Museum of Broadway

1732 - 1907

THE EUROPEAN INFLUENCE | In the 18th and 19th centuries, as a new nation began to develop its cultural identity, the European influence on the American stage remained strong. It was felt with considerable fervor in the sizable collection of contemporary European playwrights who found their work either presented or premiered in New York, particularly in the latter half of the 1800s as the city blossomed into a towering capital of entertainment. Among the most prominent were Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, who made his stage debut at the Union Square Theatre with Vera; or, The Nihilists in 1883. Among the most popular was Dion Boucicault. In 1859, while living and working in New York, the celebrated Irish playwright unveiled The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana, an exceptionally potent socio-political drama centering around a tragic romance between a white plantation owner and a mixed-race slave of one-eighth African origins. The events of the play, which was adapted from the Thomas Mayne Reid novel The Quadroon, involved murder, suicide, arson, and a slave auction.EARLY AMERICAN AUTHORS | In the years surrounding the turn of the 20th century, furthering a trail blazed by the likes of Augustin Daly, William Dunlap, and Bronson Howard, Broadway witnessed a growing number of early American authors. David Belasco, in particular, emerged as a major theatrical force with such works as The Girl of the Golden West, The Heart of Maryland, and Madame Butterfly, which premiered in 1900 and inspired the opera by Giacomo Puccini. Other notable voices included Owen Davis, Clyde Fitch, and Langdon Mitchell.

Vaudeville

VAUDEVILLE | An electrifying form of stage entertainment that flourished throughout the first three decades of the 20th century, vaudeville was an institutionalized outgrowth of the wildly popular variety shows of the late 1800s – a dynamic, exacting medium that had an incalculable influence on the character, composition, methods, and mechanics of the American musical. Featuring a spectacular array of specialists, with the headliners often having been singing comedians, dancing comedians, and nut, knockabout, and cross talk comedians, a standardized vaudeville bill consisted of roughly ten independent acts, running a total of three hours. Time, therefore, was of the essence, with many emerging entertainers receiving mere minutes to “put over” their act. Showmanship, crispness, and ingenuity were crucial to one’s success on the vaudeville stage. Meanwhile, in a sprawling industry that occupied hundreds of theatres nationwide, the “big time” typically referred to those houses associated with the United Booking Offices, playing one bill per week, twice daily. The “small time” designated those less desirable houses playing split weeks and three shows a day. Broadway’s “big time” temples included Hammerstein’s Victoria, the Hippodrome, and the Palace Theatre, which presented a parade of 20th century icons prior to playing its final straight vaudeville bill in 1932.TIN PAN ALLEY | A nifty moniker denoting the nation’s music publishing industry, once centered on a small strip of 28th Street in New York City, Tin Pan Alley enjoyed an exceptionally close relationship with the musical stage throughout the early 1900s. Vaudeville, in particular, proved to be a key ingredient in popularizing its latest airs and a driving force behind its lyrical and musical uplift. In the 1930s, though, the Alley became entrenched in motion pictures, radio, and recording, with the American popular song simultaneously shifting away from its theatrical setting.

The Minstrel Show

An extraordinarily controversial form of conspicuously American entertainment, incubated and inspired by an environment of racism and prejudice, the minstrel show remains perhaps most closely associated with burnt cork (i.e. blackface) and grotesque caricatures of African-American life. Yet, in a dangerously combustible duality, the indelible art similarly remains the foundation of the American musical stage, having fostered over the course of its decades-long dominance the creative development of the country’s comedy, song, and dance and having opened doors for its exceedingly influential African-American artists.The minstrel show formally emerged in the 1840s following decades of individual performances by “Ethiopian Delineators” like T.D. Rice, the storied stage star behind the iconic character “Jim Crow.” Evolving considerably throughout the second half of the century, it was transformed by such enterprising entertainers as Lew Dockstader and George Primrose, whose popular outfit briefly discontinued the use of blackface and rebranded the form’s infamous figureheads, “Bones” and “Tambo,” as “Jesters.” The final major new minstrel troupe was ultimately launched in 1908, with George Evans headlining what was advertised on Broadway as “An Entertainment Embracing Minstrelsy, Vaudeville, Burlesque, and Musical Comedy.”

The Ziegfeld Follies

Revue, characterized by composer Arthur Schwartz as “a high class form of vaudeville,” was essentially a scripted musical show comprised of individual comedy sketches, songs, and dances that had been organized into a plotless routine. The material was almost always original and occasionally augmented with songs from Tin Pan Alley.On July 8, 1907, as Broadway sparkled with a plethora of stage shows, Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. introduced a groundbreaking series of revues that became one of the most defining features of the first quarter century. It began as a fashionable roof garden entertainment featuring topical comic skits and a bevy of sexy and stylishly-presented showgirls. Follies became an immediate, surprise sensation. It proved to be such a smash that Ziegfeld produced a new edition of his revue each year through 1925, officially attaching his name to the title in 1911. He unveiled his final two Follies in 1927 and 1931.Ziegfeld turned his chorines into a stellar attraction, presenting them with a combination of wholesomeness, fantasy, feathers and sequins – setting new standards for tasteful glamour. When Ziegfeld insisted on providing his chorus girls costly Irish linen undergarments, an assistant pointed out that no one in the audience would know. “The girls will know. They are not just any girls... they are Ziegfeld girls.” It’s no wonder Irving Berlin’s “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody,” written for the 1919 edition, became the song perhaps most closely associated with the series. Ziegfeld’s immortal slogan “Glorifying the American Girl” was coined in 1922.Part of Ziegfeld’s showmanship was his eye for talent, which helped him discover and make stars out of comedians such as Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, and W.C. Fields. And with Ziegfeld, talent is what ruled the day. When a few Follies cast members complained about sharing the stage with Black comedian Bert Williams, Ziegfeld’s reply was “The stage door is that way. I can do this show without any of you, but I cannot do it without Bert.” And that was that.Meanwhile, the success of Ziegfeld Follies led to a swarm of annual entertainments that dominated the early 1900s. These included The Passing Show, which was launched by the Shuberts in 1912; George White’s Scandals and The Greenwich Village Follies, each of which was launched in 1919; and Earl Carroll Vanities, which was launched in 1923. None, however, was more iconic than Ziegfeld’s fabulous revues.Alas, Ziegfeld’s penchant for extravagance plunged him deep into debt and the stock market crash of 1929 wiped out much of his remaining fortune. He died in 1932. But in the words of Irving Berlin, “just like the strain of a haunting refrain,” Ziegfeld’s memory still lives on, his name synonymous with Broadway style and glory.Follies of 1907 opened on Broadway at the Jardin de Paris on July 8, 1907.

1907 - 1927

COMEDY, DRAMA, AND EXTRAVAGANZA | Though the American musical of the early 20th century is often dismissed as having been nothing more than an assortment of leggy revues and superficial Cinderella stories, the form was, in fact, vibrantly alive with a wide variety of formative stage styles. Charles Dillingham and R.H. Burnside, for instance, manufactured spectacular funhouse entertainments intermingling circus, clowning, comedy, and vaudeville. Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, and Jerome Kern penned intimate musical comedies infused with tinkling music and up-to-the-minute mayhem. Harold Atteridge constructed a series of stylish theatrical extravaganzas starring Al Jolson. Otto Harbach and Rida Johnson Young separately wrote musical plays peppered with cynicism, regret, psychology, and murder. And Harlan Thompson and Harry Archer were among the next generation artists to script contemporary musical comedies in the key of jazz. Though this early work was not fully matured, there was, by the second half of the Roaring Twenties, a clear, accelerating movement toward sophisticated language, sound construction, three-dimensional characters, and integrated scores.NIGHTCLUBS AND CABARET | In 1911, the Folies Bergère, a combination restaurant, theatre, and music hall, unofficially inaugurated New York’s nightclub craze. Its opening program consisted of two burlesques and a ballet followed by a midnight cabaret show. For the next three decades, catering primarily to the after-theatre trade in swanky dining establishments located in and around Times Square, nightclubs and cabaret would remain two of the most defining features of the syncopated Rialto. In addition to dinner and dancing, many of Broadway’s ritziest resorts offered elaborate, theatrical floor shows written, staged, and performed by the town’s top talent.BLACK ENTERTAINMENT | In the 1920s, the Black musical stage experienced a jazz-infused boom. Though Shuffle Along (1921) was instrumental in igniting the significant uptick in Black entertainment, the best legitimate offerings of the period were often those that originated in glamorous nightclubs like the Plantation, a landmark rendezvous located on the second floor of the Winter Garden Theatre building. On November 2, 1925, in particular, the popular midnight chateau launched the legendary Black Birds series.

Show Boat

When composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II asked author Edna Ferber for the rights to adapt her novel Show Boat into a musical, she was understandably skeptical. At that point, it was hard to imagine the stage as the best medium for her epic story of a family performing on a Mississippi show boat from the 1880s through the 1920s. But Ferber agreed, as did the only producer willing to take on such a challenging project — Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.The day he signed on to produce Show Boat, Ziegfeld wrote a friend that this unlikely project was the one for which he would be remembered. But he wondered: could this elaborate production make audiences accept a musical story that dealt seriously and directly with racism, alcoholism, gambling, and marital desertion?By the time the curtain fell on the opening night performance on December 27, 1927, the uncertain reaction of a stunned audience convinced Ziegfeld the gamble had failed. But the next morning, he arrived at the theatre to find ticket buyers lined up around the block. Show Boat was a massive hit!Show Boat both embodied and propelled the broad advancements being made in musical storytelling in the late 1920s. The central characters were richly drawn, and dialogue, song and dance were woven together in the storytelling with the music stemming from the idea of character. As Brooks Atkinson put it, “Show Boat turns a bit of picturesque American life into theatrical beauty.”As Oscar Hammerstein II later professed, “Much of the flatness commonly found in musical comedy books is due to erroneous ideas of what you can’t do in a musical play. It has been proved again and again that if the background is bright, and gaiety surrounds the story, the events of the story can be as dramatic or tragic as anything found in a play without music.” The Broadway musical was growing up.Show Boat opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927.Live stage performing rights to Show Boat are represented by Concord Theatricals.

