Category Archives: History

Essential Film Musicals: Top Hat

Posted on May 20, 2020 by boz

“When Hollywood revived musical films three years ago, dancing was monopolized by director Busby Berkeley,” Newsweek magazine noted in its 1935 review of Top Hat. “Thanks more to Fred Astaire than any other single influence, the character of musicomedy in … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: 42nd Street

Posted on May 20, 2020 by boz

In 1927, Warner Brothers launched the era of talkies with The Jazz Singer, and studios scrambled to hire Broadway composers. Within a handful of years, screens were flooded with movie musicals, most of them hastily put through production, and audiences … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: Hamilton

Posted on May 19, 2020 by boz

Once in a generation, a musical comes along that resets the theatrical atmosphere and perhaps enters the wider popular culture. Hamilton is such a show — as Show Boat was in the 1920s, Oklahoma! in the 1940s, Hair in the … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: Sweeney Todd

Posted on May 18, 2020 by boz

“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a dark and a vengeful god.” With that, the title character introduces himself and prepares us for a macabre musical about obsession, revenge — and cannibalism. Composer Stephen Sondheim has called Sweeney … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: A Chorus Line

Posted on May 16, 2020 by boz

At an audition, 18 dancers vie for eight openings in the chorus line of an upcoming musical. The director invites them to step forward, one by one, and tell him something true about themselves. And they do. That’s the simple … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: Cabaret

Posted on May 15, 2020 by boz

In 1929, novelist Christopher Isherwood took a spring trip to Berlin and was so taken with the city that he moved there six months later. For the next four years, as Hitler rose to power, he kept a diary chronicling … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: Fiddler on the Roof

Posted on May 14, 2020 by boz

Novelist Philip Roth called it “shtetl kitsch,” and writer Cynthia Ozick said it was an “emptied-out, prettified romantic vulgarization” of Sholem Aleichem’s work. Even if it wasn’t entirely true to its source material, Fiddler on the Roof did tackle the … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: The Fantasticks

Posted on May 13, 2020 by boz

As the size (and cost) of Broadway productions began to grow in the 1950s, several theater-makers left Times Square and settled in Greenwich Village, fashioning intimate playhouses out of bars, brownstones, and abandoned cinemas. By 1954, the Off-Broadway movement had … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: Gypsy

Posted on May 12, 2020 by boz

New York Times critic Ben Brantley believes Gypsy “may be the greatest of all American musicals.” He is not alone. Previous Times critic Frank Rich considers the show to be “Broadway’s own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear.” The Lear … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: West Side Story

Posted on May 11, 2020 by boz

When West Side Story premiered in 1957, it marked a turning point in American musical theater — “a provocative and artful blend of music, dance, and plot,” as one critic noted — but getting the work to Broadway had not … Continue reading →

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