Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a special kind of show that mixes singing, speaking, acting, and dancing together. It tells stories through music, words, and movement, making the feelings of the characters come alive for the audience. Unlike other kinds of performances, in musical theatre the music is just as important as the acting and dialogue.

Modern musical theatre began in the 19th century with plays that included music, like the light opera works of Jacques Offenbach in France, Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain, and creators like Harrigan and Hart in America. Over time, musicals became very popular, with famous shows like Show Boat, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, Les Misérables, and Hamilton.

Today, musicals are performed all over the world. They can be big, fancy shows in famous places like Broadway in New York City or the West End in London. Or they can be smaller performances in community theatres, schools, or even on tour. Many people enjoy putting on musicals in their local areas, making this art form loved by many.

Definitions and scope

Book musicals

Since the 20th century, a "book musical" is a type of musical play where songs and dances fit into a strong story with serious goals. The three main parts of a book musical are the music, the words (lyrics), and the book. The book is the story, including the characters, what happens, and the spoken words. Together, the music and words are called the score. A musical needs a team of creative people, like a director and a choreographer, to bring the story to life. Shows also need special designs for the sets, costumes, and lighting.

Most musicals last between one and a half to three hours, usually split into two parts with a break in between. The first part introduces the characters and music and often ends with a problem. The second part solves the problem and may repeat some important songs. Musicals can be based on real stories, books, or even movies, and many have been turned into films too.

Comparisons with opera

Musical theatre is similar to opera but has some key differences. Musicals often have more talking between the songs and include more dancing. They usually use popular music styles and are performed in the language of the audience. Unlike opera, where singing is the main focus, musical theatre performers must also act and dance. Some famous composers have created works for both musical theatre and opera. Musicals often use a smaller group of musicians, called a pit orchestra, to accompany the singing.

Eastern traditions and other forms

There are many traditions of theatre with music from Eastern cultures, such as Chinese opera and Japanese Noh. India has made many musical films, often called Bollywood musicals. Japan has also developed special musicals based on popular comics. There are also shorter versions of musicals made for schools and young performers, sometimes called minimusicals.

History

Early antecedents

The beginnings of musical theatre in Europe go back to the theatre of ancient Greece, where music and dance were part of comedies and tragedies in the 5th century BCE. However, the music from those ancient forms is lost and had little effect on later musical theatre. In the 12th and 13th centuries, religious dramas taught lessons. Groups of actors used outdoor stages on wheels to tell each part of the story. Poetic forms sometimes mixed with prose dialogues, and church chants turned into new melodies.

The European Renaissance saw older styles evolve into two early forms of musical theatre: one where clowns improvised stories, and later, comic operas. In England, Elizabethan and Jacobean plays often included music, and short musical plays became part of evening performances. Court parties developed during the Tudor period that included music, dancing, singing, and acting, often with fancy costumes and detailed designs. These grew into sung plays that resemble English operas, starting with The Siege of Rhodes in 1656. In France, playwright Molière turned some of his comedies into musical shows with songs and dance in the late 1600s. These influenced a short period of English opera by composers like John Blow and Henry Purcell.

From the 1700s, popular forms of musical theatre in Britain included ballad operas, like John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and later pantomime, comic opera, and music hall. Colonial America didn’t have much theatre until 1752, when a company from London arrived. By the 1840s, P. T. Barnum ran an entertainment space in New York. Early American musical theatre included British styles, but names didn’t always match the style. The 1852 show The Magic Deer called itself “A Serio Comico Tragico Operatical Historical Extravaganzical Burletical Tale of Enchantment.” Theatre in New York moved from downtown to midtown around 1850 and reached Times Square in the 1920s and 1930s. New York runs were shorter than London’s, but Laura Keene’s Seven Sisters in 1860 broke records with 253 performances.

1850s to 1880s

Around 1850, French composer Hervé tested a style of comic musical theatre called opérette. Famous composers of operetta were Jacques Offenbach from the 1850s to the 1870s and Johann Strauss II in the 1870s and 1880s. Offenbach’s catchy melodies and clever words became a model for later musical theatre. Adaptations of French operettas, along with musical burlesques, music hall, pantomime, and burletta, were mainstays of London’s musical stage into the 1870s.