Porgy & Bess

In 1935, The Theatre Guild premiered Porgy and Bess, a soaring Black entertainment set in Charleston, South Carolina and based on the play Porgy by Dorothy and DuBose Heyward. Heyward and Ira Gershwin wrote lyrics and George Gershwin brilliantly composed the music. Described by its legendary composer as “an opera for the theatre,” the musical spawned a number of classic songs, including “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and “Summertime.”The original Broadway production was directed by Rouben Mamoulian and featured Anne Wiggins Brown, Todd Duncan, John Bubbles, and Rosamond Johnson. A deeply felt love story erected with intricately drawn characters and powerful dramatic incidents, Porgy and Bess offered a markedly different display of African- American talent than most other musicals of the early 20th century.Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 10, 1935.

1927- 1943

SATIRE, COMMENT, AND SOPHISTICATION | The period prior to the Second World War is often associated with mindless musical comedies composed of silly situations and incongruous songs. It was, however, similarly and crucially characterized by an increasing number of serious-minded musical shows that found sharp, sophisticated dramatists integrating dialogue, song, staging, and dance to tell potent, prescient stories. Of Thee I Sing (1931), for instance, was a savage political satire by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and Ira and George Gershwin; The Cradle Will Rock (1937) was a searing social commentary by Marc Blitzstein; Pal Joey (1940) was a chic, cynical character study by John O’Hara, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, and George Abbott; and Lady in the Dark (1941) was a thrilling psychological exploration by Moss Hart, Ira Gershwin, and Kurt Weill. Among the other adventurous new works were Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) and The Threepenny Opera (1933), a stunning musical statement by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill that premiered in Berlin in 1928 and emerged as a classic nearly 25 years later when newly translated for the American stage by Marc Blitzstein.SOPHISTICATED REVUE | In the late 1920s, Broadway’s kaleidoscopic annual revues (e.g. Ziegfeld Follies, George White’s Scandals, etc.) gave way to a strikingly modern brand of episodic entertainment bursting with freshness, ingenuity, intelligence, and zest. Regarded by Herald Tribune critic Richard Watts, Jr. as “one of the most important forms of dramatic expression in the country,” the new sophisticated revue was instrumental in sharpening the content, stagecraft, and storytelling of the maturing musical stage, becoming an unparalleled playground for countless creative minds prior to its abrupt decline in the 1950s. The form’s most prominent practitioner was perhaps Howard Dietz, an expert lyricist and sketch writer who blazed a trail with such superbly routined, singularly stylized revues as The Little Show (1929), Three’s a Crowd (1930), and The Band Wagon (1931). His collaborators included George S. Kaufman, Arthur Schwartz, and Hassard Short.

World War II

THE BROADWAY RESPONSE | Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the entire theatre community was called to action as the United States formally entered the Second World War. Irving Berlin’s This is the Army and Moss Hart’s Winged Victory burst onto the scene as full-scale Broadway productions presented for the benefit of the Army Emergency Relief Fund; Howard Dietz and Vernon Duke’s Tars and Spars was created as a recruitment revue for the Coast Guard, touring the nation’s combination picture houses with a cast led by Sid Caesar and Gower Champion; and the American Theatre Wing opened the Stage Door Canteen in a cabaret space beneath the 44th Street Theatre, operating the Broadway nightclub as a rambunctious destination for servicemen. The Wing separately launched Lunchtime Follies, a series of pint-sized patriotic revues that played to countless war workers at factories around the country. Initiated by Aline MacMahon, the miniature morale boosters boasted topical songs and sketches by the likes of Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, Harold Rome, and Kurt Weill.SOLDIER SHOWS | In addition to the star-studded programs presented by the United Service Organizations, original musical comedies and revues written and performed by soldiers proved immensely popular on military bases during the war. One of the most prominent was Stars and Gripes, a bright, satirical smash that originated at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn and proved so successful that it was subsequently filmed, recorded, and radio broadcast. Its swinging score was penned almost entirely by Harold Rome, who was one of several Broadway veterans to serve in the armed forces during the war.

Oklahoma!

Having first collaborated during their days as students at Columbia University, composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-librettist Oscar Hammerstein II were, independently, established musical theatre giants by the early 1940s. Though both showed an interest in Lynn Riggs’ play Green Grow the Lilacs, their respective writing partners — Lorenz Hart for Rodgers and Jerome Kern for Hammerstein — did not. Thus, a new partnership was born — one that would alter Broadway forever.At the time, the prestigious Theatre Guild, run by Theresa Helburn, was desperate for a hit and gave Rodgers & Hammerstein extraordinary creative control of their maiden Broadway voyage together. The new songwriting team gave every song a crucial, dramatic purpose and hired visionary choreographer Agnes de Mille to create a dream ballet that electrified audiences and furthered the possibilities for dance in musical theatre. Instead of stars, Rodgers & Hammerstein and innovative director Rouben Mamoulian cast talented unknowns who fit the characters. After the first tryout performance in New Haven, where it was originally titled Away We Go!, one theater veteran quipped, “No gags, no gals, no chance!” Orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett quickly rearranged the song “Oklahoma” for the full chorus in time for the two-week Boston run. According to Joan Roberts, who played Laurey, “When we first did [the number] in Boston, the applause was deafening; it was like you were at an opera opening. People were standing up and yelling, ‘Encore!’ It was the most thrilling experience.”On opening night at the St. James Theatre, some seats were empty, but rave reviews kept those seats filled for years to come. In the midst of fighting World War II, theatergoers embraced Oklahoma! as a heartfelt valentine to America’s past, making the show a record-smashing hit. It turned out the farmer and the cowman could be friends. As Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times, “within ten minutes, a Broadway audience was transported out of the ugly realities of wartime into a warm, languorous, shining time and place where the only problems were simple and wholesome, and the people uncomplicated and joyous.”Though the individual elements employed in the creation of Oklahoma! were not new and had, in fact, been steadily progressing for more than two decades, the excellence and exactitude that the creative team displayed in melding them all purposefully and succinctly into the telling of a single theatrical story singlehandedly carried the integrated book musical to new heights. Hammerstein’s libretto, in particular, was remarkable in its construction, providing the piece with a meticulously structured narrative, clearly defined and individual characters, and a dramaturgical foundation for its song and dance. Building upon the inherently lyrical and folksy quality of the original play, the entire musical was marked by what Time Magazine referred to as a “captivating simplicity.” Though Oklahoma! was neither the beginning nor the end of the American musical’s extraordinary journey, it remains, as librettist and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner later asserted, “one of the few real, genuine, 14-carat, true-blue milestones ever called a milestone.”Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! opened on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on March 31, 1943.Live stage performing rights to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! are represented by Concord Theatricals.

1943 - 1957

NEW AMERICAN DRAMA | In the years following the Second World War, as Broadway continued to narrow in both definition and terrain, the legitimate stage blazed with creativity, audacity, and invention, spurred on, in part, by the emergence of an extraordinary new American drama. Tennessee Williams, for instance, burst onto the scene with a string of instant classics, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, The Rose Tattoo, and A Streetcar Named Desire; Arthur Miller turned out such stunning masterworks as All My Sons, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, and A View from the Bridge; and William Inge etched three potent portraits of small town America in Bus Stop, Come Back, Little Sheba, and Picnic. Eugene O’Neill, meanwhile, returned to Broadway with The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, each of which had been penned years prior to its premiere. Elsewhere, on a glittering Rialto, audiences flocked to a coterie ofnew comedies by the likes of Mary Chase, Garson Kanin, Norman Krasna, and John Van Druten, a prolific author and director perhaps best-known for I Am a Camera.BLACK STORIES | On August 30, 1944, the American Negro Theatre production of Anna Lucasta moved from the basement of the New York Public Library at 135th Street in Harlem to the Mansfield Theatre on Broadway, playing a total of 957 performances on the Main Stem. Initially penned by Philip Yordan as a Polish-American story with white characters, the landmark play was part of a small but steady stream of nonmusical offerings that brought Black talent to Broadway in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. Othello, in particular, found Paul Robeson turning in a towering performance as the title character opposite Uta Hagen and Jose Ferrer, while Lysistrata marked Sidney Poitier’s Broadway debut. The majority, however, were new works that told Black stories specifically focused on the subject of race. Among the most prominent were Dorothy Heyward’s Set My People Free, Louis Peterson’s Take a Giant Step, Maxine Wood’s On Whitman Avenue, and Arnaud D'Usseau and James Gow’s Deep Are the Roots, a long-running hit that followed the southern homecoming of an African-American army lieutenant at the end of World War II. It was directed by Elia Kazan, who famously cofounded the Actors Studio in 1947.

THE TONY AWARDS®

The American Theatre Wing’s Tony Awards® began in 1947 when the Wing established an awards program to celebrate excellence in the theatre.Named for Antoinette “Tony” Perry, an actress, director, producer, and the dynamic wartime leader of the Wing who had recently passed, the Tonys made their official debut at a dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1947. Vera Allen, Perry’s successor as chair of the Wing, presided over an evening that included dining, dancing, and a program ofentertainment. The dress code was black tie optional, and the performers who took to the stage included Mickey Rooney, Herb Shriner, Ethel Waters, and David Wayne. 11 Tonys were presented in 7 categories, with 8 special awards, including one for Vincent Sardi, proprietor of the restaurant on West 44th Street. Winners that night included José Ferrer, Arthur Miller, Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Patricia Neal, Elia Kazan and Agnes de Mille.The early years of the Tony Awards® saw many presentations taking place in ballrooms before it reached television sets in 1967. Since then, the ceremony reaches national audiences through a joint partnership between the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League.

