A List Of Musicals I’ve Seen Live

Scene from the production of “Sweeney Todd” I saw in 2023

So I was chatting with Myca earlier today, and he mentioned seeing Amelie The Musical and wanted to know if I’d like the Playbill. No, I said, I don’t collect Playbills; but the conversation made me regret that I haven’t made a habit of keeping playbills for the musicals I’ve seen, because now I’m sure I can’t remember all the ones I’ve seen live.

But anyway, the conversation motivated me to try to make a list of all the musicals I can remember seeing, in the hopes that this can replace having kept all those playbills.

So here’s the list. A bunch are Broadway, three are West End, some are local but professional productions (mainly in Portland), some are national tours, a few are school or college productions. In a few cases, I’ve seen them live multiple times.

  1. 13 (local Ithaca production)
  2. The 25th Annual Putman County Spelling Bee
  3. 42nd Street. (West End, Oct 2017, with Sheena Easton and Clare Halse. Incoherent story, wonderful tapdancing.)
  4. The Addams Family Musical. (Franklin High School production, Portland, OR, Nov 2019. Fun high school production. They had a girl playing Fester, and she was wonderful.)
  5. An American In Paris (West End, Oct 2017. Leanne Cope, who originated Lise in Paris and on Broadway, played Lise. AMAZING sets, also wonderful dancing.)
  6. Annie (My parents took us to see this on Broadway – one of the first Broadway musicals I ever saw. I’m pretty sure that we saw Dorothy Loudon, still the best Miss Hannigan ever. I can’t remember if the Annie was Andrea McArdle or if she’d been replaced by this point; but I do remember my instant crush on whoever the lead actress was, which occupied my thoughts for weeks afterwards.)
  7. Annie Get Your Gun (Bernadette Peters again)
  8. Assassins (A local production in Massachusetts. Really good.)
  9. The Band’s Visit. (Broadway, 2018. Tony Shalhoub had left the show by this time, but Katrina Lenk was still there and was wonderful.)
  10. Barnum (Jim Dale and Glenn Close) Our parents took us – one of the first Broadway musicals I saw. The main thing I remember is being amazed when Dale walked a tightrope over the stage.
  11. Bat Boy (A not-good production in L.A., seen with Mandolin. The lead actor was disabled – he was missing most of both his arms – and although he was very good, having the actor being genuinely, visibly disabled threw off the comedy. Mandolin and I agreed afterward that we’d rather see him play Mark in “Rent.”)
  12. Black Nativity. (Taken to this by my aunt Marlene in 2018, in Sarasota. Predictable story – I mean, well, duh – but wonderful singers.)
  13. Bright Star. (Sarasota, December 2019. Seen with my mom sister bro-in-law niece nephew. I didn’t love the story, but the performances were mostly good or great, and the bluegrass-style music was so much fun.)
  14. Candide (Portland opera, May 2012. I went to the dress rehearsal and even did some drawings.)
  15. Chicago (Broadway revival.)
  16. A Chorus Line, on Broadway. This is the first musical I saw multiple times – my parents took me to see it, and in high school I took myself a couple of additional times, because it was so easy to take a train to Manhattan and get half-price tickets to this show.
  17. Company (Broadway revival with Raul Esparza)
  18. Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (unauthorized live adaptation). Seen at a small theater in Portland; Bean and I took our nieces Maddox and Sydney. We didn’t tell them where we were taking them, but had fun dropping hints at our dinner at Subway first (“Penny for your thoughts?” “How horrible!” “Let’s hammer it home…” etc.) They restored Moist’s song; the actor came out soaking wet and did lots of big arm swings and kicks so the audience got splattered. The girls had fun, but complained that we should have let them know ahead of time so they could cosplay for it.
  19. Dreamgirls (West End, Oct 2017. Amber Riley from “Glee” starred.)
  20. Evil Dead The Musical (Seattle, seen with Robin aka J Squid. In the back row, so no blood spattered on us, sadly.)
  21. Falsettos (Mandy Patinkin, Chip Zein, Faith Prince – what an astounding cast!) 1993, so I was about 25. My sister and I were taken by our parents. We had front row seats, iirc – it was stunning.
  22. Fiddler On The Roof (Camp Modin production! Still counts!) (And then again, in June 2019 – an off-Broadway Yiddish-language production, which was excellent.)
  23. Footloose (local production with teen cast, including my niece, in Ithaca).
  24. Fun Home (One of my very favorite musicals. Better live than on the cast album, and the cast album is amazing. Seen on Broadway, with the original cast; my mom took me and Becky and Naomi to see it.) (A year or two later, saw a Portland production of the show, which was not AS great but was still great.)
  25. A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (Nathan Lane again)
  26. Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. (2018, with my mom, in Sarasota.)
  27. Guys and Dolls (1992 Broadway revival with Nathan Lane and Faith Prince) (And also a 1985-ish production at Staples High School, which I painted the marquee for).
  28. Hadestown. (National tour, seen 7/22/2022). Saw this one with my housemate Charles and our friends Alexis and Mike.
  29. Hair (Umass production)
  30. Hairspray (Another one that I put on the list, so i guess I’ve seen it, but now (in 2018) I don’t recall seeing it. Presumably a local Portland production?)
  31. Hamilton (the “And Peggy” National Tour, seen 4/15/2022). Seen with Charles, Rachel and Mike. As good as you’d expect overall, but the actor playing George Washington – Darnell Abraham – was outstanding, much better then any of the actors I’ve seen perform the part on video.
  32. Heathers. Local Portland production which I took Sydney and Maddox to see. It was fun. During the simulated sex in “Dead Girl Walking,” Sydney covered her own eyes with one hand and Maddox’s eyes with her other hand, but Maddox peeked over.
  33. Hello, Dolly. (Broadway 2018, with Bernadette Peters and Victor Garber.)
  34. Hereville: The Musical (reading). I’ve actually seen two readings of this work-in-progress based on my graphic novels, both in 2023, one in San Diego and one in NYC. I’m biased, obviously, but I’m really impressed with the work they’ve done.
  35. In The Heights (Tiny local Portland production, seen 4/29/2016.) (And then again, in a big production at Portland Center Stage, September and October 2019. I saw it twice – the first time I was invited by the production to sketch the show. You can see the resulting drawing here. Then I traded a high-res copy of the drawing to a cast member in exchange for tickets to see it again!)
  36. Into the Woods (OBC, w/ Bernadette Peters) At the end of Act 1, I thought the play was over, and my mom stopped me from walking off. Later on, they added the narrator telling the audience “To be continued!” at the end of Act 1, so presumably I wasn’t the only one to make this mistake.
    Years later, I saw a small local production in Massachusetts, with Charles and Sarah. They had beautiful costumes. The very intimate theater really added something – the song “No One Is Alone,” especially, had much more impact on me here.
  37. Ivy & Bean. Intended-for-kids production; I was invited to livesketch the dress rehearsal, and then they gave me tickets so I brought Sydney and Maddox to see it.
  38. James and the Giant Peach. I took Maddox and Sydney to see this one. This might have been another one I got tickets for as a reward for live-sketching the dress rehearsal?
  39. Jesus Christ Superstar (Oberlin College production, 1987-ish)
    …And again in 2021, with Sydney and Sydney’s boyfriend, at the Keller Auditorium in Portland. This was a delayed-by-Covid US tour of the 2016 London revival. A bit too abstract and impersonal for my tastes, despite being very well done. Had odd elements, like when Jesus is being whipped, instead of whipping him 39 times, he had glitter thrown at him 39 times.
  40. Kimberly Akimbo (Seen on Broadway in November 2023, with Vicotria Clark and Bonnie Milligan. This was a week I saw five musicals, and KA was my least favorite, although I actually liked it quite a lot, it was a good week.)
  41. Kinky Boots (Seen on Broadway, with my mom.)
  42. Kiss Of The Spider Woman (Original Bwy cast w/ Chita Rivera) (And then again in Portland, seen with Becky.)
  43. The Last 5 Years, in a Portland production. Saw this with my friend Becky, who introduced me to the show.
  44. Les Miserables (bwy)
  45. The Life (bwy). (My parents took me to this, but my mom has no memory of it at all. Honestly, all I remember about this musical is the fact that I did see it.)
  46. Lizzie (Punk rock show about Lizzie Borden. Seen with my friend Becky in Portland.)
  47. Lost In The Image Machine (This was an original musical at Oberlin College, written and directed by a student named Tom Abernathy, who was a very talented musician and performer. Not sure where Tom is today, but I hope he’s having fun.)
  48. The Magic Show, with Doug Henning. This is one of the first Broadway musicals I ever saw; my parents took me, of course. This show is long-forgotten, but it had music by Stephen Schwartz, and I keep on meaning to find a copy of the cast album to see if it’s at least fun. David Ogden Stiers was in it. The main thing I remember is when Henning covered his female co-star with a sheet and then appeared to set her on fire.
  49. Mamma Mia. Stumptown Stages production in Portland; I saw this February of 2020 with Charles and Mike. It was silly fun, which really is all Mamma Mia needs to be.
  50. Mean Girls. National Tour when they came to Portland in November 2021, seen with Charles, Mandolin, and Mike, at Keller Auditorium. My seat was far enough back that I brought low-power binoculars with me, which actually worked very well. It was pretty much a replica of the Broadway production (they’d changed lyrics here and there), and I had a wonderful time. The actress playing Gretchen Wieners, Megan Masako Haley, I also saw in New York playing a smaller role in Pacific Overtures.
  51. Merrily We Roll Along, seen on Broadway November 2023, with Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez in the leads. This was so excellent; I was blown away. (Also, I was sitting front and center, and I got wet three times: a little splash that hit me and my neighbors when the cast toasted at the end of “That Frank,” a little bit of Jon Groff spittle, and a larger splash when an ensemble member playing a maid with a tray accidently dropped a glass and a good splash hit me in the face!)
  52. Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play (Only marginally a musical, but they do sing, so… Seen with Becky, who was totally blown away, and Charles, in Portland.)
  53. The Mystery of Edmund Drood (I added this later, because I originally forgot to include it on the list. Which is kind of sad, because not only did I see this particular UMASS production, I drew the poster for it.)
  54. A New Brain (Seen in Portland with Charles, but I have barely any memory of it!)
  55. Once. (A very good production in Sarasota, Florida, December 2017. The cast was excellent, the staging elegant, but I just don’t get the appeal of this much-praised show, which might as well have been titled “Magic Pixie Dream Girl: The Musical.” Also, it’s always a problem when the plot hinges on the main character being an incredibly brilliant songwriter, when the songs themselves are actually quite meh.)
  56. Once On This Island (Broadway 2018 revival with Lea Solonga, and damn was this show spectacular.) (And then again, on my 55th birthday in 2022, at a tiny local production a ten minute drive from my house. The actress playing Asaka seemed about 12, and that actually worked fine and was sort of neat; there’s no reason a goddess can’t embody herself as a child, after all).
  57. Pacific Overtures (the 2017 off-Broadway revival with George Takai. This was directed by John Doyle, who also directed the Broadway revivals of Company and Sweeney Todd I saw, and it was wonderful. Radically different from the original production, however. Seen with Becky.)
  58. Parade (Portland production in a tiny theater, but really good. Seen with Becky.)
  59. Passion (Original bwy cast w/ Donna Murphy)
  60. Pete the Cat. Kid’s musical I livesketched in 2018, at Oregon Children’s Theatre.
  61. The Phantom of the Auditorium. Kid’s musical based on a novel from the “Goosebumps” series, at Oregon Children’s Theatre. I went with Sydney and Maddox. I drew the poster for this production!
  62. Pippin (the Bwy revival with the circus acrobats. Purely spectacle, so much jaw-dropping fun. Also, the least comfortable seat I’ve ever had in a theater, my hips hurt for days afterwards.)
  63. The Pirates of Penzance (Kevin Kline as the Pirate King). I’m not sure which was the very first Broadway musical my parents took me to see, but this is a possibility. I remember being stunned by the energy of Kline’s performance. Also, the bit where Kline got into a swordfight with the conductor, who defended himself with his baton, was the single funniest thing I’d seen in my entire life, especially when the conductor won.
  64. Putting It Together (Local Portland production. I have literally zero recollection of seeing this, by my friend Kevin has a very clear memory of seeing this with me.)
  65. Rent – first seen on Broadway. I was so startled that many people in the audience were singing along!. Later on I brought Sydney and Maddox to a professional Portland production in a very tiny theater – I think Becky may have been with us as well. It was fun, and the way they restaged “Contact,” to focus on Angel and Collins rather than being the whole case, made it work much better.
  66. The Rocky Horror Show (this was a local production, I think in Massachusetts.)
  67. Ruthless! (teeny tiny production in Portland)
  68. The Scarlet Pimpernel (Original Bwy cast)
  69. Seussical. Portland production I took Sydney and Maddox to see. I have basically zero memory of this, although I quite like the Seussical original cast album. I should ask my neices if they remember this.
  70. Show Boat (Bwy revival with Elaine Stritch. Seen with my mom, who asked me afterward if Stritch – who was very flat – used to be good.)
  71. Side Show (Bwy original cast. I think I saw this with my parents.)
  72. Six (touring company in Portland in July 2023. The cast included Natalie Paris at Jane Seymour – who originated the part on the West End in 2017. Gabriela Carrillo as Catherine Parr radiated energy and was practically bouncing sometimes.)
  73. Some Like It Hot, seen on Broadway with mom in September 2023. So much fun! With Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee. The whole things was bouncy, energetic, and likable, but to me the most memorable part was the final chase scene with the gangsters after the main characters and the cops after the gangsters, which was done as a long (ten minutes?) screwball comedy based dance with the full cast, and worked remarkably well. I also loved when the two main characters put on their female personas for the first time, which took place onstage during a song.
  74. Spring Awakening (local production with teen cast in Ithaca NY. Seen with my mom, and with my sister and her family.)
  75. Sweeney Todd (perhaps my all-time favorite musical, I’ve seen this on Broadway (the revival with Patti Lupone), at a UMASS production I drew the poster for, and in Portland. It’s a shame they never made a movie of it. THEY NEVER MADE A MOVIE OF IT! IT NEVER HAPPENED!) September 2023: Seen again on Broadway, this time with Josh Groban and Anneleigh Ashford.  A stunning, wonderful production that leaned into horror film imagery; the ensemble creepily danced like zombies, and during “Epiphany” Grobin cast a 30-foot-high shadow on the back wall. Ashford really leaned into making Lovett grotesque and even hornier than usual.
  76. The Tap Dance Kid. The original Broadway production – My mom brought me to see this one. I don’t think my sister or dad were with us, although I don’t know why.
  77. Tick Tick… BOOM!. August 2022. Local production by Portland Center Stage. Becky had a couple of free tickets she couldn’t use, so me and Charles went. It was pretty-good but not great, and honestly I liked the movie better. There is something fun about an extremely stripped-down design, though, and I will never not love the song “Therapy.”
  78. Tommy (On Broadway, with my sister and parents. This is certainly the loudest musical I’ve ever seen! I didn’t love it – I think I’d get a lot more out of it now.)
  79. Tootsie: The Musical. Original cast, April 2019, seen on Broadway during an unexpected NYC stay because the second leg of my flight home from Florida got cancelled. It isn’t the best musical I’ve ever seen, but the book was hilarious, and it was fun to see Santino Fontana (Greg from Crazy Ex Girlfriend) live.
  80. Urinetown – Aug 2017. (A superfun production by the Anonymous Theater Company. None of the actors had met each other or rehearsed together before the performance.)
  81. Wicked (Saw it on Broadway – I won the ticket lottery on my first try!)
  82. You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown (Portland production in a tiny theater.)

