatre Lab (MTL) with BSC Artistic Director
Julianne Boyd. The MTL is an annual summer lab where emerging musical theatre artists are supported and new musical works are created, originally fine-tuned and produced under the curatorship of Finn and Boyd. Three musical revues or song suites of Finn's music have been produced: •
Infinite Joy, in which the composer played the piano and sang along with an all-star cast, contained several songs from shows that were unfinished, and some that were cut from previous shows. •
Elegies: A Song Cycle (2003) is a series of songs the composer wrote in memoriam of loved ones now gone, and in response to the
September 11, 2001 attacks. •
Make Me a Song, conceived and directed by Rob Ruggiero, premiered at Hartford's Theaterworks in the summer of 2006, opened
Off-Broadway in November 2007, and closed in December 2007 after 54 performances. A live recording was released by
Sh-K-Boom Records on April 29, 2008. Finn's first show was called
Sizzle and was produced at Williams College in the fall of 1971. Finn wrote the music and lyrics, and his good friend, Charlie Rubin, wrote the libretto.
Sizzle was the first original musical produced on the Williams College campus since
Stephen Sondheim attended the college over 20 years earlier.
Sizzle was a coming of age musical about college students but concluded in an unusual way with the star of the show, played by J. Tyler Griffin, Jr., dying in an electric chair.
Sizzle played to packed houses. Rubin possesses a reel-to-reel tape containing excerpts from the show, including most of the music. Finn's songs were featured exclusively on
Lisa Howard's album
Songs of Innocence and Experience, released on April 12, 2011. The musical comedy
Little Miss Sunshine, premiered at the
La Jolla Playhouse, California, from February 15, 2011, through March 27, 2011. James Lapine wrote the book and was the director, set design by David Korins, staging by Lapine and
Christopher Gattelli. The opening night cast featured
Hunter Foster (Richard),
Malcolm Gets (Frank),
Dick Latessa (Grandpa),
Taylor Trensch (Dwayne), Georgi James (Olive), and
Jennifer Laura Thompson (Sheryl). The ensemble, who Jay Irwin wrote "...took the small parts they were given and ran with them, almost right out of the theater as each of them brilliantly played the comedic relief to the family's "straight man"", starred
Bradley Dean, Carmen Ruby Floyd, Eliseo Roman, Andrew Samonsky, Sally Wilfert, and Zakiya Young.
Little Miss Sunshine began previews
Off Broadway at the
Second Stage Theatre in New York on October 15, 2013, and opened November 14, 2013. Finn's frequent collaborators included
librettist James Lapine, director
Graciela Daniele and singers/actors
Stephen Bogardus,
Carolee Carmello,
Stephen DeRosa,
Alison Fraser,
Keith Byron Kirk,
Norm Lewis,
Michael Rupert,
Mary Testa,
Christian Borle, and
Chip Zien. Finn was one of a selected few composers who contributed to the song cycle
Stars of David which premiered in October 2012 at the
Philadelphia Theatre Company. It is based on the
Abigail Pogrebin's book
Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish and starred Nancy Balbirer,
Alex Brightman, Joanna Glushak,
Brad Oscar, and
Donna Vivino. Finn also contributed to the Off-Broadway musical
Mama & her Boys. His long-in-development show,
The Royal Family of Broadway, with a book by
Richard Greenberg, is based on the play by
George S. Kaufman and
Edna Ferber, which tells the story of a girl from a family of great Broadway actors who contemplates leaving show business and getting married. It apparently had been shelved according to Finn's personal notes for
Make Me a Song,
Playbill magazine and an article from 2006. Notwithstanding, it saw its first full production in 2018 at the
Barrington Stage Company with
Putnam librettist
Rachel Sheinkin penning the book. ==Personal life and death ==