West Side Story

In 1949, director-choreographer Jerome Robbins began collaborating with established composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Arthur Laurents on a musical that reset Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in contemporary New York City. Conceived as a story set between rival religious groups on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Juliet would be Jewish, Romeo would be an Italian Catholic, and Act II would open with a Seder. The team worked on the musical, but it was not yet distinct enough from Romeo & Juliet and seemed to mimic the storyline of the popular 1922 play, Abie’s Irish Rose – so the project stalled and the team moved on separately to other projects.Flash forward to 1955, when Laurents and Bernstein were working independently in Los Angeles. At the time, the newspapers were filled with stories of teenage gang violence. Laurents and Bernstein were inspired. The gangs became white Americans and newly immigrated Puerto Ricans on the then-grungy Upper West Side. All at once, the project took off. In Bernstein’s words: “Suddenly it all springs to life. I can hear the rhythms and pulses, and – most of all – I can feel the form.” He would go on to compose a stunning symphonic tapestry of jazz, be-bop, and other musical genres that shaped the environment, delineated character, and enhanced the show’s dramatic context.Stephen Sondheim, a friend of Laurents’s, casually asked him who was writing the lyrics. Betty Comden and Adolph Green – Bernstein’s collaborators from On the Town and Wonderful Town – had been the intended lyricists but Broadway’s Bells Are Ringing kept them off the project. The young Sondheim was not interested in a lyrics-only assignment, as he was pursuing a career as a composer in his own right. It was his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, who counseled him to accept saying, “You should take the job… you’ll learn a lot and you can write music in the future sometime.”The show’s content and approach were such hot-button issues that its original producer, Cheryl Crawford, pulled out only two months prior to the first rehearsal. After a call from Sondheim to his friend Harold “Hal” Prince, Prince and Robert E. Griffith signed on as producers and the show was off to a tryout at The National Theatre in Washington D.C.The story is gritty and the themes are serious and tragic, but what makes West Side Story a game changer is the way the show’s creative elements collectively advance the storyline. The four authors worked closely together, frequently borrowing from one another until the book, music, lyrics and choreography became inextricably linked. To that end, the casting itself was revolutionary: Robbins demanded that some of the principals be dancers first and foremost, otherwise the dance would “never be well incorporated into the show.” So committed and obsessive was Robbins in getting the absolute most from his ensemble that he kept the performers playing the Sharks and Jets apart during the rehearsal process, encouraging each group to genuinely dislike the other. By opening night, his cast was seething with emotion and the final result was unmistakable. Critics and audiences alike recognized that this was a musical theatre milestone and choreography for the Broadway stage would never be quite the same again.West Side Story opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957.Winner of 2 Tony Awards® in 1958.

1957 - 1966

DARKNESS AND DANGER | As the American musical continued its mid-century ascent moving into the 1960s, Broadway witnessed an increasing number of new works with serious subject matter and dramatic sensibilities, delving even further into the fields of darkness and danger. Carnival, for instance, was an unusually sensitive smash that juxtaposed its colorful circus settings and its warm xylophone melodies with themes of rape, violence, and mental illness; I Can Get It for You Wholesale painted a bitter, scathing portrait of a depression-era garment manufacturer whose unapologetically ruthless business practices burn both his friends and family; and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever offered a lightweight and unfinished exploration of extrasensory perception, hypnosis, psychiatry, and reincarnation. Elsewhere, two of the period’s most exceptional entertainments proved to be Gypsy and Fiddler on the Roof, a pair of completely unified, individually stylized masterworks directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and interspersed with thrilling dramatic moments of power and significance.VAUDEVILLE, BURLESQUE, AND REVUE | In the late 1950s and early 1960s, despite a preponderance of high profile flops like I Had a Ball, Subways Are for Sleeping, and Wildcat, Broadway produced a dazzling collection of expertly crafted, meticulously constructed musical comedies, each of which embraced the artistic maturity of the modern musical stage while mining the comical crevasses and stylistic ravines of vaudeville and burlesque – contemporary clown shows and newfangled farces whose style and structure was similarly informed by revue. (Revue informed the style and structure of countless shows throughout the canon.) Among the most polished and prominent mid-century musical comedies were Bye Bye Birdie, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Hello, Dolly!, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Little Me, a sensational show business sketchbook in which television and stage star Sid Caesar played seven different characters, echoing the early 20th century offerings of Al Jolson and Fred Stone. Do Re Mi, too, offered some fine flashes of low comic fun.EUROPEAN PRODUCTS | Though the musical stage of the mid-20th century was defined almost exclusively by a maturing American art form, a smattering of European products like Irma La Douce and Oliver! caught the eyes and ears of Broadway audiences. Oh What a Lovely War and Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, in particular, peppered their storytelling with narrative and thematic comment. Incidentally, all four pieces were produced on the Main Stem by David Merrick, a legendary showman who racked up a laundry list of hits and misses.

Hello, Dolly!

After several years dancing in Hollywood with his wife, Marge, Gower Champion returned to Broadway as one of its leading director-choreographers with popular shows like Bye Bye Birdie (1960) and Carnival (1961). Producer David Merrick enlisted Champion for Hello, Dolly! (1964), and his approach to Michael Stewart’s book and Jerry Herman’s lyrics and score resulted in a classic and crowd pleasing hit which swept the Tony Awards® in 1964, winning awards in ten categories out of eleven nominations — a record that remained unbroken for 37 years.The production also offered a legendary star turn for the matchless Carol Channing, whose charming and idiosyncratic performance of Dolly Levi won her the Tony Award® for Best Actress in a Musical, which she went on to perform more than 4,000 times across multiple productions over four decades. While Channing remains the actress most closely associated with Dolly Levi, the role is such a powerful “star vehicle” that it attracted a long line of leading ladies, including Ethel Merman, for whom the show was originally written.Hello, Dolly! opened on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on January 16, 1964.Winner of 10 Tony Awards® in 1964.Live stage performing rights to Hello, Dolly! are represented by Concord Theatricals.

Fiddler on the Roof

The story of Tevye, a Russian Jewish dairyman facing the destruction of his community and his way of life, might not have seemed like an obvious choice to become the longest-running musical in Broadway history at the time. Yet the relatable, human story of a father facing change both within his family and his country resonated with audiences facing the convulsive social upheaval of the 1960s. The inimitable and volcanic Zero Mostel was the first of many greatactors to win acclaim as Tevye and director-choreographer Jerome Robbins once again made dance an integral part of the storytelling. His ever-present insistence on authenticity extended to the way he staged the Orthodox wedding, featuring men who danced while balancing wine bottles on their heads – an eloquent, visual metaphor for the show’s message of survival in the face of unstoppable change.Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre on September 22, 1964.Winner of 8 Tony Awards® in 1965.

1966 - 1968

MUSICALS | In a painfully unsteady two-year period that found multiple Broadway theatres occupied by long-running productions of both plays and musicals like Cactus Flower, Fiddler on the Roof, and Mame, a once thriving and regenerative Rialto began to show real cause for concern. The largely stagnant and out of touch musical stage, in particular, endured a barrage of unsatisfactory new works such as Darling of the Day, The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, Here's Where I Belong, and I’m Solomon, each of which lasted less than a month. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, meanwhile, closed during previews. Elsewhere, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé headlined Golden Rainbow; Robert Goulet and David Wayne headlined The Happy Time; and Mary Martin and Robert Preston headlined I Do! I Do! Michael Bennett emerged as a major choreographer with such mixed-bag musical comedies as A Joyful Noise, Henry, Sweet Henry, and How Now, Dow Jones; pop culture icons Eddie Fisher, Judy Garland, and Buddy Hackett brought their respective acts to the Palace; and, in 1967, the long-running production of Hello, Dolly! acquired an all-Black replacement cast led by Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway.PLAYS | Though the late 1960s saw a modest assortment of new American plays penned by the likes of Jay Allen, Robert Anderson, and Arthur Miller, the most prominent and profitable individual force on the nonmusical stage remained Neil Simon. Between December 21, 1966 and June 25, 1967, the prolific playwright enjoyed the distinction of having the original productions of Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and The Star-Spangled Girl running on Broadway simultaneously. (Sweet Charity was also on the boards, boasting lyrics by Dorothy Fields and music by Cy Coleman.) On February 14, 1968, he premiered Plaza Suite. Yet, Broadway continued to be dominated more broadly by a succession of high profile European imports, including Peter Nichols’ A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Joe Orton’s Loot, Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy and White Lies, and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which became the first Royal National Theatre production to make its way to the Main Stem.

Cabaret

While Hal Prince was stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, in the early 1950s, he spent time at Maxim’s, a nightclub in the cellar of a bombed-out church. He was overwhelmed with the surprising glamour of the seedy club and its emcee. Upon returning to America, he was struck by the similarity of John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera (1952) and Christopher Isherwood’s memoir The Berlin Stories upon which it was based. Prince dove into Isherwood’s stories of life in the tawdry, bohemian cabarets of 1930’s Berlin that Prince was so fascinated by in Germany. His wheels were turning. Years later, Prince optioned the rights to both and began work on this unique project. He collaborated with librettist Joe Masteroff, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb and decided to direct himself, as well as produce. Cabaret had a distinct evocative world. The team specifically structured the piece such that plot-driven scenes of dialogue and song were alternated with musical numbers being performed in the rundown Kit Kat Klub. These numbers simultaneously served to comment on the story. Since the action took place during the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, the effect was fresh and sometimes disconcerting – as when a group of waiters sang “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” It was as if a delicate melody had transformed into a chilling Nazi anthem. Joel Grey’s androgynous Emcee, leering gleefully in gruesome white makeup, initially a tacky embodiment of Weimar decadence, gradually revealed himself to be a personification of Nazi bigotry. After the giddy “Willkommen” (which ended with a disturbing echo of goose-stepping feet), the story gradually descended into darkness and the Kit Kat Klub’s star vocalist desperately urged everyone to ignore reality and pretend that “life is a cabaret.” Scenic designer Boris Aronson inventively positioned a mirror above the audience’s heads so they would have to take a hard look at themselves before and after the musical. Using the mirror as metaphor, the show forced people to look inward at their choices in life: What would you do in this situation? What would you do if you were me? Audiences responded to Cabaret’s dark honesty. It won the Tony Award® for Best Musical and enjoyed a 1,165-performance run. After starring in the 1972 film version directed by Bob Fosse, Grey became one of only three musical stars to date to win a Tony® and an Academy Award for the same role. Acclaimed revivals in London and New York have proven the ongoing appeal of this unsettling masterpiece.Cabaret opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on November 20, 1966.Winner of 8 Tony Awards® in 1967.

Harold S. Prince

If the bulbs that light up Broadway represented those who have created it, none may shine quite brightly as Harold “Hal” Prince. With an affection for provocative subjects, an all-star list of collaborators, a career spanning over five decades, and numerous and profound contributions to the musical theatre canon, Hal Prince remains a luminary of the American theatre. Prince began his career as an assistant stage manager to Broadway veteran George Abbott, a prolific writer-director-producer whose 70-year career included well over 100 productions. Prince’s early successes and first Tony Awards came from producing shows that Abbott had written and/or directed: The Pajama Game (1954); Damn Yankees (1955); Fiorello! (1959); and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). Prince soon expanded his circle of collaborators, and from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, he worked with legendary teams to create and produce some of the most iconic and most beloved shows in the musical theatre canon: in 1957, West Side Story with Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim; in 1963, Fiddler on the Roof with Jerome Robbins, Joseph Stein and Bock & Harnick; in 1966, Cabaret with Kander & Ebb, for which Prince won his first Tony Award for direction. Though Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim had collaborated on two Broadway shows prior to the 1970s (West Side Story, A Funny Thing…), their intense and fruitful partnership and their creative trailblazing in this decade resulted in an extraordinary artistic innovation and a slew of sophisticated, provocative new works: Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Merrily We Roll Along (1981). Hal Prince and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s collaboration on Evita (1979) was only a precursor to the unbridled success they would come to enjoy with audience- adored The Phantom of the Opera (1988). Throughout the remainder of his career, Prince furthered his legacy of tackling provocative subjects — fascism, for example, in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993), told through the story of imprisonment of a leftist revolutionary and gay addict; and moral blindness and anti-semitism in Parade (1998), told through the story of a lynching in American South. He also returned to an early American musical landmark in his 1994 production of Show Boat. His final work was Prince of Broadway (2017) which celebrated his life and many contributions to the American stage.