So 82, or 81 if we don’t count “Mr Burns,” which perhaps we shouldn’t. If I count Mr Burns and count shows I’ve seen multiple times by the number of times seen, then the total is 96 or so.

In addition to these, and in addition to ones I’ve forgotten, there are any number of shows I’ve seen either on legit videos or on bootleg, some of which I’ve watched and listened to so much that I feel as if I’ve seen them live.

Altogether, a pretty nice list. Some were fun for the night but unmemorable, some of I have no memory of beyond the bare fact of having seen them, but a bunch were (at least to me) spectacular, treasured memories. Given my tastes, it’s not surprising that I’ve seen more shows by Sondheim than by any other composer.

(List has been updated many times since the original posting.)

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84 Responses to A List Of Musicals I’ve Seen Live

  1. 1
    Harlequin says:

    You’ve seen a lot of Sondheim, but as a fraction of total musicals the composer has written, Jason Robert Brown might beat him? I see 3/7 JRBs, vs 6/19 Sondheims.

  2. 2
    Ampersand says:

    That’s sadly true. (It amazed me how much the main character in “13” and the main male character in “Last 5 Weeks” were obviously the same guy, down to the crappy way he treated the women in his life, except for the age difference). I like JRB, but “Parade” is the only one of the three that really knocked my socks off.

    If I added Sondheims I’ve seen on video – Sunday In The Park With George, West Side Story, Gypsy, Merrily We Roll Along, Pacific Overtures, Evening Primrose, and Putting It Together – my fraction improves. But yes. I really need to arrange to see Follies and also A Little Night Music.

  3. 3
    Harlequin says:

    That’s interesting! I quite like his music, but I’ve never seen a show of his live–I don’t know how I’d like them with dialogue and stuff.

