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.
- 13 (local Ithaca production)
- The 25th Annual Putman County Spelling Bee
- 42nd Street. (West End, Oct 2017, with Sheena Easton and Clare Halse. Incoherent story, wonderful tapdancing.)
- 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.)
- 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.)
- 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 I can’t remember if the Annie was Andrea McArdle or if she’d been replaced by this point; but I do remember my instant crush on whoever the lead actress was, which occupied my thoughts for weeks afterwards. This would have been around 1977. Seen again a year of so later in the Camp Modin production. And seen again, the non-equity national tour in Portland in May 2024 – so 47 years between the first time I saw it and the most recent time! In 2024, the standout cast member for me was Christopher Swan as Warbucks; he did a good job acting it and his voice sounded so rich.
- Annie Get Your Gun (Bernadette Peters again)
- Assassins (A local production in Massachusetts. Really good.)
- The Band’s Visit. (Broadway, 2018. Tony Shalhoub had left the show by this time, but Katrina Lenk was still there and was wonderful.)
- 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.
- 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.”)
- Black Nativity. (Taken to this by my aunt Marlene in 2018, in Sarasota. Predictable story – I mean, well, duh – but wonderful singers.)
- Beetlejuice. (Saw the national tour in Portland April 2024. Justin Collette and Isabella Ensler were the leads. It won’t be an all-time favorite for me, but it was lots of fun and, as you’d expect from a national tour, had great sets and an amazingly skilled ensemble.)
- 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.)
- Candide (Portland opera, May 2012. I went to the dress rehearsal and even did some drawings.)
- Chicago (Broadway revival.)
- 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.
- Company (2006 or 2007. Broadway revival with Raul Esparza, although to be honest I can no longer remember if it was Esparza I saw or an understudy. Regardless, it was spectacular. The best of the three John Doyle directed Sondheim shows I’ve seen.) And then seen again in July 2024, in Portland, the national tour of the “Bobbi” Broadway revival. The production was great, the staging very clever, and the performers were all very good without any being outstanding.
- 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.
- Dreamgirls (West End, Oct 2017. Amber Riley from “Glee” starred.)
- Evil Dead The Musical (Seattle, seen with Robin aka J Squid. In the back row, so no blood spattered on us, sadly.)
- 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.
- Fiddler On The Roof (Camp Modin production! Still counts!) (And then again, in June 2019 – an off-Broadway Yiddish-language production, which was excellent.)
- Footloose (local production with teen cast, including my niece, in Ithaca).
- 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.)
- A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (Nathan Lane again)
- Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. (2018, with my mom, in Sarasota.)
- 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). (And also a really fun production in Sarasota, Florida, probably around 2015?, that I went to with my mom and my sister.)
- Hadestown. (National tour, seen 7/22/2022). Saw this one with my housemate Charles and our friends Alexis and Mike.
- Hair (Umass production)
- 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?)
- 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.
- 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.
- Hello, Dolly. (Broadway 2018, with Bernadette Peters and Victor Garber.)
- 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.
- 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!)
- 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. - 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.
- 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?
- 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. - 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.)
- Kinky Boots (Seen on Broadway, with my mom.)
- Kiss Of The Spider Woman (Original Bwy cast w/ Chita Rivera) (And then again in Portland, seen with Becky.)
- The Last 5 Years, in a Portland production. Saw this with my friend Becky, who introduced me to the show. (We also saw the movie together, but that was a different occasion.)
- Les Miserables (bwy)
- 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.)
- Lizzie (Punk rock show about Lizzie Borden. Seen with my friend Becky in Portland.)
- 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.)
- 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. I also remember that I couldn’t follow the plot, but that happened to me a lot when I was a kid.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. It’s up there with the Broadway revival of “Once On This Island” for “most perfect production I’ve ever seen, no change would improve it.” (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!)
- 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. It was a really fun and interesting production – there are three acts, and each act was done in a different location, so the audience got up and walked to the next place at each act break.)
- 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.)
- A New Brain (Seen in Portland with Charles, but I have barely any memory of it!)
- 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.)
- 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).
- 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.)
- Parade (Portland production in a tiny theater, but really good. Seen with Becky.)
- Passing Strange (May 2024. Portland production in a tiny theater – Portland Playhouse, to be specific, which was also where we saw Mr Burns. Really good production, entire cast was great, with a woman playing the narrator which I thought was interesting because it probably made it take longer for audience members to realize that the narrator and the main character are the same person. Seen with Charles and Becky.)
- Passion (Original bwy cast w/ Donna Murphy)
- Pete the Cat. Kid’s musical I livesketched in 2018, at Oregon Children’s Theatre.
- 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!
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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.)
- 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.
- The Rocky Horror Show (this was a local production, I think in Massachusetts.)
- Ruthless! (teeny tiny production in Portland)
- The Scarlet Pimpernel (Original Bwy cast)
- 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.
- 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.)
- Side Show (Bwy original cast. I think I saw this with my parents.)
- 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.)
- 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.
- Spring Awakening (local production with teen cast in Ithaca NY. Seen with my mom, and with my sister and her family.)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.”
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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.)
- Wicked (Saw it on Broadway – I won the ticket lottery on my first try!)
- You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown (Portland production in a tiny theater.)
So 84 shows! If I count shows I’ve seen multiple times by the number of times seen, then the total is 101!
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Oh–our lists only overlap by 12, it seems. How fascinating, because I don’t think either list looks overly full of obscure works.
Post your list! POST IT! :-p
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’.”
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.
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.)
Didn’t your high school do musicals? No Music Man? No Bye Bye Birdee? No Anything Goes?
No Rogers & Hammerstein?
No Chicago? No Wicked?
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.
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….
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.
Hilariously I somehow forgot Wicked! I have also ween Wicked. At least twice.
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.
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.
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. :-)
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
I think I’ve seen more musicals than you. But I’m also not going to count, so.
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!
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.
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!
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).
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.
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.
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.”
Just got tickets for “Bat Boy The Musical” for Halloween!
Alas, a near universal affliction. We in community theater are constantly seeking a cure, but it’s an uphill battle. Please give generously.
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.
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?
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.)
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).
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
I wrote:
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.
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.
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.
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
I forgot I’ve seen Fantasticks
nobody.really:
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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….)
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).
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.
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.
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?”)
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…?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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.
I have no comprehension of this.
Elusis, Then She Fell is amazing. Good choice.
The producers of Hamilton have made the entire cast album available as streaming audio, for free, on NPR.
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.
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.
The cast album of Hamilton is fantastic.
What Charles said.
Also, I now want to see a science-fiction Mikado where the characters are all actual sci-fi aliens.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Anyone planning to see George Takei’s Allegiance? It opens next month!
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)
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
Christian Science Monitor: Curtain Rises on Broadway’s Most Diverse Season In Years.
We’re seeing the first preview next week.
Please let us know how it was!
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.
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:
The article also has some comments from Stephen Sondheim.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBEpTrPhd2Q
Amp, you tease — (no, not amputees; that’s different) — the link is busted! Got any other Hamilton links, perchance?
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.
Nobody needs to keep making puns in these comments! (I very much appreciate them.)
For your “Hamilton” nerding out pleasure – the lyrics to Hamilton, with annotations.
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