HAIR

Although rock ‘n’ roll was dominating the charts, many in the Broadway establishment insisted that ear-splitting popular music could never work in the dramatic context of a musical. Set to prove them wrong, HAIR co-creators James Rado and Gerome Ragni began writing the book and lyrics for the show in 1964. With the addition of Galt MacDermot’s music, they kept the volume up and called their collection of songs a “happening” and their cast a “tribe.” On October 17, 1967, HAIR premiered as the inaugural production of Joseph Papp’s new Public Theater off-Broadway. The show then moved uptown for a short run at the Cheetah nightclub on Broadway and West 53rd Street. Finally, with a new director, cast, and a radically-revised script that included thirteen new songs, the show moved to Broadway in 1968.The loosely structured plot centered around a draftee who must choose between staying with his counterculture tribe of hippies and going off to fight in Vietnam. The essence of HAIR was rebellion – against social, political, and theatrical norms – and reflected the unrest and upheaval that the creators were witnessing all around them. For Broadway, the emotional first act finale added a brief moment with the entire cast nude on stage. The show also proudly featured sexually and racially-charged lyrics that were meant to provoke and challenge an older, more traditional generation of theatregoers, and inspire younger, newer ones. At the time, the nude scene, profanity, embodiment of the sexual revolution, and incorporation of the American flag as an onstage prop drew protests wherever the show performed.HAIR quickly wove itself into the cultural fabric of the country with its message of peace and love. It became an international sensation with more than a dozen sit-down productions running simultaneously in the United States. Touring and international versions also sprouted during the first few years of its Broadway run, typically translated into the language of each country – a relatively new concept at the time. Thousands of recordings have been made from the Grammy Award-winning score, including “Aquarius” and “Let The Sun Shine In,” which put Broadway back on the pop charts with covers by The Fifth Dimension and Diana Ross & The Supremes, and became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement. The song “Air” also proved to be one of the earliest voices for ecological and environmental awareness in the music world.Beyond its popular success, the legacy of HAIR is perhaps its greatest achievement. As its first true “rock musical,” HAIR expanded the way Broadway could “sound,” paving the way for subsequent classics such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, and many more. HAIR was a mirror, and sometimes critique, of prevailing politics and mainstream morality. It further proved that a Broadway musical could be a powerful form of free speech and protest, capable of both depicting the world and changing it. HAIR opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on April 29, 1968. Live stage performing rights to HAIR are represented by Concord Theatricals.

1968 - 1970

Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim was the most accomplished and revered writer of the American musical theatre over the last half-century. He collaborated on more than a dozen landmark shows and was a singularly influential force in bringing the Broadway musical into the modern age.Sondheim’s works are as original as they are ambitious. He wrote the lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965); he wrote music and lyrics for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Into the Woods (1987), and Passion (1994), all of which ran on Broadway. Three other shows — Saturday Night (1997), The Frogs (1974) and Assassins (1990) — ran off-Broadway.Lauded for his originality, wit and the sophistication and complexity of his work, Sondheim reinvigorated and reinvented the form of musical theatre. Like his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II, he left an indelible legacy of craft, collaboration and mentorship. Among his many awards, Sondheim received 8 Tonys®, 15 Drama Desk Awards, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Pulitzer Prize. The Broadway theatre formerly known as Henry Miller’s Theatre was renamed The Stephen Sondheim Theatre in 2010.

Bob Fosse

Bob Fosse, born Robert Louis Fosse, was an American choreographer, dancer, and director. Best known for his distinct style of dance, he provocatively revolutionized musicals through his signature moves and choice of introspective materials. Fosse was inspired by vaudeville, but his talents gave him a successful career in theater, film, and television. Fosse began dancing professionally at 13, later making his Broadway debut in Dance Me a Song (1950). He appeared in television shows, making his film debut in The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), Kiss Me Kate (1953), and Give a Girl a Break (1953). He returned to Broadway, making his choreography debut in The Pajama Game (1954) which earned him his first Tony award nomination and win. His distinct choreography style includes “jazz hands,” turned-in knees, and small, controlled movements. Fosse was nominated each consecutive year for his choreography contributions in Damn Yankees (1956), Bells are Ringing (1957), New Girl in Town (1958), and Redhead (1959). Fosse was revered and celebrated for his ambition to contribute his dark, humorous, directorial touch as well as his choreography to his production of Little Me (1963). After this success, it launched the golden age of his career, leading to his direction and choreography contributions in Sweet Charity (1966), Pippin (1973), Chicago (1976), Dancin’ (1978), and Big Deal (1986). Fosse notably won 9 Tony Awards, 4 Drama Desk Awards, an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, Palme d’Or from Cannes Film Festival, and 3 Primetime Emmy Awards for his work with Liza Minelli on her television special Liza with a Z (1973). Among the impressive colleagues whom Fosse surrounded himself with were Ann Reinking and his wife, Gwen Verdon. These extraordinary women helped to preserve Fosse’s style after his death and assisted to uphold his legacy through artistic consultancy and the recreation of his choreography in revivals of his shows.

Company

Nowadays, it’s not hard to understand why the mention of legendary composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim is often followed by the name of the equally legendary Hal Prince, and vice versa. Prince produced the original Broadway production of West Side Story for which Sondheim provided lyrics, as well as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sondheim’s first Broadway musical as both composer and lyricist. At this point, they had a business relationship as well as a close personal friendship. Yet it was only when Sondheim asked Prince to take a look at a series of one-act plays written by Sondheim’s friend the playwright George Furth that a groundbreaking artistic collaboration began.In reviewing the Furth plays, Prince remarked “There’s a musical here. Three of your seven plays are involved with marriage and the complexity of that interpersonal relationship — how people get through it and how they come out ahead because they commit themselves to it. I think that’s worth examining.” And thus, Company was born.Instead of its story unfolding as a linear narrative involving successive and typically chronological cause-and-effect incidents, Company was plotless, exploring a theme and a psyche. It was brilliantly conceived and exceptionally well-crafted. In fact, shows of this nonlinear nature came to be called “concept musicals.” Company, in particular, might have been more appropriately branded a “narrative revue,” but its official label remains a musical comedy.For Company, Sondheim and Prince created a series of vignettes based on the Furth plays showcasing the relationships of fivemarried couples, all observed by a lead character named Bobby, their single friend who is about to celebrate his 35th birthday.Witnessing the trials and tribulations, dysfunction and eccentricities of his married friends, heightened by the occasion of a momentous birthday, Bobby is forced to finally confront his fear of romantic intimacy and commitment. The musical was set in present-day Manhattan — “a city of strangers” in Sondheim’s words — and Boris Aronson’s contemporary metal scenic design, which included a functioning apartment-style elevator, reflected the cramped, sometimes cold, always busy urban jungle that isNew York City. Company was a bracing dose of realism, up close and personal. From the oft-divorced Joanne’s vitriolic salute to “The Ladies Who Lunch” to Bobby’s plea for someone to help him face “Being Alive,” upper-middle class theatregoers, the backbone of Broadway’s core audience at the time, were confronted with characters they likely knew well. Though there was much humor in its presentation of modern marriage, Company was also a relevant, frank, even painful look at modern life. The boundaries of the Broadway musical had been broken and the fruits of Sondheim and Prince’s labors together would continue to prove that spectacularly in thedecade to come.Company opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on April 26, 1970.Winner of 6 Tony Awards® in 1971.

1970 - 1975

MUSICALS | In the early 1970s, as Broadway settled into a prolonged period of discord and disarray, the new musicals that emerged were largely characterized by what many contemporary critics and creatives referred to as “amateurism,” exhibiting a general deficiency in craft, construction, and theatrical composition. Pop and rock music permeated the likes of Dude, Jesus Christ Superstar, Pippin, and Via Galactica. The Black experience was given new voice in Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death and Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. Social and political winds blew through the center of Inner City, The Lieutenant, and The Me Nobody Knows. And “camp” (i.e. artificial, affected, and exaggerated performance) streaked across the Main Stem in cult favorites like Rachael Lily Rosenbloom and The Rocky Horror Show. Hugh Wheeler, Stephen Sondheim, and Harold Prince, meanwhile, brought to Broadway a refreshingly sophisticated musical comedy in A Little Night Music. And, as nostalgia began to infiltrate every facet of American life, revivals surged, becoming an integral and permanent part of the theatrical landscape. The 1925 musical comedy No, No, Nanette was perhaps the production most instrumental in igniting the new trend, opening on January 19, 1971 and running a total of 861 performances. It was immediately followed by the likes of Candide, Good News, Gypsy, and Irene, a modern Cinderella story that proved both popular and pioneering when it premiered in 1919. The revamped version was headlined by Debbie Reynolds.PLAYS | While major European works like Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth and Peter Shaffer’s Equus continued to stream across the Atlantic, Joseph Papp’s Public Theater became one of the leading dramatic forces on the Broadway stage. In addition to its successful transfers of David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones and Jason Miller’s That Championship Season, the celebrated downtown institution briefly assumed control of Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre, presenting such works as Hugh Leonard’s The Au Pair Man, Bill Gunn’s Black Picture Show, and Ron Milner’s What the Wine-Sellers Buy. Elsewhere, Neil Simon continued his comic reign with The Prisoner of Second Avenue and The Sunshine Boys and Edward Albee turned out his latest masterwork in Seascape.