    (The music’s interesting in that it sounds fairly simple if you’re just listening to it, but rhythmically it’s really complex: most of the sung note lengths are slightly longer or shorter than you’d expect them to be, I think to mimic the rhythms of natural speech. Hard to hear for me unless I’m actually looking at the sheet music, though.)

    I went through and made my own list because I was curious–I do keep Playbills, but they’re all in storage at my parents’ house (the life of an itinerant academic…). I’ve definitely seen 46, a number of them college student productions, with 2 more I’m actually not sure about, + 2 school musicals that I played in the pit for and therefore saw many, many, MANY times. A good definition of boredom is having to play the bass line to “We’re Off To See The Wizard”, on a piano keyboard with the bass synth sound on, 11 times a night. 1, 5, 1, 5, 2, 5, 1, 5, 1. I used about three fingers total.

    Anyway, this year my city’s getting as traveling companies both A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (saw it on Broadway, hardest I’ve ever laughed at any theatre piece ever) and Matilda (one of my favorite scores of the last 5 years at least, never seen it live), so I’m a happy theatregoer. :) If you’re not familiar with A Gentleman’s Guide, it’s based on the same source material as the movie Kind Hearts and Coronets; it’s got wordplay like this song (spoilery, I guess, if you care about the plot; lyrics in the comments), or a later number that rhymes “risible” and “invisible”. Plus lots of visual humor as well. I’d recommend it if it comes your way.

  4. 4
    Harlequin says:

    Oh–our lists only overlap by 12, it seems. How fascinating, because I don’t think either list looks overly full of obscure works.

  5. 5
    Ampersand says:

    Post your list! POST IT! :-p

  6. 6
    Ampersand says:

    My friend Becky says, re “We’re off to see the Wizard,” “I’ll see that and raise you playing Clarinet in the pit of ‘1776.’ It’s a 3 and a half hour show with like 20 minutes of music in it. I’m just sayin’.”

  7. 7
    Ampersand says:

    Re: JRB live: All three of the ones I saw were tiny little local productions. “13” was fun but not more than fun; I really loved “The Last 5 Years,” and the conceit of it – the two characters moving in opposite directions through the narrative – is, I think much clearer and more touching seen on stage. With only two actors in the whole show, obviously a lot depends on how good the performances are. (There’s an okay movie of it, too – the male lead was badly miscast, but Anna Kendrick was good as the woman.)

    “Parade” is amazing. A stunning show, with better characters than the other two JRB shows I’ve seen, and gorgeous music. And seeing it in a small theater made it all the more intense.

    If you’re not familiar with A Gentleman’s Guide, it’s based on the same source material as the movie Kind Hearts and Coronets; it’s got wordplay like this song (spoilery, I guess, if you care about the plot; lyrics in the comments), or a later number that rhymes “risible” and “invisible”. Plus lots of visual humor as well. I’d recommend it if it comes your way.

    I really want to see A Gentleman’s Guide To Murder! All of know of it is the Tony Award Performance, but just that is enough to make me want to see it. Very envious of you for having seen it; hopefully it’ll still be playing next time I’m in NYC. (Or it’ll come to Portland.)

  8. 8
    nobody.really says:

    Didn’t your high school do musicals? No Music Man? No Bye Bye Birdee? No Anything Goes?

    No Rogers & Hammerstein?

    No Chicago? No Wicked?

  9. 9
    nobody.really says:

    ’1776.’ It’s a 3 and a half hour show with like 20 minutes of music in it.

    What? Hell, the overture lasts nearly 20 minutes. But yes, there is one 30+ minute stretch without a song.

    1776 is an awesome show: It tells the political intrigues around the creation of the Declaration of Independence — and especially the (unsuccessful) fight to use the Declaration as a vehicle to denounce slavery. It’s dramatic, more-or-less historically accurate, clever (much of the dialogue come from the founders who, whatever their other shortcomings, were wickedly articulate) — and the music is tremendous.

    And there are exactly two female roles: Adam’s wife makes two or three appearances; Jefferson’s wife makes one. No chorus; no townsfolk; no dancing scenery.

    And given that school and community theaters are overwhelmingly female, that dooms this fine show to undeserved obscurity.

  10. 10
    Lee1 says:

    Wait, you think the Sweeney Todd movie was that bad? I certainly wasn’t blown away by it but enjoyed it well enough. I don’t really have sharp memories of favorite scenes from it though, which perhaps doesn’t reflect too well on it….

  11. 11
    Harlequin says:

    The list:

    The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
    The Addams Family
    Annie Get Your Gun
    Avenue Q
    Beauty and the Beast
    Billy Elliot
    Book of Mormon
    Bye Bye Birdie
    Cabaret
    Cats
    Chicago
    A Chorus Line
    Cinderella – I’m not sure if this was the Rogers and Hammerstein version; in my memory it’s more of a panto style, with funny lyrics written to well-known songs, but those may have been added? It was in a regional theatre, aimed at kids; I was probably 10 when I saw it.
    Crazy For You
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Forever Plaid
    The Full Monty
    A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
    Grease (with Suzanne Somers as the principal, weirdly enough)
    Guys and Dolls (also the Nathan Lane production, actually, but after Jamie Farr had taken over the role)
    Hair
    Hairspray (This and Mamma Mia! I’m not sure about–I *think* I saw traveling productions just before the movies came out, but I might be mixing them up with the movie itself.)
    Jekyll and Hyde
    Jersey Boys
    Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
    The King and I
    The Light in the Piazza
    The Lion King
    Mamma Mia!
    A Man of No Importance
    Les Mis (seen this several times–far and away the best was in the round at the Marriott Theatre in the north suburbs of Chicago, which had maybe 3 pieces of staging including the barricade, and all the focus was put on the songs–a bunch of them are solos and duets that work much better when they’re not on a huge stage)
    Miss Saigon
    Oklahoma
    The Phantom of the Opera
    Pippin (traveling company of the circus-like production)
    The Pirate Queen
    Pinocchio (in the pit)
    Porgy and Bess (er, does this count as a musical or as opera? It was on Wikipedia’s list of musicals, but I think of it more as opera.)
    Ragtime
    Rent
    Show Boat
    Spamalot
    Spring Awakening
    South Pacific
    Sweeney Todd
    Urinetown
    West Side Story
    The Will Rogers Follies
    The Wizard of Oz (in the pit)

    And, yes! That’s the song that rhymes “risible” and “invisible.” Great number in person, too.

  12. 12
    Harlequin says:

    Hilariously I somehow forgot Wicked! I have also ween Wicked. At least twice.

  13. 13
    RonF says:

    I haven’t seen a lot of musicals, but I do have one not on the previous lists.

    The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
    The Addams Family
    Book of Mormon
    Hair
    Jersey Boys
    The Million Dollar Quartet
    The Rocky Horror Show (with the movie’s original cast – my wife had never seen the movie and thus not only was not prepared for the show, she was by no means prepared for the audience ….)
    South Pacific
    Wicked

    And I was IN an opera – Maskerade. I was Johan (a.k.a. drunk student #4) and Vulcan. We sang the whole thing in the original Danish. Four months of rehearsals, 6 performances and it was easily one of the most mentally and physically challenging and fun things I have ever done.

  14. 14
    Ampersand says:

    Nobody Really, my high school did do musicals, but the only one I can remember for sure seeing is “Guys and Dolls.” (Nathan Lane wasn’t in my high school production – I also so it on Broadway later).

    I’ve never seen 1776 live, but I’ve enjoyed the revival cast album (starring Data from Star Trek), and also the movie version (which features John Cullum doing an awesome “Molasses To Rum”). Hopefully, the movie will prevent it from being entirely obscure.

  15. 15
    Ampersand says:

    Wait, you think the Sweeney Todd movie was that bad?

    I do!

    To be fair, I thought some of the production design was really good, and there were bits I enjoyed – particularly “By The Sea,” which was (purposely) hilarious. But basically, “Sweeney” isn’t a show you can do well with lousy singers, and nearly none of the actors – most especially Depp in the title role – were capable of singing their parts.

    The failure mode of movie musicals is casting people for being famous rather than for being able to do the part – see Javert in the movie version of “Les Mis” – and the Sweeney Todd movie is the worse example of that I’ve ever seen.

    That said, I enjoyed it well enough too. I didn’t think it was good, but there were good bits, and I enjoyed it for the good bits. :-)

  16. 16
    Ampersand says:

    Ron and Harlequin, thanks for posting your lists! You both have my envy for the ones you’ve seen that I haven’t. :-)\

    Harlequin, it is sort of surprising how little our lists cross over! Especially since there are a bunch of shows on your list that I like, even if I’ve never seen them live, so our tastes aren’t entirely opposed.

    Are you not all that fond of Sondheim? (I only noticed 1.5 on your list, but maybe I missed something.) It’s okay if you’re not a big Stephen fan; I don’t insist that everyone join my religion. :-p

  17. 17
    Mandolin says:

    I think I’ve seen more musicals than you. But I’m also not going to count, so.