In America, mid-19th century musical entertainment included variety revues, which turned into vaudeville, and minstrel shows, which later went to Britain. Victorian burlesque was first popularized in the US by British groups. Kurt Gänzl says The Doctor of Alcantara (1862) might be the “first American musical,” but he also points to earlier works. A very popular show that opened in New York in 1866, The Black Crook, mixed dance and original music to tell its story. It was famous for its revealing costumes and ran for a record 474 performances. That same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a “musical comedy.” In 1874, Evangeline or The Belle of Arcadia, by Edward E. Rice and J. Cheever Goodwin, based loosely on Longfellow’s Evangeline, with original American music, opened in New York and was revived in Boston and on tours. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart made musicals on Broadway from 1878 to 1885. These musical comedies used characters and situations from everyday life in New York’s lower classes. They featured top singers instead of earlier styles. In 1879, The Brook by Nate Salsbury was a national hit with American dance styles and a story about actors facing obstacles on a river trip.

As transportation improved, poverty dropped in London and New York, and safer street lighting led to more evening theatre visitors. Plays ran longer, bringing better profits and higher production values, and men started bringing families to the theatre. The first musical to run over 500 shows was the French operetta The Chimes of Normandy in 1878, with 705 performances. English comic opera borrowed ideas from European operetta, most successfully in the long-running Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, including H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and The Mikado (1885). These were big hits on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia, raising standards for successful shows. These shows were made for family audiences, different from the racy burlesques and music hall shows of earlier times. Only a few 19th-century musicals beat The Mikado’s run, like Dorothy, which opened in 1886 and set a new record with 931 shows. Gilbert and Sullivan greatly influenced later musical theatre, showing how to weave lyrics and dialogue into a clear story. Their work was admired and copied by early musical writers and composers in Britain and America.

1890s to the new century

[A Trip to Chinatown] (1891) was Broadway’s top-long runner until Irene in 1919, with 657 performances, but New York runs were still shorter than London’s until the 1920s. Gilbert and Sullivan were widely copied and imitated in New York, like Reginald De Koven’s Robin Hood (1891) and John Philip Sousa’s El Capitan (1896). A Trip to Coontown (1898) was the first musical made and performed entirely by African Americans on Broadway, inspired by minstrel show routines, followed by ragtime-style shows. Hundreds of musical comedies were put on Broadway in the 1890s and early 1900s, with songs from New York’s Tin Pan Alley, including works by George M. Cohan, who aimed for an American style different from Gilbert and Sullivan. The biggest New York shows often went on long national tours.

Meanwhile, musicals took over London’s stage in the Gay Nineties, led by producer George Edwardes, who wanted a new style for audiences beyond Savoy-style comic operas. He tried modern, family-friendly musicals with catchy songs, quick romantic talk, and stylish shows at the Gaiety and other theatres. These used traditions from comic opera and added bits from burlesque and Harrigan and Hart shows. He replaced burlesque’s bold women with his “respectable” Gaiety Girls to finish the musical fun. The first of these, In Town (1892) and A Gaiety Girl (1893) set the style for the next three decades. The stories were usually light, romantic tales where a poor girl falls for an aristocrat and wins him. Music was by Ivan Caryll, Sidney Jones, and Lionel Monckton. These shows were quickly copied in America, and Edwardian musical comedy replaced older styles of comic opera and operetta. The Geisha (1896) was a big hit in the 1890s, running over two years and becoming very popular worldwide.

[The Belle of New York] (1898) was the first American musical to run over a year in London. The British musical comedy Florodora (1899) was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, as was A Chinese Honeymoon (1901), which set a London record with 1,074 shows and 376 in New York. After 1900, Seymour Hicks worked with Edwardes and American producer Charles Frohman to make another ten years of popular shows. Other lasting Edwardian musical comedy hits were The Arcadians (1909) and The Quaker Girl (1910).

Early 20th century

Operettas almost disappeared from English-speaking stages but returned to London and Broadway in 1907 with The Merry Widow, and adaptations of European operettas became rivals to musicals. Franz Lehár and Oscar Straus wrote new operettas popular in English until World War I. In America, Victor Herbert created a series of lasting operettas like The Fortune Teller (1898), Babes in Toyland (1903), Mlle. Modiste (1905), The Red Mill (1906) and Naughty Marietta (1910).

In the 1910s, P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, and Jerome Kern, building on Gilbert and Sullivan, made the “Princess Theatre” shows and started Kern’s later work by proving a musical could mix light entertainment with story continuity between songs. Historian Gerald Bordman said these shows built and polished the shape for almost all later major musical comedies. The characters and situations were believable, and humor came from situations or character traits. Kern’s beautiful melodies helped move the story or show character feelings. Edwardian musical comedy often added songs randomly. The Princess Theatre musicals changed that. Wodehouse, the most observant, witty lyricist of his time, and the team of Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern influenced musical theatre to this day.