The Wiz

Since L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was first published in 1900, it has been translated into nearly every major language and gained a worldwide following. It has also undergone countless adaptations: in the first half of the 20th century, it was the basis for a successful stage musical by L. Frank Baum, three different silent films, and, of course, the 1939 MGM classic starring icon Judy Garland. Since then, it’s continued to inspire many works for the stage and screen — but none, perhaps, has been as distinct and joyful as The Wiz.In the hands of a Juilliard-educated musical prodigy named Charlie Smalls, America’s greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale was re-animated with the sounds of Motown, funk, gospel, soul, and rhythm and blues. With the help of superb orchestrator-arranger Harold Wheeler, the fun and funky score attracted mainstream success, and The Wiz became a glowing expression of the contemporary Black culture in the mid-1970s.Had it not been for the determination of its creators, The Wiz might never have happened. Prior to the show’s Broadway run, the production faced seemingly insurmountable hurdles behind-the-scenes: actors and the original director were replaced, the show received poor reviews out of town, and the production was in financial trouble. On the opening night on Broadway, producer Ken Harper was already readying the production’s closing notice — but then The Wiz received a standing ovation with four curtain calls. Determined to keep the show open, Harper and the production team snapped into action: press agents blitzed reporters, talent coordinators, and columnists, exchanging free tickets for press; Harper and the creative team deferred their pay so the production had more cash on hand, and he secured more money for advertising from the musical’s backer, Twentieth Century Fox; finally, the production rolled out a television commercial featuring the tuneful hit “Ease on Down the Road”, which was played 101 times in a two-week period, ensuring that nearly all local households saw the spot many, many times. Within two weeks of the commercial, sales doubled. The press campaign was tireless, but in the end, it gave this musical its “Brand New Day” — The Wiz was selling out and went on to win seven Tony Awards®, including Best Musical.The Wiz welcomed audiences of all backgrounds: traditional theatregoers appreciated the nostalgia of a familiar and beloved storyline; Black audiences connected to the contemporary vernacular and celebrated the success of a large-scale, big-budget production led by a Black company; audiences who did not traditionally see theatre enjoyed the cutting-edge, contemporary music; mass audiences responded to the universal and inspiring messages. Even the sophisticated, elite New York intelligentsia confessed affection for the show: of shows he did not write, Stephen Sondheim confessed that The Wiz was his favorite show, because “it’s the one show which makes you feel better when you come out of it than you did when you walked in.”The Wiz opened at the Majestic Theatre on January 5, 1975.Winner of 7 Tony Awards® in 1975.

A Chorus Line

In January 1974, dancers Michon Peacock and Tony Stevens invited Michael Bennett and some of their veteran Broadway colleagues to gather in a studio and share their collective industry experiences around a tape recorder. The interviews began in a circle, with each dancer stating their name, where they were born and why they started dancing. As the evening continued, the stories grew and covered many topics, from childhood traumas to insecurities, sexuality and more. Armed with edited excerpts of the recorded sessions, Bennett, who was already a two-time Tony® winner, told Public Theater founder Joseph Papp that he wanted to turn the tapes into a musical. Papp offered Bennett a small budget and an empty off-Broadway theater in which to “workshop” this material. At the time, the very concept of a workshop to develop a Broadway musical was almost unheard of. After A Chorus Line became a smash hit of epic proportions and the longest-running musical of all time (and, to this day, the 7th longest), workshopping would become the norm. The first workshop took place on August 4, 1974. Featuring a unique narrative structure, the piece was a documentary of sorts, grounded in first-hand accounts, experienced in real time, and performed on an almost-bare stage, delivering fully realized and deeply moving characters. It was a poignant meditation on the struggle to stand out while also fitting in. And the innovation did not stop there. In the ever-evolving world of theatre technology, A Chorus Line was the first Broadway production to utilize a computerized lighting board. This allowed lighting designer Tharon Musser to both create more than 100 lighting cues, which would have otherwise proved impossible to execute on a manual board, and, more importantly, to ensure that her designs were realized identically and flawlessly every night.Also worthy of note is the riveting monologue written for Sammy Williams’ character, Paul, based largely on the real-life experience of co-book writer Nicholas Dante. Arriving just before the suspenseful ending of the show, the scene was a long-overdue and powerful affirmation that Broadway would finally begin to truly see members of the gay community as protagonists in their own stories. As Frank Rich eloquently stated, “For a generation of theatre people and theatregoers, A Chorus Line was and is the touchstone that defines the glittering promise, more often realized in legend than in reality, of the Broadway theatre.”A Chorus Line opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on July 25, 1975.Winner of 9 Tony Awards® in 1976.Live stage performing rights to A Chorus Line are represented by Concord Theatricals.

1975 - 1978

MUSICALS | In the space of three dispiriting years, during which time disco dominated the airwaves and Studio 54 became New York’s hottest destination, Broadway was beset by a string of legendary flops, including Home Sweet Homer, Rockabye Hamlet, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a presidential affair by Alan Jay Lerner and Leonard Bernstein that lasted only seven performances. I Love My Wife emerged as a fresh, contemporary comedy; Annie emerged as a family-friendly phenomenon; and Your Arms Too Short to Box with God emerged as a roof-raising gospel celebration. The popular Black musical, based on the Book of Matthew, was conceived and directed by Vinnette Carroll, who premiered the piece at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. Revivals, meanwhile, continued to flood the Main Stem. Pacific Overtures sent John Weidman, Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler, and Harold Prince to the Far East. And, Bubbling Brown Sugar, Dancin’, A Musical Jubilee, and Side By Side By Sondheim were among the new works to demonstrably alter the meaning of “revue.” Once a singular, distinctive form of legitimate stage entertainment, “revue,” by the 1970s, had become a nondescript catchall applied to anthologies, retrospectives, concerts, and song-and-dance displays. One of the decade’s earliest and most influential offerings of the sort was Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, a contemporary cabaret favorite that moved to Broadway in 1972 following a four-year run downtown at the Village Gate.PLAYS | In addition to the auspicious playwrighting debuts of Michael Cristofer, Albert Innaurato, and David Mamet, Broadway witnessed over the course of the mid-1970s a hodgepodge of nonmusical offerings, from Neil Simon’s Chapter Two and Tom Stoppard’s Travesties to William Luce’s The Belle of Amherst and Simon Gray’s Otherwise Engaged. One of the most prominent, however, was Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman’s The Royal Family, a 1927 classic which received a starry revival under the direction of Ellis Rabb.

Annie

Economic obstacles, energy crises, and political scandals burdened Americans throughout the 1970s: the Vietnam War carried on, the Watergate scandal had broken, and New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1972, in the midst of this cultural malaise, director and lyricist Martin Charnin approached playwright Thomas Meehan and composer Charles Strouse about writing a musical. After a pre-Broadway tryout at the historic Goodspeed Opera House in April of 1976, a plucky, red-headed orphan named Annie belted out a cheery reminder to the disillusioned audiences: “The sun’ll come out tomorrow.” Annie’s virtue and optimism struck a chord with audiences who flocked to it — on Broadway, on numerous national tours, in international productions, and who still do in the 700 to 900 productions estimated to take place each year in towns and cities across America.Annie opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on April 21, 1977.Winner of 7 Tony Awards® in 1977.

Aint Misbehavin'

Despite the launch of the TKTS booth and an “I Love NY” campaign, the seediness of Times Square in the 1970s was keeping audiences away. However, further north a cabaret venue was packing them in. A sensational new musical tribute to African-American pianist and composer Thomas “Fats” Waller had taken New York City by storm.Featuring five ferociously talented Black performers, a piano, and utilizing more than two dozen jazz-infused airs from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s that the rotund entertainer had either written or performed, Ain’t Misbehavin’ was an intimate, exuberant, swinging affair that rode on the wings of the public’s penchant for nostalgia and the contemporaneous resurgence of Black entertainment. Presented as a non-stop series of songs, the joyous and neatly organized revue was wonderfully successful at capturing the oversized personality of Waller and the spirit of the times in which he lived.Within a mere three months, the infectiously energetic show moved from Manhattan Theatre Club’s East 73rd Street cabaret to Broadway. The New York Times raved, audiences flocked, and Nell Carter was a newly anointed star. Ain’t Misbehavin’ proved so popular that the Shubert Organization moved the show from the Longacre Theatre to the Plymouth Theatre less than a year into its run, and then to the Belasco Theatre two years later, where it closed after almost four years and winning three Tony Awards®, including Best Musical in 1978. Meanwhile, within 18 months of the show’s opening in New York, three touring companies were simultaneously criss-crossing the United States, while André De Shields and Charlayne Woodard from the show’s original Broadway cast headlined the London premiere as well.Incidentally, Ain’t Misbehavin’ was one of the decade’s several new works to be built around pre-existing songs. Though the practice had been put to use previously from time to time, it surged in the 1970s and would continue to pick up steam. By the 21st century, shows that sported pre-existing songs would come to be known as “Jukebox Musicals” – especially those shows with pop and rock songs from the 1950s and later. Whether it’s original stories set to pre-existing music by one author (Mamma Mia!) or multiple authors (Rock of Ages, Moulin Rouge!), musical biographies documenting the life story of a songwriter or performing group using his/her/their music (Beautiful: The Carole King Story, Fela!) or direct descendants of Ain’t Misbehavin’ such as Smokey Joe’s Café and After Midnight, it seems Broadway audiences will forever be delighted to hear their favorite music performed in new, imaginative, and engaging ways. Ain’t Misbehavin’ opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theater on May 9, 1978.Winner of 3 Tony Awards® in 1978.