  18. 18
    nobody.really says:

    Never saw 1776? OSTA did a production in Wilder Hall in 1986 (I think).

    Nobody’s seen Camalot? Man of La Mancha? Fantastics?

    Ok, skip Rogers & Hammerstein. The only Andrew Lloyd Weber that anyone will acknowledge seeing is Jesus Christ Superstar and Cats? Oh, come on.

    And come to think of it, what about The Secret Garden? How could Amp have ever discovered the cast album if he had not seen the show? Did he grow up in a music library or something?

    Plus, I still want confirmation that Amp hasn’t seen Wicked. That strains credulity.

    I demand a recount!

  19. 19
    nobody.really says:

    Ok, here’s an obscure musical that deserves much greater distribution: Edith Wharton’s Glipses of the Moon.

    You know how a typical musical will have the lead couple meet cute, hate each other on site, but eventually get married? That happens in this musical, too — by halfway through the second number. The show is about what happens next.

  20. 20
    Harlequin says:

    I have both Phantom and Joseph on my list, nobody, both of which are ALW musicals. :) (And both of which I’ve seen multiple times. Phantom was my first show when I was 6; the chandelier came crashing down, the music got VERY LOUD, I started crying, and my mom later told me, “All I could think of was how expensive the tickets were!” I did eventually calm down.)

    There are a bunch of shows on your list I’d like to see too, Amp, including all of the Jason Robert Browns and Falsettos.

    The dearth of Sondheim is a mix of taste and opportunity. Taste: I greatly appreciate his musicals, but enjoy them somewhat less than that. I can marvel at the structure, appreciate the grace of the melodies, and laugh at the wordplay, but when I sit down to watch them, I find that they move me less than some others do. The ones that move me really do–Into the Woods is my favorite of his, and I also quite like parts of Company, but neither of those has been performed where I was at the time.

    Opportunity: until I moved to Chicago when I was 21, I mostly saw traveling companies that came through Iowa or local theatre productions, neither of which were very Sondheim-heavy in that period (roughly the 90s). We saw a few things on Broadway when we visited family in the New York area every 2 years, but mostly it was tours. Even in Chicago, I didn’t live in a place that was particularly close to the theatre district, so I’d see Broadway tours and Broadway-bound shows downtown, and then occasionally ventured north for more experimental fare.

    No fans of Urinetown? Very funny show, very metafictional. Incidentally, Hunter Foster, the lead from Urinetown, also sang what I think is hands down the best recorded version of Suddenly Seymour. Not really related, I just like linking people to that!

  21. 21
    Jake Squid says:

    I’m surprised that only one of you has seen The King and I. That’s one of two shows my parents brought me to as a kid (Annie being the other).

  22. 22
    Ampersand says:

    Nobody Really, I’ve seen the Man of La Mancha movie and listed to the OBC album countless times. And I wish I had seen The Secret Garden! As I recall, my friend Jenn Lee (who creates the comic Dicebox) saw it on Broadway and introduced me to the cast album. Rodgers and Hammerstein I’ve only seen in the movie versions.

    And I’ve never seen Wicked live, but there’s the cast album, plus there are probably more bootleg videos of Wicked than of any other show. :-)

    My problem is, I’m a much bigger fan of musicals than my bank account will allow. So there are tons of shows – very much including Urinetown, Harlequin – that I love and have listened over and over again, but have never seen live. And in a bunch of cases, have never seen at all.

  23. 23
    Ampersand says:

    Harlequin:

    I like that Suddenly Seymour, but I like this one even better – same cast, but despite the low-quality video, I think both of them give more intense performances.

    But as great as that performance is – and Hunter Foster is definitely the best Seymour I’ve ever seen – for me, it can’t be the best “Suddenly Seymour” ever if Ellen Greene isn’t singing it. :-)

    And yeah, we just have different tastes on Sondheim. For me, nothing has moved me as much as some Sondheim shows. I don’t know why, but he hits me more than any other songwriter – which is kind of a shame, for me, since Sonheim is now, if not exactly retired, certainly not being very productive. Oh, well.

  24. 24
    Ampersand says:

    NR: Thanks for the clip from “Glimpses of the Moon,” that was really good. My favorite obscure musical is probably “First Lady Suite,” a musical about three first ladies (Eleanor Roosevelt, J Kennedy, and Mamie Eisenhower), but told mostly from the perspective of one of the women around them (except for Mamie’s story, which is done as a bizarre “I Love Lucy” pastiche with Mamie as the wacky redhead and time-travel).

    I’m really excited that the composer, Michael John LaChiusa, has a sequel coming out this year – “First Daughter Suite.”

  25. 25
    Ampersand says:

    Just got tickets for “Bat Boy The Musical” for Halloween!

  26. 26
    nobody.really says:

    I’m a much bigger fan of musicals than my bank account will allow.

    Alas, a near universal affliction. We in community theater are constantly seeking a cure, but it’s an uphill battle. Please give generously.

    Thanks for the clip from “Glimpses of the Moon,” that was really good.

    You should know better: Offer even a hint of encouragement to theater people, and they’ll just do more! If you looked at the first two clips, you can blow six minutes on the conclusion. Yeah, this kinda undercuts the experience of the full show, but ’tis better to see the conclusions of a truncated version than never to conclude at all.

  27. 27
    Simple Truth says:

    Musicals/operas I was cast in:
    Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
    Grease
    HMS Pinafore (x2)
    Something’s Afoot
    Man of La Mancha

    Musicals I did tech for:
    West Side Story

    Musicals/operas I played in the pit for:
    Iolanthe
    Into the Woods

    Musicals/operas I’ve only watched:
    Avenue Q
    Pirates of Penzance
    The Gondoliers
    Candide
    Phantom of the Opera
    Annie Get Your Gun
    Evening with Cole Porter
    Guys and Dolls

    For a theatre/music major, I really need to get out and see more musicals, but I always get a little sad that I’m not on stage. Anyone else get that way?

  28. 28
    Ampersand says:

    I was looking to see if there was any show that all four of us who have posted lists have seen, but very quickly the answer was “no,” because Simple Truth and Ron’s lists don’t have even a single overlap.

    Clearly, one of you has been trying not to run into the other.

    And ST, I don’t get sad I’m not on stage. But I’ve been doing a lot of Karaoke lately, so a little voice in the back of my head is sometimes saying “you could karaoke that!” (And then I get a little sad because there’s no karaoke version of it on youtube.)

  29. 29
    Carmilla says:

    Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
    Cats
    Phantom of the Opera
    Great Expectations
    The Wizard of Oz
    Blood Brothers
    Grease
    Our Day Out
    Oliver!
    Showboat (terrible local production which had no black actors so decided to make Julie la Verne’s character Jewish instead. Confused my knowledge of history for a good couple of years)
    Fame
    West Side Story
    Kiss Me Kate
    Annie Get Your Gun (gosh, I loved this so much as a kid and now I really, really hate it)
    South Pacific
    The Rocky Horror Picture Show
    Batboy! The Musical
    The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!
    I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
    Thatcher the Musical
    Cabaret (Wayne Sleep and Sam Barks, who I didn’t like as Eponine in the Les Mis film but adored in this)
    Hedwig and the Angry Inch
    Jerry Springer the Opera
    HMS Pinafore
    The Mikado
    Pirates of Penzance
    The Merry Widow
    The Flint Street Nativity
    Sweeney Todd (a few different productions including the Michael Ball/Imelda Staunton one on the West End, which was *awesome*)
    Les Miserables
    Wicked
    Acorn Antiques the Musical
    Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens
    Jekyll and Hyde
    Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi
    Spamalot (Simon Russell Beale)
    The Book of Mormon
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    Doctor Faustus
    Legally Blonde the Musical
    Gypsy (Imelda Staunton and Peter Davidson)

    I suspect most of my non-overlaps are due to being in the UK rather than the US (and a couple of these I think were only ever on in Liverpool).

  30. 30
    Ampersand says:

    And here’s Carmilla’s list again, but now alphabetized, because I just discovered an online tool for that. (And I’ve also edited the original post to alphabetize).

    Thanks for posting the list, Carmilla. There’s several I’ve never even heard of, which is probably the “being in the UK” thing. And your youthful confusion on Julie la Verne is hilarious. :-p

    And yes, “Annie” doesn’t age well at all.