People needed escape during World War I, and they filled theatres. The 1919 hit musical Irene ran for 670 shows, a Broadway record until 1938. British theatres had longer runs like The Maid of the Mountains (1,352 shows) and especially Chu Chin Chow. Its 2,238 shows was more than twice any before, a record that lasted nearly forty years. Even a revival of The Beggar’s Opera ran for 1,463 shows. Revues like The Bing Boys Are Here in Britain, and those by Florenz Ziegfeld and others in America, were also very popular.

The musicals of the Roaring Twenties, influenced by vaudeville, music hall, and other light shows, focused more on big dance numbers and popular songs than on plot. Typical shows were cheerful ones like Sally, Lady, Be Good, No, No, Nanette, Oh, Kay!, and Funny Face. Despite weak stories, these shows featured stars like Marilyn Miller and Fred Astaire and created many lasting songs by Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Rodgers and Hart. Popular music was led by musical theatre hits like “Fascinating Rhythm”, “Tea for Two” and “Someone to Watch Over Me”. Many shows were revues, collections of sketches and songs with little connection. The best known were the yearly Ziegfeld Follies, big song-and-dance shows on Broadway with fancy sets, elaborate costumes, and beautiful chorus lines. These shows also raised production costs, and putting on a musical became more expensive. Shuffle Along (1921), an all-African American show, was a Broadway hit. A new group of operetta composers appeared in the 1920s, like Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg, creating popular Broadway shows.

In London, writers-performers like Ivor Novello and Noël Coward became famous, but British musical theatre’s lead from the 19th century through 1920 was slowly taken over by American ideas, especially after World War I, as Kern and other Tin Pan Alley composers brought new styles like ragtime and jazz to theatres, and the Shubert Brothers controlled Broadway theatres. Musical theatre writer Andrew Lamb says, “The operatic and theatrical styles of nineteenth-century social structures were replaced by a musical style more suited to twentieth-century society and its everyday language. It was from America that the more direct style emerged, and in America that it could grow in a developing society less tied to nineteenth-century traditions.” In France, comédie musicale was written in the early decades of the century for stars like Yvonne Printemps.

Show Boat and the Great Depression

Broadway’s Show Boat (1927) went far beyond the light musicals and sentimental operettas of the time, by fully mixing book and music, with dramatic themes told through music, dialogue, setting, and movement. This was done by blending Kern’s lyrical music with Oscar Hammerstein II’s skilled writing. One historian said, “Here we find a completely new kind – the musical play rather than musical comedy. Now… everything else served that play. Now… came full integration of song, humor and production numbers into one inseparable artistic whole.”

As the Great Depression started during Show Boat’s national tour, people turned to light, escapist song-and-dance shows. Audiences on both sides of the Atlantic had little money for entertainment, and only a few stage shows anywhere ran over 500 performances during the decade. The revue The Band Wagon (1931) starred dancing partners Fred Astaire and his sister Adele, while Porter’s Anything Goes (1934) made Ethel Merman’s name as the First Lady of musical theatre, a title she kept for many years. Coward and Novello kept making old-fashioned, sentimental musicals, like The Dancing Years, while Rodgers and Hart left Hollywood to make a series of successful Broadway shows, including On Your Toes (1936, the first Broadway musical to use classical dance dramatically), Babes in Arms (1937) and The Boys from Syracuse (1938). Porter added Du Barry Was a Lady (1939). The longest-running musical of the 1930s in the US was Hellzapoppin (1938), a revue with audience parts, which played for 1,404 shows, a new Broadway record. In Britain, Me and My Girl ran for 1,646 shows.

Still, some teams started building on Show Boat’s ideas. Of Thee I Sing (1931), a political satire by the Gershwins, was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize. As Thousands Cheer (1933), a revue by Irving Berlin and Moss Hart where each song or sketch came from a newspaper headline, was the first Broadway show where an African-American, Ethel Waters, starred with white actors. Waters’ scenes included “Supper Time”, a woman’s sadness for her husband who had been killed. The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (1935) had an all African-American cast and mixed opera, folk, and jazz styles. The Cradle Will Rock (1937), directed by Orson Welles, was a strong pro-union show that, despite the arguments around it, ran for 108 shows. Rodgers and Hart’s I’d Rather Be Right (1937) was a political satire with George M. Cohan as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Kurt Weill’s Knickerbocker Holiday made light of New York City’s early history while gently making fun of Roosevelt’s good intentions.

Movies challenged the stage. Silent films weren’t much competition, but by the late 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer could be shown with sound. “Talkie” films at low prices effectively ended vaudeville by the early 1930s. Despite the hard times of the 1930s and competition from film, musicals lived on. In fact, they kept growing in themes beyond the jokes and showgirls of the Gay Nineties and Roaring Twenties and the sentimental love stories of operetta, adding skill and fast-paced direction and natural talking led by director George Abbott.