1978 - 1983

MUSICALS | In five years of significant social and cultural shifts that saw the emergence of the AIDS crisis and the launch of MTV: Music Television, the overall Broadway outlook remained bleak – even as the storied street actively cultivated a younger audience. (Broadway reportedly began the 1970s with more than half of its theatregoers over the age of 35 and ended the decade with more than half under the same age.) On the musical stage, in particular, Cats, Evita, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat helped to ignite a new wave of blockbuster British imports which collectively offset the era’s lackluster list of homegrown products. Among the most successful of domestic diversions were Dreamgirls, Sophisticated Ladies, and They’re Playing Our Song, which played more than one thousand performances with a principal cast of two. Lauren Bacall headlined Woman of the Year. Ann Miller and Mickey Rooney headlined Sugar Babies. Gene Barry and George Hearn headlined La Cage aux Folles. Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim collaborated on their final two Main Stem musicals. Tommy Tune emerged as a major new creative force with four back-to-back hits. And, in a tragic turn of events, 42nd Street opened on the same day that its legendary director and choreographer Gower Champion died.PLAYS | Though the late 1970s and early 1980s brought forth a handful of popular new plays from both emerging and established playwrights, including Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart, Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”...and the Boys, and Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, the biggest dramatic event of this precarious five-year period was perhaps The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, an eight-and-a-half-hour epic based on the novel by Charles Dickens and helmed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn. It was initially unveiled in London under the auspices of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Elsewhere, in addition to the legendary production of Arthur Bicknell’s Moose Murders, Broadway welcomed a spate of star-studded revivals such as Othello, with James Earl Jones, Christopher Plummer, and Dianne Wiest, and Private Lives, with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

La Cage Aux Folles

While creative teams and casts had showcased the work LGBTQ artists for decades, if not centuries, many were not yet “out”, and Broadway musicals had rarely featured openly gay characters except primarily as caricatures and/or comic relief. But composer Jerry Herman, book writer Harvey Fierstein, and director Arthur Laurents decided to change that. For the first time on Broadway, a musical celebrated love, marriage and children as universally human themes, regardless of sexual orientation. And straight audiences of all ages, genders, religions, races, and ethnicities embraced and loved it. What Fierstein originally wrote as a monologue for Albin at the end of Act I – “I’m too old to put up with this. I’ve worked too hard, I have fought too hard, so that at last no matter what the world calls me, I can stand before you and say, I don’t care, I am what I am, and you will never take that away from me.” – was transformed by Herman into the showstopping hit song, “I Am What I Am”, a rallying cry and anthem that has been sung with pride all around the world ever since. Tragically, La Cage aux Folles also coincided with the very time that the AIDS epidemic was decimating the Broadway community. Celebrated and promising talents were suddenly falling ill and dying, most in the prime of their creative lives. Here too, La Cage helped blaze a trail. In the spring of 1984, cast members were the headline performers in one of the first charity evenings to raise consciousness and funds for people suffering from the disease. Soon afterward, the surge of concern in the theatrical community led to the creation of two charitable organizations, Broadway Cares and Equity Fights AIDS. La Cage aux Folles opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on August 21, 1983. Winner of 6 Tony Awards® in 1984. Live stage performing rights to La Cage aux Folles are represented by Concord Theatricals.

The Public

While The Public Theater is not a Broadway theatre, its culture of originality and accessibility, and its legacy of transferring shows “uptown” to Broadway, make it a driving and influential force in New York’s off-Broadway theatre.Joseph Papp founded the “Shakespeare Workshop” in 1954 and brought Shakespeare to venues around the city. In 1962 he began mounting summer productions in Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. Papp’s vision, aside from producing Shakespeare, was to discover and promote contemporary, socially relevant work by up-and-coming playwrights. In 1967, The Public unveiled its permanent location in the former Astor Library on Lafayette Street with a premiere — the original, off-Broadway production of HAIR, the success of which established the “downtown” institution as a wellspring of timely and trailblazing new works.One year later, with the successful Broadway run of HAIR, The Public established its pipeline to Broadway, sending more than fifty productions “uptown,” including plays by David Rabe, Ntozake Shange, Danai Gurira, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and groundbreaking musicals like A Chorus Line, Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk, Fun Home, and Hamilton.

Cats

What do Oxford-educated, Nobel Prize-winning Modernist poet T.S. Eliot and theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber have in common? Cats, of course!For nearly a decade, throughout the 1930s, T.S. Eliot sent humorous, frivolous poems (known as light verse) in letters to his godchildren, which he subsequentlypublished as “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Nearly four decades later, in 1978, Andrew Lloyd Webber began setting the poems to music.Producer Cameron Mackintosh paired Lloyd Webber with choreographer Gillian Lynne, and their discussions led to bringing on Director Trevor Nunn to help develop and expand the work into a full-fledged musical. In 1981, CATS was born in London. A cast of lithe, nimble dancers clawed, pranced, and danced to the eclectic score, on an oversized “junkyard” set and in fur-filled costumes by John Napier.CATS was unlike anything London or Broadway had seen before. The production marked the first professional collaboration between Lloyd Webber and Mackintosh, ushering in the age of the “mega-musicals” that would become their legacies, and would be enjoyed and celebrated by generations of theatregoers.CATS opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on October 7, 1982.Winner of 7 Tony Awards® in 1983.

The AIDS Epidemic / Angels in America*

“You would go into rehearsal and before you could get to previews, friends, colleagues and coworkers would have disappeared. People became sick and landed in the hospital. Some would come out, many more would not.” - AnonymousAs the AIDS epidemic decimated the theatre community in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Broadway community came together to turn anger and sorrow into action: the organizations Broadway Cares and Equity Fights AIDS were created, and in 1992 they combined into one organization.One of organizations earliest initiatives was to create a symbol that would reflect the Broadway and New York City theatre community’s mourning, as well as their support of those living with AIDS: a quilt composed of handcrafted, 8-inch squares of fabric in a variety of colors, textures, and layers — reflecting the communities various identities and experiences — became a lasting tribute. In 1991, the completed quilt was unveiled.Today, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is the philanthropic heart of Broadway. A fundraising and grant-making organization raising and awarding millions of dollars each year, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS helps ensure all within the theatre community and beyond still affected by HIV/AIDS or facing other debilitating illness and life crises are embraced and receive medication, nutritious meals, health care and emergency assistance.Because of the extraordinary goodwill of theatre professionals on Broadway and beyond, coupled with the generosity of audiences, donors, and beloved fans, a phrase coined in Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS’ earliest days has become a promise kept still today: “What we do together makes a difference.

1983 - 1988

MUSICALS | Though the mid-1980s continued to be dominated by big budget British imports like Les Misérables and Starlight Express, both of which opened on Broadway in the same week, one of the most surprising and influential productions of the period was Claudio Segovia and Héctor Orezzoli’s Tango Argentino, an unusually theatrical evening of dance that essayed 100 years of tango history. Following a sold-out engagement at New York City Center, the international sensation transfixed audiences at the Mark Hellinger Theatre for more than five months and helped to ignite a contemporaneous Spanish and Latin American dance craze that eventually brought to Broadway the likes of Flamenco Puro (1986), Tango Pasion (1993), and the Graciela Daniele dance dramas Dangerous Games (1989) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1995). Elsewhere, in the mid-1980s, James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim joined forces for Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods; Grind, Rags, Roza, and Smile led a lengthy list of high profile flops; Shirley Bassey, Barbara Cook, and Patti LaBelle led a similarly lengthy list of special events; and, on September 29, 1983, A Chorus Line was christened the longest running musical in Broadway history.PLAYS | In addition to its own share of European products such as Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money, the dramatic stage witnessed a handful of major new American works in the mid-1980s. Among the most prominent were Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, August Wilson’s Fences, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and David Rabe’s Hurlyburly. Some of the biggest theatrical fireworks, however, were generated by an eclectic roster of revivals, including Death of a Salesman, Heartbreak House, and The House of Blue Leaves, a Lincoln Center Theatre production that marked the auspicious directorial debut of Jerry Zaks.

Sunday in the Park with George

Stephen Sondheim pondered quitting the theatre business after the failure of Merrily We Roll Along (1981), but author-director James Lapine was able to lure him back for Sunday in the Park with George (1984). The first act, set in the 1880s, imagined the making of the Georges Seurat masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Each of the characters in the story, apart from the artist himself, brought to life a figure pictured in the painting. Thesecond act, set in the 1980s, introduced Seurat’s fictional grandson – also an artist – as he struggles to find inspiration, remain relevant, and innovate, without relinquishing all of his humanity. The music emulated Seurat’s pointillistic style, the lyrics a series of colors or dots frantically painted on canvas. Taken together, the two acts of Sunday in the Park with George offer a one-of-a-kind look at thecomplicated intersection of art, commerce, and self. The musical began its journey off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters and famously adding Act II during its run. By 1985 it took home the Pulitzer Prize.Sunday in the Park with George opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on May 2, 1984.Winner of 2 Tony Awards® in 1984.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber has composed the scores of some of the world’s most famous musicals. From Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1969) to Bad Cinderella (2023). He has had shows continually running in London’s West End for 50 years and on Broadway for 43. When Sunset Boulevard joined School of Rock, CATS, and The Phantom of the Opera he equaled Rodgers & Hammerstein’s record of four shows running simultaneously on Broadway. He is one of the select group of artists with EGOT status, having received Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards®.Andrew Lloyd Webber arrived on Broadway in 1971. With lyrics by Tim Rice, Jesus Christ Superstar opened on October 12th, followed in 1979 by Evita. Evita was the first British musical to receivethe Tony Award® for Best Musical. Since Evita, Lloyd Webber has had a show continually runningin a Broadway theatre. In September 1982, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat opened at the Royale Theatre and on October 7, 1982, CATS arrived at the Winter Garden. In1997, CATS became Broadway’s longest running show. A record broken – and now held by – The Phantom of the Opera. As it announces its closure on Broadway in 2023, Phantom has been seenby 19.5 million people. It has been the largest single generator of income and jobs in Broadwayand U.S. theatrical history. Bad Cinderella will open at the Imperial Theatre in February 2023.With the American Theatre Wing, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Initiative provides support to help young people fall in love with, and build careers in, theatre. In 2018, Lloyd Webber was given a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award®. In London’s West End, Lloyd Webber owns six theatres including the iconic London Palladium and Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In July 2021, he completed a £60 million restoration of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, one of the biggest projectsever undertaken by a private theatre owner in recent times. Lloyd Webber’s mantra is that every penny of profit made from his theatres is ploughed back into the buildings. Knighted in 1992, Andrew Lloyd Webber was created an honorary member of the House of Lords in the UK Parliament in 1997, from which he resigned in 2017.

Cameron Mackintosh

When eight-year-old Londoner Cameron Mackintosh saw a West End musical called Salad Days, he knew he wanted to produce theatre — but no one could have known that boy would one day transform the landscape of professional theatre around the world.With a string of mega-hits during the 1980s and 1990s, it is no wonder that The New York Times dubbed Cameron Mackintosh “the most successful, influential, and powerful theatre producer in the world.” While his enormous, spectacular productions originate in the West End theatres of London, his hits have attracted audiences to Broadway for decades, and for decades-long runs: CATS, with 7,485 performances over nearly 18 years; Les Misérables, with 6,680 performances over more than 16 years; Miss Saigon, with 4,092 performances over nearly 10 years; The Phantom of the Opera, with nearly 14,000 performances over 35 years. Cameron’s other original New York productions have included Little Shop of Horrors, Oliver!, Song and Dance, Five Guys Named Moe, Putting It Together, Mary Poppins (co-produced with Disney), as well as critically acclaimed revivals of Carousel and Oklahoma!.With his innovations in branding and marketing, shrewd business acumen, and innovative production strategy — concurrently mounting and touring productionsin multiple markets on multiple continents — Cameron Mackintosh has transformed his most popular musicals into worldwide phenomena.Cameron was knighted in the 1996 New Year’s Honours for his services to British theatre and he is the first British producer to be elected to Broadway’s Theater Hall of Fame.