    Acorn Antiques the Musical
    Annie Get Your Gun (gosh, I loved this so much as a kid and now I really, really hate it)
    Batboy! The Musical
    Blood Brothers
    The Book of Mormon
    Cabaret (Wayne Sleep and Sam Barks, who I didn’t like as Eponine in the Les Mis film but adored in this)
    Cats
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    Doctor Faustus
    Fame
    The Flint Street Nativity
    Grease
    Great Expectations
    Gypsy (Imelda Staunton and Peter Davidson)
    Hedwig and the Angry Inch
    HMS Pinafore
    I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
    Jekyll and Hyde
    Jerry Springer the Opera
    Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
    Kiss Me Kate
    Legally Blonde the Musical
    Les Miserables
    The Merry Widow
    The Mikado
    The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!
    Oliver!
    Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi
    Our Day Out
    Phantom of the Opera
    Pirates of Penzance
    The Rocky Horror Picture Show
    Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens
    Showboat (terrible local production which had no black actors so decided to make Julie la Verne’s character Jewish instead. Confused my knowledge of history for a good couple of years)
    South Pacific
    Spamalot (Simon Russell Beale)
    Sweeney Todd (a few different productions including the Michael Ball/Imelda Staunton one on the West End, which was *awesome*)
    Thatcher the Musical
    West Side Story
    Wicked
    The Wizard of Oz

  31. 31
    Ampersand says:

    I wrote:

    And yes, “Annie” doesn’t age well at all.

    Erm, I meant “Annie Get Your Gun.” Not, well, “Annie.”

    Also, my sister reminded me that our parents took us to see “Tommy” on Broadway, so I’ve added that to my list. The main thing I remember about it, was that it was the loudest Broadway musical I’d ever been to.

  32. 32
    Ampersand says:

    Just ran across this… it seemed appropriate for this thread.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDKPwtJH2nQ

    Watching this reminded me that I’ve also seen the musical this song comes from, “Ruthless,” which was fun in a very campy way.

  33. 33
    nobody.really says:

    Aida — Verdi’s version is the grandest of grand opera (elephants!). Tim Rice’s version sacrifices the climactic scene from the opera to emphasize the relationship between the female protagonists fighting over the male protagonist. Kinda Wicked-ish — which I mean as high praise.

    Once Upon This Island — An all-black re-telling of The Little Mermaid as The Illiad on Haiti: The story of a lower-class black-skinned young woman seeking to join the ranks of the upper-classes, explained as part of a contest between the gods to test the power of love against the power of death. Where the Disney protagonist sings “Part of That World,” this show’s protagonist sings the dynamite “Waiting for Life to Begin.”

    Curtains — A murder mystery musical about contemporary live theater. It features contract clauses, Actors Equity union reps, tech crews, financial backers, try-outs before going to Broadway, theater critics, last-minute re-writes, etc. Along with being very funny, it’s a good mystery.

    I guess it’s appropriate to note that if we’re going to include musicals we’ve seen on film, I bet we all have seen a ton of animated Disney musicals. For a while Disney seemed like the last remaining producer of movie musicals.

  34. 34
    AJD says:

    I’m certain I’m missing some, but here are the musicals I can come up with right now that I’ve seen live:

    Musicals I’ve been in:
    Annie Get Your Gun
    Big River
    Lady in the Dark
    The Mikado
    My Fair Lady
    You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

    Musicals I’ve seen professional productions of:
    Avenue Q
    Bat Boy
    Beauty and the Beast
    Billy Elliot
    Chicago
    Curtains
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    The Drowsy Chaperone
    Forever Plaid
    Guys and Dolls
    Honk!
    In the Heights
    Les Miserables
    A Little Night Music
    Man of La Mancha
    Miss Saigon
    The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!
    Newsies
    On the Twentieth Century
    Once
    Once on This Island
    Phantom of the Opera
    Ragtime
    South Pacific
    Spamalot
    The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
    Urinetown
    Violet
    Wicked
    Windy City

    Musicals I’ve seen only amateur or student productions of:
    Assassins
    The Boys from Syracuse
    Bye Bye Birdie
    Cabaret
    Camelot
    Candide
    Chess
    City of Angels
    Company
    The Dot-Comedy of Errors
    Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
    Elegies
    The Fantasticks
    Fiddler on the Roof
    A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
    The Gondoliers
    Grease
    Hair
    HMS Pinafore
    In Trousers
    Into the Woods
    Iolanthe
    John and Jen
    The King and I
    Kiss Me, Kate
    Kiss of the Spider Woman
    The Last Five Years
    March of the Falsettos
    Merrily We Roll Along
    The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    A New Brain
    Nine
    Of Thee I Sing
    Patience
    Pippin
    The Pirates of Penzance
    Ruddigore
    Ruthless!
    1776
    Songs for a New World
    The Sorcerer
    Sweeney Todd
    Sweet Charity
    Utopia Limited
    West Side Story
    The Yeomen of the Guard

  35. 35
    RonF says:

    I forgot I’ve seen Fantasticks

    nobody.really:

    Tim Rice’s version sacrifices the climactic scene from the opera to emphasize the relationship between the female protagonists fighting over the male protagonist.

    I’d be really pissed off if I was not aware of that before I went to see/hear it.

  36. 36
    nobody.really says:

    Tim Rice’s version [of Aida] sacrifices the climactic scene from the opera to emphasize the relationship between the female protagonists fighting over the male protagonist.

    I’d be really pissed off if I was not aware of that before I went to see/hear it.

    No. You wouldn’t. You’d be astonished and moved. You’d only think about the difference after the fact.

    What might really piss you off would be if someone had given away the ending. If so, stop reading now.

    Aida is the name of a prisoner of war (secretly the princess of the rival nation) who is forced to serve as the slave of Pharaoh’s daughter. Knowing about the pressures of court life, Aida helps the daughter prepare to marry Pharaoh’s chief of the army. Complicating the situation is the fact that the general falls in love with Aida, not Pharaoh’s daughter, and their affair is discovered.

    The opera’s climactic scene occurs when the general is punished by being sealed alive in a huge Egyptian tomb, only to discover that Aida had hidden herself in there as well, so that they could die in each other’s arms. Very romantic.

    In the musical, Aida helps Pharaoh’s daughter not merely prepare for a wedding, but to assume the role of Queen of Egypt. The daughter puts aside her air-headed ways. But then the daughter is confronted with a catastrophe: Her lover and best friend have betrayed her, and her father has been fatally poisoned! Will she crack? Will she crumble? No; Aida has prepared her to take command, and she does.

    As in Camelot,, custom demands a death sentence. The daughter loves them both, but she cannot assume command and defy custom. But she can at least give them an honorable death, together. And so they are entombed.

    Oh man, I’m tearing up as I type. It’s a really good show.

  37. 37
    closetpuritan says:

    The only musical I’ve seen on Broadway is Sweeney Todd, in 2003 I think. I also saw professional touring productions of The Addams Family and most of Cats (the power went out in the theater during the railroad cat song). I’ve seen quite a bit of community theater, though:

    1776
    A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
    Annie Get Your Gun
    Anything Goes
    Brigadoon (in chorus, did not see as an audience member)
    Cabaret
    Chess
    Chicago
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Guys and Dolls
    Gypsy (I was in the audience, but my husband was Herbie!)
    Hairspray
    Into The Woods
    Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat (in chorus, also saw as an audience member)
    Legally Blonde
    Les Miserables
    Mame
    Oliver!
    Rent
    The Drowsy Chaperone
    The Fantasticks
    Seussical
    Showboat
    The King and I
    The Pajama Game
    The Producers
    The Sound of Music (in chorus, did not see as an audience member)
    Titanic
    Waiting on a Dream (an adaptation of Chickasaw Revival Tonic)
    West Side Story

    (Are we counting Gilbert and Sullivan operettas? Pirates of Penzance and Yeomen of the Guard.)

    College Productions:
    Once on This Island (I think; I only vaguely remember it)
    How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
    I might have seen South Pacific, but I mostly just remember one of my friends talking about it, so I’m not completely sure?

  38. 38
    Harlequin says:

    Ah–sorry, I meant the cast recording version of Suddenly Seymour is the best–I couldn’t find a YouTube video of that fast enough, and wasn’t very clear in linking to it!

    Very jealous of everyone who’s seen Once on This Island. I usually put on new cast recordings that I buy and listen through a few times to get used to the music before I really sit down to appreciate it (my mind wanders too much otherwise); Once on This Island is one of the only times I can remember where I stopped to just listen and stayed interested the whole way through.

  39. 39
    Grace Annam says:

    Hm.

    Fiddler on the Roof
    Godspell
    The Gondoliers
    H.M.S. Pinafore (with a septuple-or-octuple-encore performance of “Ring the Merry Bells on Board Ship”, no less)
    Man of La Mancha
    The Mikado
    The Music Man
    Pirates of Penzance
    Ruddygore
    Trial By Jury

    I’ve probably missed one or two.

    If there’s a certain bias, I have my Grandpa’s love of Gilbert and Sullivan (which he passed on to me) to thank.

    Grace

  40. 40
    RonF says:

    I think it’s kind of interesting how many people here have performed in theater (musical or otherwise). Although it’s a small sample, it’s doubtless much higher than the U.S. population average.

  41. 41
    Ampersand says:

    I haven’t performed, but I’ve worked on musicals as a crew member in high school, and then I’ve drawn posters for college musicals.

  42. 42
    Ampersand says:

    Thanks Grace and Closetpuritan for posting your lists. It’s interesting to me that virtually every list posted here, has at least one show on it I’ve never even heard of. (From Grace’s list, Trial by Jury – google shows that it’s a G&S that I’m unfamiliar with; from CP’s list, Waiting on a Dream.)

    I’m also very jealous of everyone whose seen “Once On This Island.” What a great cast album that has!

    And Grace, yes, that is quite a focus on G&S. :-) But G&S are awesome. I’ve actually seen a couple of G&S productions live, but I can’t remember which the second production I saw was (it was in the late 1980s), so I only listed “Pirates.”

    So does anyone have any musicals they’re going to see in the near future?

    I’ve got tickets for “Bat Boy” on Halloween – I’m really looking forward to that. I love the cast album, but I’ve never seen the show live before.

    Portland is having local productions of “Rent” and “Falsettos” (Rent just opened, Falsettos opens at the end of the month), plus there’s the touring company of “Pippin” coming through. I’m planning to take the girls to see “Rent,” and definitely to go see “Falsettos” – the last time I saw that was in the 1980s, but I remember loving it. Probably I won’t see “Pippin,” because I’ve already seen this production once, and as wonderful as it is (and it’s stunning), it’s also kinda pricey.

  43. 43
    Myca says:

    It’s interesting to me that virtually every list posted here, has at least one show on it I’ve never even heard of.

    In school, I was in a production of a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew that was not Kiss Me Kate. It was called (no joke) “Shrew!

    It was so, so, so silly.

    I was Petruchio. I sang (to the tune of An Irish Lullabye) ‘To The Lure of Lira.’ Because, after all, Petruchio was in it for the money.

    So that’s my entry for “a show I was in that Ampersand hasn’t heard of.”

    —Myca

  44. 44
    nobody.really says:

    I also am impressed with all the G&S. Utopia, Limited? That’s hard-core. I’ve seen Trial by Jury, Sorcerer, Pinafore, Pirates, Patience, Princess Ida, Mikado, Yeoman, Gondoliers (I think; I’m losing track), and Grand Duke — but almost all in college.

    So does anyone have any musicals they’re going to see in the near future?

    Over the past year or so I’ve seen Pippi Longstocking, Drowsy Chaperone, Lady Be Good, Luncheonette of Terror, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and La Traviata.

    Gonna see a friend in Thoroughly Modern Millie. Just can’t get enough of those flapper girls who have put romantic love behind them, only to fall in love. (At least, that’s what I’m expecting….)

  45. 45
    RonF says:

    Actually, now that I think of it there were a couple of others that I saw in Chicago, one at the Bailiwick Theater and one at a smaller venue. I’ll have to dig up the titles.

    One was about a white woman who lived on a Southern plantation in the middle of nowhere with a drunk and often-absent husband prior to the Civil War. She took up with one of the slaves. First for entertainment and revenge against her husband, but the relationship grew into something more. The husband eventually ended up getting killed. A lot of runaway slaves showed up. They’d work her fields for a while as cover if anyone looking for runaway slaves came by. After a while that arrangement attracted too much attention. She took off with a group going north towards freedom. They’d stop in a town and she’d sell a slave for money. She would leave town with the rest of her slaves. Then the slave she sold would escape and meet back up with them, and they all shared the cash to live on. They ran this game until they all reached freedom – at which point she and the now free black she had been sleeping with had to choose what was going to happen to their relationship (about which there had been a lot of drama involving both the two of them and the other slaves during this whole process).

    So does anyone have any musicals they’re going to see in the near future?

    I spent last Friday night at the bandshell in Millennium Park in Chicago at the Stars of the Lyric show. The Lyric Opera of Chicago is opening its season soon and they send out their orchestra, chorus and some singers (but minus costumes, sets and staging) to present the music from some of the season’s operas. Between that and the fact that some of the people I’ve sung with have decided to start up their own opera companies (with prices a lot lower than the Lyric), I’m thinking I may try to get out to an opera production or two.

  46. 46
    Ruchama says:

    I know I’m going to be missing a ton here, but, my list, as far as I can remember, and in no particular order:

    1. Les Miserables
    2. Annie
    3. Phantom of the Opera
    4. Damn Yankees
    5. Godspell
    6. Grease
    7. Chorus Line
    8. Into the Woods
    9. Assassins
    10. Sweeney Todd
    11. Bye Bye Birdie
    12. Ragtime
    13. Pippin
    14. Secret Garden
    15. Matilda
    16. Drowsy Chaperone
    17. West Side Story
    18. Carousel
    19. Music Man
    20. Anything Goes
    21. 42nd Street
    22. Wicked
    23. Once on this Island
    24. If/Then
    25. American Idiot
    26. Newsies
    27. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
    28. Guys and Dolls
    29. Kiss Me Kate
    30. Rent
    31. Book of Mormon
    32. Company
    33. Sunday in the Park with George
    34. Fiddler on the Roof
    35. Show Boat

    I feel like I’m forgetting some, but I can’t figure out what I’m forgetting. I keep wanting to list Gypsy, but I don’t think I’ve actually seen that live — I’ve just seen the movie so often that it feels like I have.

  47. 47
    Ruchama says:

    Reading through the thread some more, I completely forgot all the G&S. Do middle school productions count? My middle school always did G&S shows. I was in The Mikado and Pirates, and also remember seeing HMS Pinafore and … something else. Why can’t I remember it? It probably had a ship in it. (There was one year that a parent who really knew what he was doing built this gorgeous ship set for a high school production of Anything Goes, and for several years afterward, high school and middle school productions seemed to be chosen on the basis of, “Can we use the ship?”)

  48. 48
    RonF says:

    Ah – while I was there then as well, the link in #45 was from the 2014 “Stars of the Lyric”. This is the one I went to last Friday night. That’s what I get for doing a search and copying the link without actually READING the link content first …. Amp, if you could substitute for me…?

  49. 49
    AJD says:

    So does anyone have any musicals they’re going to see in the near future?

    I have a ticket for Hamilton in January! Very excited. And I’m hoping to see A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder when the tour comes through my town, but that’s not for eight months or so.

    Oh, and I’ve thought of two more that I missed from my list: Seussical and Little by Little.

  50. 50
    Ampersand says:

    I have a ticket for Hamilton in January! Very excited.

  51. 51
    Ampersand says:

    Ron, it sounds to me like the musical you saw was Dessa Rose, by the same composer/lyricist team that made Once On This Island.

  52. The only one I have to add that isn’t already on someone’s list is Di Yam Gazlonim, The Pirates of Penzance in Yiddish, put on by the Gilbert and Sullivan Yiddish Light Opera Co.

  53. 53
    RonF says:

    Amp #50:

    Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding

    Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Now that you say the name I remember.

    In fact, it was this production.

  54. 54
    Ruchama says:

    I just remembered one more — it was an off-Broadway show, in 2003 or 2004, set on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s, with a Jewish family as the main characters. I mostly remember that the actress playing the teenage daughter was obviously older than teenage, while the boy playing the younger son was definitely really 13, as could be seen by the fact that his voice was cracking through every song.

  55. 55
    AJD says:

    Amp, I meant to see Hamilton this past February, but it was sold out before I could get a ticket then, so it’s been a long process. That’s when I saw On the Twentieth Century, since I was in New York anyway.

    Also I see on my original list I included The Dot-Comedy of Errors. Since I’m apparently including student-written shows I saw in college which have never had professional productions, it’s certainly remiss of me to have omitted Les Phys.

    (Another omission: Milk and Honey.)

  56. 56
    Ruchama says:

    Oh, that reminds me, I also saw Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. And Elliot Spitzer was sitting in front of us.

    Oh! And I saw Will Rogers Follies, while Marla Maples was in it. (Reading something about Trump reminded me.)