The Phantom of the Opera

Andrew Lloyd Webber was already an internationally-recognized, award-winning composer with hits such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and CATS when, in 1984 he, with producer Cameron Mackintosh, turned his attention to Gaston Leroux’s story of a mysterious masked man who roams the Paris Opera House, pining for the love of a young soprano and murdering anyone who stands in his way. The Phantom of the Opera is a global phenomenon. It is Broadway’s longest running musical and, to date, has been performed in 183 cities around the world in 17 languages. It has played continuously both in London and on Broadway for over 35 years. What’s the secret to its success? Is it Gillian Lynne’s choreography married with the masterful direction of Hal Prince? Is it designer Maria Björnson’s dazzling array of more than 200 ornate costumes or the iconic crystal chandelier that rises and thrillingly falls each night above the audience? Or is it simply the public’s abiding desire to be swept away in a timeless tale of romance, love, obsession, betrayal and redemption? It could be any of these elements but, for many, it is the timeless Lloyd Webber score which has sold over 40 million albums and been streamed over one billion times, that makes The Phantom of the Opera such a classic.Whatever the unique spell that The Phantom of the Opera has cast over hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than three decades, its artistry is undeniable, its longevity remarkable, and its place in the pantheon of greatest hit Broadway musicals eternal. The Phantom of the Opera opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre on January 26, 1988.Winner of 7 Tony Awards® in 1988.

1988 - 1996

MUSICALS | In a period of reckoning that produced such infamous flops as The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, Carrie, Legs Diamond, and Welcome to the Club, Broadway bid adieu to the majority of its last remaining voices from the middle of the 20th century – a group of towering individuals like Larry Gelbart, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, and Jule Styne, all four of whom wrote what would be their final new musical to reach the Main Stem. The new crop of Broadway creatives included Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, and George C. Wolfe, a masterful writer and director who made his highly anticipated debut with a landmark musical about the life of jazz great Jelly Roll Morton. Elsewhere, though the rush of revivals continued at a breakneck pace, the flood of hot ticket British imports began to slow considerably, with Blood Brothers, Five Guys Named Moe, Miss Saigon, and Sunset Boulevard collectively heralding the unofficial end of an era. Meanwhile, Sarafina! arrived from South Africa; Metro arrived from Poland; and Cyrano arrived from the Netherlands. Beauty and the Beast marked Disney’s first official foray onto the Broadway stage. The Secret Garden became one of the few shows written entirely by women. And, in 1993, The Who’s Tommy emerged as an electrifying new rock musical, providing a visual and aural jolt to an erratic Rialto.PLAYS | The late 1980s and early 1990s proved to be a particularly fruitful period for new plays on Broadway. Among the most prominent were those penned by emerging playwrights making their Main Stem debut, including Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Richard Greenberg’s Eastern Standard, Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, Robert Schenkkan’s The Kentucky Cycle, David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, and Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss. Established authors, too, made major contributions to the contemporary scene, with August Wilson alone delivering Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, and Two Trains Running, each of which represented a new installment in the famed playwright’s soaring ten-part survey of African-American life in the 20th century. The list of new solo shows included Spalding Gray’s Gray’s Anatomy, Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine, and Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Two of the era’s most unique offerings, however, belonged to Bill Irwin, who thrilled Broadway audiences with Largely New York and Fool Moon, a pair of vaudeville flavored entertainments infused with pantomime and clowning. The latter was created in collaboration with David Shiner.

BRiNg iN Da'NOiSE, BRiNg iN Da'FuNK

An exhilarating revue that explored Black history through the use of poetry, song, tap dance, and percussion, Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk electrified Broadway audiences for nearly three years at the Ambassador Theatre. It featured a cast of nine Black performers and unfolded in six parts across two powerful acts, tracing the beat of Black culture in America from the first slave ships of the 1600s to the city streets of present day.The idea for the piece was hatched at The Public Theater when artistic director George C. Wolfe asked tap dance great Savion Glover what he might be interested to do at the downtown institution. Glover replied, “I want to bring in ‘da noise, I want to bring in ‘da funk.” In conceiving and directing the musical, Wolfe positioned Glover as “a living repository of rhythm” and engaged as one of his collaborators Reg E. Gaines. As a playwright and poet, Gaines had been developing in his work a rap-influenced, percussive approach that complemented Glover’s heavy, highly percussive style of dance, often called “rhythm tap.” The remainder of the writing team consisted of Ann Duquesnay, Zane Mark, and Daryl Waters, all of whom were Black.Tap dancing is visual, but it is also aural. It is sound and music. It had been seen and heard on Broadway for decades, including individual performances by Black hoofers like Peg Leg Bates, Jeni Le Gon, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. In Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk, the form became the primary language of storytelling, the embodiment of Black identity, and the leading instrument of emotion – or, as Wolfe saw it, “a source of delight, intensity, rage, or power.” It was further complemented and comingled in the musical with the drumming of percussionists Jared Crawford and Raymond King on pots, pans, metal bars, buckets, and other objects. Added into the mix were musical modes ranging from blues and jazz to gospel and rap. The result was a highly theatrical human history that exploded with rhythm, music, and movement.“We didn’t want to bang people on the head with history,” Wolfe later explained, “but to explore what history truly is: an incredibly intimate phenomenon. History doesn’t happen to cultures. It doesn’t happen to races. It happens to people. I love the phenomenon of being an American because it’s not just my history — my history is right up there next to everybody else’s. People who are very different from me, even if we have violent connections — we complete each other’s story. I love the phenomenon of that. If you can leap past whatever psychological or historical obstacles that keep you from drinking from the nourishing and replenishing water of your history, you can do anything. You can defy any level of structure. When you fully claim your history, you can soar.”Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on April 25, 1996.Winner of 4 Tony Awards® in 1996.

RENT

A waiter by day at the Moondance Diner in SoHo and a gifted writer-composer by night, early morning, and any other available waking hour, Jonathan Larson spent years trying to get a show to Broadway without success. He was a devoted student of musical theatre and studied relentlessly. He had a rebellious, pioneering spirit, eager to push new boundaries. Larson dreamt of a new kind of Broadway: “My goal as a lyricist-composer is to take the best aspects of traditional American musicals (well-made plot, three-dimensional characters, sense of humor, and integrated choreography) and combine them with current themes, aesthetics, and music. I believe theatre should (and could) again be a source of pop music, which would attract a new audience. Generally, my music is contemporary, yet I take a more theatrically conservative approach with my lyrics. I’ve found it tricky – but not impossible – to advance the plot and theme lyrically, on top of a happening beat.”Larson found his answer in an idea initially conceived by playwright Billy Aronson: a rock opera loosely based on Puccini’s La Bohème. The time was now; the place the East Village. It spoke to a generation that had grown up on MTV and rock ‘n’ roll. Larson’s masterwork documented the lives of a group of artists struggling with modern day issues and surviving loss. Art imitated life as he feverishly wrote of the world around him. Larson captured the spirit of a generation on the page as many of his friends were becoming ill, living with and dying from HIV/AIDS. For so many, there was “no day but today.” New York Theatre Workshop took a chance on the young writer and in 1995, after so many years of scraping by, Jonathan Larson’s dreams were coming true. He quit the Moondance Diner to focus all of his time on Rent. The genius of Rent was such that it may already have been destined for greatness as it approached the opening of its first fully staged production off-Broadway in 1996. But, in a tragic twist, Larson unexpectedly died of an aortic aneurysm on the night of the final dress rehearsal. He would never see the rave reviews showered upon his creation, nor the Broadway transfer and 12-year run, nor the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, nor the worldwide phenomenon that Rent quickly became. Many of today’s most devoted theatregoers were the “Rentheads” who camped out for hours – even days – for rush tickets to see the original production, which for some was their first Broadway show. The show’s iconic Act II opener “Seasons of Love (525,600 Minutes)” remains an anthem for hope and survival.Rent was instrumental in fostering a new generation of theatre artists who continued to expand the languages and themes of the musical stage. Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights, Hamilton), credits Rent as “the show that made me go from admiring musicals, like the way you might admire a piece of art, to thinking I could make one too.”Rent opened on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996.Winner of 4 Tony Awards® in 1996.

1996 - 2001

MUSICALS | In the final days of the 20th century, Broadway spent a significant amount of time looking backwards. The musical stage, in particular, continued to witness a flood of revivals, reinventions, retrospectives, and revues, while major new works like Parade, Ragtime, and Titanic situated their respective stories in the distant past. High Society repurposed the catalogue of Cole Porter; Play On! repurposed the catalogue of Duke Ellington; and Contact repurposed the catalogues of Van Morrison, Robert Palmer, Giacomo Puccini, and more to create an exciting new spin on the episodic dance drama. Swan Lake found choreographer Matthew Bourne reimagining a 19th century classic; Aida found Tim Rice and Elton John traveling to Ancient Egypt; and Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and The Civil War found Billboard chart topper Frank Wildhorn with three pop-infused period pieces running on Broadway simultaneously. Meanwhile, on October 26, 2000, just one month after Cats ended its record-breaking run, lyricist-composer David Yazbek, director Jack O’Brien, and choreographer Jerry Mitchell brought a fresh, contemporary breeze to the musical comedy stage with The Full Monty.PLAYS | Despite such memorable new American plays as Dirty Blonde, Proof, Side Man, and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, the end of the 20th century was largely dominated by European imports. In addition to the six individual entries penned by prolific playwright David Hare, Broadway’s lengthy list of transatlantic transfers included Art, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Closer, Copenhagen, The Invention of Love, The Lonesome West, Stanley, and The Weir. (Some were seen in entirely new productions.) Revivals, too, made the popular journey overseas. And, in a fit of homegrown fun and laughter, crowd-pleasing comics Sandra Bernhard, John Leguizamo, Colin Quinn, and Jerry Seinfeld each planted their solo show on the Main Stem within the space of nine months.