  57. 57
    Elusis says:

    Musicals I’ve been in:
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Oklahoma!
    Carousel
    The Music Man
    Here’s Love (musical version of Miracle on 34th St.)
    South Pacific
    Guys and Dolls
    Baby
    Sugar (musical version of “Some Like it Hot”)
    [I feel sure I’m missing something from college here as we did a musical every year]
    City of Angels
    Little Shop of Horrors
    Into the Woods
    The Rocky Horror Show

    Musicals I’ve seen on stage, high school, college, or community productions:
    Brigadoon
    Once Upon a Mattress
    Li’l Abner
    You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
    Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
    Gypsy
    Grease
    Camelot
    Oliver!
    Pippin
    Godspell
    Mame
    1776
    Nunsense
    Big River
    The Mikado (an abbreviated version at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair)

    Musicals I’ve seen on stage, professional (in-house or touring) productions:
    Showboat
    Jesus Christ, Superstar
    Cats
    Once Upon This Island
    Tommy
    The Phantom of the Opera
    Rent
    The Rocky Horror Show
    Chicago
    Jerry Springer, the Opera
    Wicked
    Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play (and I wish I hadn’t)
    Pippin
    Assassins
    Book of Mormon
    Cabaret (YES WITH ALAN CUMMING YOU CAN TOUCH ME IF YOU ASK NICE)
    Fun Home (in a couple of weeks)
    Spring Awakening (in a couple of weeks)
    Allegiance: A New Musical (in a couple of weeks)

    Musicals I’ve seen on video/TV/film:
    Oklahoma!
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Into the Woods (both the film of the original Broadway, and the recent movie version)
    The Sound of Music
    Annie
    A Chorus Line
    The Wizard of Oz
    The Wiz
    Little Shop of Horrors
    Chicago
    Fame
    Hair
    Hairspray
    Sunday in the Park with George (which I failed to appreciate at the time and quit halfway through. I’m sorry!)
    Cabaret
    Moulin Rouge
    Sweeney Todd
    Grease
    The Rocky Horror Picture Show

    Musicals I have only listened to the recording of
    Les Miserables
    Kiss Me Kate
    Miss Saigon
    Hedwig and the Angry Inch (we had tickets for a couple of weeks from now and then Taye Diggs flopped…)

    —-
    “Hamilton” was also high on our list for the trip that’s upcoming but we’re seeing “Then She Fell” in Brooklyn (rather than going back to “Sleep No More”). And it kind of seemed like we should see something that wasn’t a musical.

  58. 58
    Ampersand says:

    Elusis, thanks for posting that list! Please come back to this thread to tell us what you thought of “Fun Home” and “Spring Awakening” – I loved FH, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about this revival of SA.

    Also, the video of Sunday in the Park with George still exists, so it’s not too late! :-) That’s definitely a musical that I need to be in the right mood to watch, although I totally love it.

    And it kind of seemed like we should see something that wasn’t a musical.

    I have no comprehension of this.

  59. 59
    AJD says:

    Elusis, Then She Fell is amazing. Good choice.

  60. 60
    Ampersand says:

    The producers of Hamilton have made the entire cast album available as streaming audio, for free, on NPR.

  61. 61
    nobody.really says:

    In case you missed Amp’s blogroll, Reappropriate argues that the traditional presentation of The Mikado is racially insensitive. I guess that’s not much of a stretch. But the author goes further, arguing that we could readily perform the exact same show substituting some mythical culture in place of the Japinalia and enjoy all the same benefits of a traditional production without the costs.

  62. 62
    Elusis says:

    Interesting stuff about Mikado. I was intensely uncomfortable watching the shortened version I saw at Dickens, and even more so when I learned they were repeating it the next year (I gather they do a shortened G&S every year but tend to repeat a production for a few years before switching to ease preparation year to year a bit.)

    In college, we did a production of “Comedy of Errors” set in Dr. Seussland. I wonder if that kind of “definitely not a known culture from our world” re-set would work.

  63. 63
    Charles S says:

    The cast album of Hamilton is fantastic.

  64. 64
    Ampersand says:

    What Charles said.

    Also, I now want to see a science-fiction Mikado where the characters are all actual sci-fi aliens.

  65. 65
    Ben Lehman says:

    I’m pretty sure even if the Mikado was about literal aliens it’d still be appallingly racist.

    (I’m also pretty sure it’s the only musical I’ve ever seen live.)

    yrs–
    –Ben

    P.S. There’s some really interesting things about the racism in the Mikado: since England had only just begun cultural contact with Japan, they didn’t have time to cultivate specifically Japanese racial stereotypes. This, in the play, the putatively Japanese characters use pre-existing racial stereotypes about Chinese people. Hence the vaguely Cantonese sound names, for example.

  66. 66
    Harlequin says:

    The English National Opera did a version of the Mikado starring Eric Idle in the late 80s. You can find clips of it online if you look.

    Holding up Ben Lehman’s judgment, while the title card says it’s set in Japan, the action is transferred to what appears to be an English seaside resort, based on costuming and staging….and when the characters sing “We are gentleman of Japan,” they reach up and pull the outer corners of their eyes back. I wish I was joking.

  67. 67
    nobody.really says:

    Holding up Ben Lehman’s judgment, while the title card says it’s set in Japan, the action is transferred to what appears to be an English seaside resort, based on costuming and staging….and when the characters sing “We are gentleman of Japan,” they reach up and pull the outer corners of their eyes back.

    Hm. I only watched a few minutes, but they would lead me to the opposite conclusion. Yes, I observed someone pulling back his eyes — but that’s clearly a gesture that could be omitted with no consequence for the rest of the show. In all other respects, it would appear that the Japanese elements (except for lines such as “We are gentlemen of Japan”) had been expunged. Was there something else that seemed problematic?

    There’s some really interesting things about the racism in the Mikado: since England had only just begun cultural contact with Japan, they didn’t have time to cultivate specifically Japanese racial stereotypes. This, in the play, the putatively Japanese characters use pre-existing racial stereotypes about Chinese people. Hence the vaguely Cantonese sound names, for example.

    I hadn’t thought about the names as Cantonese — but now that you mention it, I guess you’re right.

    Gilbert & Sullivan made various references to Japan in their shows. Apparently the English upper-crust had a fad for all things Japanese, so this became grist for the G&S mill.

  68. 68
    Harlequin says:

    Hm. I only watched a few minutes, but they would lead me to the opposite conclusion. Yes, I observed someone pulling back his eyes — but that’s clearly a gesture that could be omitted with no consequence for the rest of the show. In all other respects, it would appear that the Japanese elements (except for lines such as “We are gentlemen of Japan”) had been expunged. Was there something else that seemed problematic?

    Hmm. Well, I guess I was arguing from a practical and not a theoretical standpoint. Maybe without that gesture the production would have been free of racism, but that gesture was present in the play as performed. It was meant to be an example of how just moving the setting was insufficient, not a proof that such movement could never be sufficient. (The gesture is repeated throughout the song, by the way, not just that first instance; I know if you only watched a few minutes you would not have seen it.) The changes were also substantive, not merely setting, in some places–the only one I remember in particular is that the “little list” has different items, though I couldn’t tell you what they were, at this point! (I might remember something about golf?)

    I can’t answer for the rest of the show being racist or not-racist–I haven’t seen it in years. But the pulling back the eyes really stuck with me, more than anything else about the production.

  69. 69
    Ampersand says:

    Oh, sure, the change of setting would have to be reflected in more than the sets and costumes, I agree – it would also have to be in the staging and in some cases in the lyrics. But (as the Reappropriate post Nobody Really linked to said) there’s a long tradition of modernizing the lyrics of “Little List”, so there’s some precedent there.

  70. 70
    nobody.really says:

    Anyone planning to see George Takei’s Allegiance? It opens next month!

  71. 71
    Charles S says:

    A Hamilton song that was cut: Sit down, John!

    Musicals I’ve seen:
    Camelot (high school)
    Jesus Christ Superstar (one high school production, one college production)
    Gypsy (high school)
    Cats (touring company)
    Lost in the Image Machine (college)
    Iolanthe
    Amal and the Night Visitors
    Assassins
    Sweeney Todd
    A New Brain
    Rent (yesterday afternoon)

  72. 72
    Mandolin says:

    Okay, I went through my CDs, and a Wikipedia list of musicals, and wrote down the ones I’ve seen. I came up with a list of 95, but I suspect I’ll be thinking “oh, that one!” for the rest of the week…

    The list is flawed because:
    1) I can’t remember everything, especially the old revues which were pretty indistinguishable.
    2) I saw musicals in workshop or early production that weren’t successful enough to be mentioned.
    3) A number of other musicals just weren’t on the wiki list for whatever reason.
    4) I probably accidentally marked some I’ve seen in video but not live. Especially since I saw a lot of musicals before I was 10, sometimes it blurs, and I may have confabulated a thing or two.

    I didn’t list musicals I’ve been in but never seen. I’ve seen a lot of these a number of times. I’m noting if I was in stuff or if I saw it on Broadway, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t see it in other spaces, too. (Not that it matters to anyone but me, but for my analness. ;) )

    The Three Musketeers (world premiere)
    42nd Street
    Aladdin
    Annie
    Annie Get Your Gun (Broadway)
    Anything Goes
    Assassins
    Avenue Q (Broadway)
    Bat Boy
    Beauty and the Beast (Broadway)
    Big River
    Big: the Musical
    Bye Bye Birdie
    Cabaret (Broadway)
    La Cage aux Folles
    Carousel
    Chess (was in)
    Chicago (Broadway)
    Children of Eden
    A Chorus Line
    A Christmas Carol
    City of Angels
    Copacabana
    Crazy for You
    Damn Yankees
    Enter the Guardsman (world premiere)
    Evita (was in)
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Follies (Broadway)
    The Full Monty (Broadway)
    A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
    George M!
    Gondoliers (was in)
    Grand Hotel
    Grease
    Guys and Dolls (was in)
    Gypsy (Broadway)
    The Haunting of Winchester (world premiere)
    Hello, Dolly!
    HMS Pinafore
    Honk!
    Iolanthe
    Making Tracks (world premiere)
    The Hot Mikado
    Into the Woods (Broadway) (was in)
    Jane Eyre (Broadway)
    Jesus Christ Superstar
    Joseph etc.
    Kiss Me, Kate (Broadway)
    Leader of the Pack (was in)
    Les Miserables (Broadway)
    Li’l Abner
    The Lion King (Broadway)
    A Little Night Music
    Little Shop of Horrors
    Lunch
    Mame
    Mama Mia (Broadway)
    Man of La Mancha (Broadway)
    Me and My Girl
    Merry Widow
    Mikado
    Miss Saigon (Broadway)
    The Music Man
    No, No, Nanette
    Oklahoma!
    Oliver!
    On the Town
    Once on this Island (was in)
    Pacific Overtures
    Phantom (was in)
    Pirates of Penzance
    The Phantom of the Opera
    Pippin
    The Producers (Broadway)
    Ragtime
    Rent (Broadway)
    Ruddigore (was in)
    The Secret Garden
    Seussical (Broadway)
    Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
    Show Boat
    Side Show
    The Sound of Music
    South Pacific
    Starmites (was in)
    Sweeney Todd (Broadway)
    The Threepenny Opera
    Trial by Jury
    Urinetown (off-Broadway right before it went to Broadway)
    Victor/Victoria
    West Side Story
    Tommy
    Will Rogers Follies
    The Wiz (was in)
    The Wizard of Oz
    The Yeoman of the Guard

  73. 74
    Elusis says:

    Anyone planning to see George Takei’s Allegiance? It opens next month!

    We’re seeing the first preview next week.

  74. 75
    Ampersand says:

    Anyone planning to see George Takei’s Allegiance? It opens next month!

    We’re seeing the first preview next week.

    Please let us know how it was!

  75. 76
    Charles S says:

    Karaoke of “Guns and Ships” (yeah, I’m still obsessed with Hamilton).

    Also, listening to In the Heights for the first time after listening to Hamilton over and over again is kind of neat, because I can’t help hearing Usnavy (Lin-Manuel’s role) as Hamilton transported to the modern day, another striving immigrant in New York.

  76. 77
    Ampersand says:

    From a New York Times article about Hamilton, a quote from Ron Chernow, the historian who wrote the Hamilton biography the musical is based on:

    Then he invited me to one of the first rehearsals at a small studio in the Garment District. I remember poking my head into the room and seeing eight actors standing in front of eight music stands, thinking, ‘‘Oh my goodness, they’re all black and Latino! What on earth is Lin-Manuel thinking?’’ I sat down with Thomas Kail, the director, and Jeffrey Seller, the producer, thinking to myself, ‘‘When this is over, I need to sit down and talk to Lin-Manuel alone. We’re talking about the founding fathers of the United States.’’ But after a minute or two I started to listen and forgot the color or ethnicity of these astonishingly talented young performers. Within five minutes, I became a militant on the subject of color-blind casting.

    The whole concept of ‘‘Hamilton,’’ I realized, was inseparable from casting. The miracle of the play is that it shows us who we were as a nation but also who we are now. This young, multiracial cast has a special feeling for the passion, urgency and idealism of the American Revolution, which maybe shouldn’t surprise us. Our history is the saga of outsiders becoming insiders — of the marginal and dispossessed being welcomed as citizens. Lin-Manuel offers us an Alexander Hamilton who is the quintessential immigrant and outsider who lends his talents and energies to creating the new nation.

    The article also has some comments from Stephen Sondheim.

  77. 78
    nobody.really says:

    Hamilton is the very model of a modern fast-paced musical.

    In the unending quest of Nate Silver’s blog to quantify everything, FiveThiryEight clocks the pace of word delivery of various shows, putting Hamilton up against Company (“I Am NOT Getting Married Today!”), 1776, and Pirates of Penzance (“Modern Major General”), among others.

  78. 79
    Ampersand says:

    Thanks for posting that, Nobody.

    For those of us who are Hamilton fans who probably won’t get to see the show in person for years (if ever), here’s ten minutes of professionally-shot footage from the show. Lin-Manuel has said that he’d like to make a commercial video of this cast performing Hamilton, but he’s not sure if it’s going to happen.

  79. 80
    nobody.really says:

    Amp, you tease — (no, not amputees; that’s different) — the link is busted! Got any other Hamilton links, perchance?

  80. 81
    Ampersand says:

    Weird that it’s not on the web now, since it seemed like it was initially posted with Lin-Manuel’s approval. Anyhow, unless it also gets taken down, you can see about half of the video I linked to here.

  81. 82
    Harlequin says:

    Nobody needs to keep making puns in these comments! (I very much appreciate them.)

  82. 83
    Ampersand says:

    For your “Hamilton” nerding out pleasure – the lyrics to Hamilton, with annotations.

  83. 84
    Elusis says:

    I can now add “Fun Home,” “Spring Awakening,” and “Allegiance” to my list.

    Capsule reviews:

    Fun Home – we missed the first 30 minutes thanks to a terrible cab driver who did not know that there was a Dominican Pride parade staged just a block away from the theatre district, and did not bother to check his traffic app. We probably would have been only 15 minutes late but the “NO LATE ADMITTANCE” on the tickets and website deterred us from racing the blocks between us and the train (when we abandoned the cab) and the train and the theatre, assuming we’d need to just plead vaguely for some kind of partial refund. But they let us in! And the show was great – fortunately we both know the book well. Flawless performances and staging, would see again if distance and money weren’t issues.

    Spring Awakening – I knew there’d been a musical version done in the mid-2000s but didn’t pay much attention. Spoiler: the music is FANTASTIC. Non-spoiler: this cast won’t be recording an album, SADNESS ABOUNDS. The Deaf West production layers on so much meaning to the original themes of cross-generational expectations and lack of communication, bringing in themes of the focus on oralism and suppression of sign that were contemporary with the original script. The Deaf performers “voices” (hearing actors in contemporary dress who speak, sing, and play instruments while the Deaf actors sign) enhance the actors’ performances without overshadowing them, and the incorporation of sign into staging and dance is flawless. I was also thinking about how disabled people are often given little if any sex education (or even vocabulary, for those who rely on non-oral communication) due to embarrassed or protective parents, and about how Freud at the time of the original play was ascribing his female patients’ stories of physical and sexual abuse to neurotic fantasy because he couldn’t conceive it was so rampant in Austrian society. And about how the adolescents in the play will grow up to be the libertines of the Weimar era, against whom the next generation will react by condemning their corruption and “Jewishness.” Sigh.

    This was fantastic. It’s got a limited run; get there to see it if you have any possible opportunity. Just superb.

    Allegiance – Dear George Takei, I figured out how to fix your musical. Cut 70% of the heterosexual romance*, and focus on the actual interesting aspects of the story. I wrote like five songs while watching that I think would help:
    – a song about conditions in the camp (rather than just showing people struggling with dust and cold in profile upstage) – gotta have some jokes about Spam in there, but also some lines for the adult women and men about their rage and frustration
    – a song about what it means to be American, Japanese, and Japanese-American (since THAT’s really the interesting theme of the show)
    – a song about being in the “suicide squad” in the war (rather than just a brief monologue and a quick pantomime of guys falling over in the fog – why did the white guys get the USO-style song and not the Japanese guys?)
    – a song for the women in the camp who smuggled out letters about what happened next (rather than just a brief scene where some of the women flashed some thigh to put them in their garters) – maybe the show would pass the Bechdel test if you made some of these changes, BTW?
    – and a song for the father about being in the extra-harsh camp (rather than just a 60-second scene of him mooning over his son in Time Magazine) in which he actually interrogates the idea of “gamon” (endurance with dignity – the play’s rather lampshaded theme) and asks “when you’re asked to give up your dignity in order to endure, how do you navigate that?” that maybe included both his son who joined the Army and the son-in-law who resisted the draft, all exploring their dilemmas.

    What you could have had was a very fresh, sharp show about a shameful chapter of American history and a group of people navigating immigrant identity. What you got was a very saccharine, traditional show that focused mostly on individuals and the Motivating Power of Love. I predict it will fare poorly on Broadway, and go on to be extremely popular with high schools, colleges, and community theatres, kind of “Bye Bye Birdie” for places with lots of Asian people. (And inevitably some school in Ohio will cast a white girl in the Lea Salonga role, and tape up her eyes, and claim “color-blind casting,” and totally fail to Get It.)

    Sigh.

    *seriously, starting act II there were like 4 romance songs in a row, FFS