The Lion King

The overwhelming popularity of Beauty and the Beast on Broadway in 1994 made it abundantly clear that there was an enthusiastic audience for more stage adaptations of Disney’s roster of hit animated films. The Lion King quickly made its way to the top of the list, but how would it be possible to depict a savannahs worth of animals while still preserving the human quality of the performers and the performances that are essential to a Broadway production? True to their decades-long legacy of imagination and innovation, Disney’s answer was an unexpected, brilliant one: groundbreaking director, Julie Taymor. With an eclectic resume and a penchant for incorporating puppets and masks in her interpretations of both classic and new works, Taymor drew upon her years creating dance-drama and shadow puppetry in Indonesia to conceive and construct ingenious costumes and puppets that could summon the grace, beauty, and scale of the Serengeti and its menagerie of creatures without obscuring the human beings bringing these beloved characters to life. The awe-inspiring costumes merged with the human figure, all the while maintaining the animal’s physicality. At the same time, Taymor’s dramaturgical innovations enriched the tale even further: she made the character of Rafiki (a male mandrill in the film) female and added the rich South African choral work of composer Lebo M to the project’s existing group of songwriters, including the legendary Sir Elton John, Sir Tim Rice, Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, and Hans Zimmer.The visual aesthetic was established from the very first moments of the musical when it opened on Broadway in 1997. In a breathtaking realization of the “Circle of Life,” the stage and the aisles of the recently restored New Amsterdam Theatre were filled with dozens of puppets including, zebras, giraffes, a life-sized elephant, and, of course, a family of lions. Taymor’s purely theatrical vision, coupled with the song’s soaring message, launches every performance of The Lion King as propulsively today as on that November night in 1997. “It’s the circle of life and it moves us all through despair and hope, through faith and love.” A global phenomenon was born.The Lion King opened on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre on November 13, 1997.Winner of 6 Tony Awards® in 1998.

Clean-up of Times Square

After spending more than two decades in peril, overrun with muggings, violent crimes, prostitution, and other illicit activity, Times Square began to change in the mid-1990s. The groundwork for its transformation had been laid by New York City Mayors Ed Koch (1978-1989) and David Dinkins (1990-1993), using eminent domain laws to condemn and take control of decrepit buildings, and rezoning laws to clean up sex businesses that had long plagued the area’s residents. When Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office in 1994, he was able to convince Michael Eisner, then CEO of Disney, that his hopes of a Broadway theatre for the corporation would find a good and family-friendly home in Times Square. Disney ultimately signed a 99-year lease on the dilapidated New Amsterdam Theatre, restoring the former home of Ziegfeld’s Follies to its full Art Nouveau glory. The famed Broadway venue was reopened in 1997 with a limited two-week engagement of the new Tim Rice and Alan Menken oratorio King David and a subsequent two-week engagement of the new animated film Hercules, which was augmented with a live stage show entitled Disney’s Magical Moments. On November 13th, following these two special events, Disney premiered its eagerly anticipated stage adaptation of The Lion King. The blockbuster production ran almost nine years at the New Amsterdam before moving to the Minskoff Theatre to make room for Mary Poppins, and later, Aladdin. Essential to the revitalization of the theatre district in Times Square was a devoted non-profit group, The New 42nd Street (now called New 42), which was charged with overseeing the redevelopment of seven other neglected venues on the block. New 42’s efforts, in turn, also helped bring new restaurants and retailers to the area. Major hotel chains joined the line-up as city officials forced out the seedier businesses and improved security. By the start of the 21st century, Times Square resumed its place as “town square to the world” with a new family-friendly sense of razzle-dazzle.

The Producers

Stage musicals based on movies have been around since at least the 1950s, but in the decade leading up to the turn of the millennium – save for Disney’s adaptations of their own animated hits – such efforts typically drew upon serious and/or lesser-known art films. Successful musical comedies based on mainstream live-action films were not frequently seen on Broadway. That is, until The Producers affirmed what was possible when the right stars (the inimitable Nathan Lane & Matthew Broderick) met the right material, directed by Susan Stroman and adapted and expanded by the same genius who created it for the screen thirty years before: Mel Brooks.Some may have thought taking a property like The Producers – or which the writer won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay – and completely retooling it for Broadway was nuts, but Mel Brooks (the aforementioned Oscar® winner) and Tony®-winning writer Thomas Meehan had the nerve. Meehan likened it to “disassembling the works of a finely crafted Swiss watch and then put[ting] it back together again, adding new pieces where necessary, taking out old pieces that no longer fit the new construction, and end up with it still ticking.” They cut beloved scenes, crafted a new beginning and ending, and Brooks wrote a bunch of brand new songs to add to the film’s “Springtime for Hitler” and “Prisoners of Love”. As luck would have it, Rocco Landesman, then President of Jujamcyn Theaters, attended an early reading of the work and famously offered them the highly sought-after St. James Theatre at intermission, setting the show’s path to Broadway.The Producers was a glittering homage to Broadway’s past – a refreshingly old-school musical comedy. A true showbiz tale. It had comedy! It had legs! It had tap dancing! All this glitz and glamour hit the scene and won a record-setting 12 Tony Awards®. The Producers reminded audiences of the joys to be found in what Julian Marsh in 42nd Street called, “the most glorious words in the English language,” musical comedy, and reminded its financiers that musical comedy was alive and profitable as ever.The Producers opened on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on April 19, 2001.Winner of 12 Tony Award® in 2001.

2001 - Present

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Broadway blazed into a brave new world, boosted, in part, by a chorus of diverse new voices and a collection of trenchant new tales. Many captured the social, cultural, and political pulse of the relative present, tackling timely subjects such as teen suicide, sexuality, systemic racism, and cultural identity. Others provided an invigorating escape. Of the many new developments to take place on the Main Stem at the dawn of the new millennium, one of the most noticeable involved the American musical. The extraordinary art form, whose own rich history remains intrinsically bound to that of the Broadway stage, took significant steps toward regaining its footing. Featuring an assortment of styles ranging from rap and hip-hop to rock and R&B, the best of the contemporary bunch successfully blended new stories, new themes, and new musical languages with the professionalism, craft, and theatrical composition that moved the fledgling form into maturity throughout the middle of the 20th century.Meanwhile, where Broadway once originated the majority of its productions, supplying the country – indeed, the world – with some of the finest plays and musicals written for the stage, a sweeping change in the practice of producing, several years in the making, found the country – indeed, the world – fueling Broadway. The majority of its productions now originated at Off-Broadway establishments like Atlantic Theatre Company, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, and the Vineyard Theatre; at regional outfits like American Repertory Theatre, Deaf West Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and Steppenwolf Theatre Company; at international venues like the Donmar Warehouse and Théâtre du Châtelet. Though it may still signify only a select number of legitimate playhouses located within a clearly defined quadrant around Times Square, Broadway remains a national – indeed, a global – institution, one which is presently in the business of sprouting a dazzling array of theatrical seeds planted perhaps in your own backyard.

Avenue Q

Despite being a theatrical tradition that stretches back thousands of years – quite literally, to the 4th or 5th century B.C. – puppetry still had a very light resume on Broadway when a 9-person, single set musical featuring “full puppet nudity” made the jump from off-Broadway’s Vineyard Theatre to the John Golden Theatre on West 45th Street. With that tagline, these certainly weren’t the old-fashioned puppets of the 1961 musical Carnival, Flahooley in 1951, norwere they the exotic Indonesian-influenced puppets of The Lion King. No, this was effectively “Sesame Street” for adults – preserving the innocent storytelling aesthetic of the beloved TV show, but stirring in a healthy, uncensored dose of irreverent social commentary about topics as decidedly not G-rated as racism, homophobia, and sex. It was hilarious; it was an underdog; it was unlike anything Broadway had seen before; and in 2004 it won the Tony Award® for Best Musical. For a generation who had grown up on and with the Muppets, it was irresistible.Avenue Q opened on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre on July 31, 2003.Winner of 3 Tony Awards® in 2004.

Wicked

Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another girl, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships… until the world decides to call one “good,” and the other one “wicked.”This is the story of the blockbuster musical Wicked. When Tony Award®-winning composer Stephen Schwartz first read Gregory Maguire’s inventive novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, he knew it could be a stage musical. Producers Marc Platt and David Stone agreed, and in collaboration with book writer Winnie Holzman and director Joe Mantello, an epic musical was born, changing the focus to “the untold true story of the Witches of Oz”.Whether it was the inventive twist on the well-known and universally loved story of The Wizard of Oz, Schwartz’s eminently catchy and tuneful score including the hits “Defying Gravity,” “Popular” and “For Good,” or the fascination by audiences with this truly human story about the unappreciated “green girl” in all of us, audiences in New York and around the world have embraced this magical tale of two women who show us that things aren’t always as they appear.Wicked opened on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre on October 30, 2003.Winner of 3 Tony Awards® in 2004.

Spring Awakening

A decade after Rent took New York City by storm, Broadway was rocked again by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s electric score for Spring Awakening, based on the landmark 1891 Frank Wedekind play of the same name. Turns out, the adolescent experience of the late 19th century wasn’t all that different from the early 21st century!Brought to life by a cast of budding stars-in-the making including John Gallagher Jr., Jonathan Groff, and Lea Michele, the timeless themes of teenage angst, emerging sexuality, and societal repression fused with melodies that would have been perfectly at home on contemporary pop radio proved to be a powerful combination, especially for Millennial theatre-goers.In what was still the exception rather than the rule, a Broadway show was telling an underserved audience a story they could relate to, in a contemporary musical language they understood and celebrated, and reassuring them that they were not alone.Spring Awakening opened on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on December 10, 2006.Winner of 8 Tony Awards® in 2007.

Hamilton

An innovative American musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton has captivated audiences around the world since its premiere at The Public Theater in February 2015. Set against the backdrop of the American revolution, the theatrical masterpiece tells the story of Alexander Hamilton’s life —his loves, losses, and lessons — by combining the narrative and emotive traditions of musical theatre with a contemporary musical vernacular of jazz, hip-hop, R&B and Broadway. The use of this vernacular reveals to audiences “that hip-hop and its generic cousins embody the cocky, restless spirit of self-determination that birthed the American independence movement,” according to The New York Times. With a diverse cast, Hamilton reminds contemporary audiences that America was and remains a nation of immigrants and their descendants, and powerfully tells the story of America’s origins and past through the culture and language of today.Hamilton opened on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on August 6, 2015.Winner of 11 Tony Awards® in 2016.