The Golden Age (1940s to 1960s)

1940s

The 1940s started with more hits by Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Weill, and Gershwin, some running over 500 shows as the economy improved, but artistic change was coming. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! (1943) finished the change started by Show Boat, by tightly linking all parts of musical theatre, with a strong story, songs that moved the story forward, and dances that advanced the plot and showed character growth, instead of just showing off women in skimpy clothes. Rodgers and Hammerstein hired ballet choreographer Agnes de Mille, who used everyday movements to help characters show their ideas. It broke tradition by opening not with a group of women, but with a woman churning butter, and an off-stage voice singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” with no music. It got great reviews, caused a rush at the box office, and won a Pulitzer Prize. Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times that the show’s opening number changed musical theatre history: “After a line like that, sung to a lively tune, the old, simple musical stage seemed small and empty.” It was the first “blockbuster” Broadway show, running 2,212 performances, and was made into a popular film. It is still one of the most performed shows by the team. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird wrote that this was a “show that, like Show Boat, became a turning point, so that later theatre historians would mark time by its influence on twentieth-century theatre.”

“After Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein were the most important creators of the musical-play style… The examples they set in making powerful plays, often full of social ideas, encouraged other talented writers to make musical plays of their own.” The two made an amazing group of some of musical theatre’s best-loved and longest-lasting classics, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951) and The Sound of Music (1959). Some of these musicals dealt with deeper subjects than most earlier shows: the bad guy in Oklahoma! might be a murderer and mental health patient; Carousel includes wife abuse, theft, suicide, and the afterlife; South Pacific looks closely at race mixing beyond Show Boat; the hero of The King and I dies on stage; and The Sound of Music is set during the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

The creativity of the show inspired Rodgers and Hammerstein’s friends and started the “Golden Age” of American musical theatre. American culture appeared on Broadway during the “Golden Age”, as the cycle of shows from the war years began to appear. An example is On the Town (1944), written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, with music by Leonard Bernstein and choreography by Jerome Robbins. The story is set during wartime and follows three sailors on a 24-hour leave in New York City, each falling in love. The show also feels like a country with an unsure future, as the sailors and their women also face uncertainty. Irving Berlin used sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s life for his Annie Get Your Gun (1946, 1,147 shows); Burton Lane, E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy mixed political jokes with Irish magic for their fantasy Finian’s Rainbow (1947, 725 shows); and Cole Porter used William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew for Kiss Me, Kate (1948, 1,077 shows). The American musicals overtook the old-fashioned British Coward/Novello-style shows, one of the last big hits of which was Novello’s Perchance to Dream (1945, 1,021 shows). The rule for Golden Age musicals followed one or more of four common ideas of the “American dream”: That safety and value come from a love relationship approved and limited by Protestant marriage rules; that a married couple should make a moral home with children far from the city in a town or countryside; that a woman’s job was to keep house and raise children; and that Americans are independent and successful because they make their own way.

1950s

The 1950s were key for the growth of the American musical. Damon Runyon’s colorful characters were central to Frank Loesser’s and Abe Burrows’ Guys and Dolls (1950, 1,200 shows); and the Gold Rush was the background for Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon (1951). The short seven-month run of that show didn’t stop Lerner and Loewe from working together again, this time on My Fair Lady (1956), an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, which with 2,717 shows held the long-run record for many years. Popular Hollywood films were made of all these musicals. Two hits by British writers in this decade were The Boy Friend (1954), which ran for 2,078 shows in London and marked Andrews’ American debut, and Salad Days (1954), which broke the British long-run record with 2,283 shows.

Another record was set by The Threepenny Opera, which ran for 2,707 shows, becoming the longest-running off-Broadway musical until The Fantasticks. The production also showed that musicals could be profitable off-Broadway in a small, orchestra style. This was proven in 1959 when a revival of Jerome Kern and P. G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Jane ran for over two years. The 1959–1960 off-Broadway season had a dozen musicals and revues including Little Mary Sunshine, The Fantasticks and Ernest in Love, a musical version of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 hit The Importance of Being Earnest.

[West Side Story] (1957) moved Romeo and Juliet to modern New York City and changed the fighting Montague and Capulet families into rival gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. The book was written by Arthur Laurents, with music by Leonard Bernstein and words by new writer Stephen Sondheim. It was praised by critics for its new music and dance but wasn’t as popular as the same year’s The Music Man, by Meredith Willson, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical that year. West Side Story got a film version in 1961, which did well with critics and at the box office. Laurents and Sondheim worked together again for Gypsy (1959), with Jule Styne’s music for a story about Rose Thompson Hovick, mother of famous performer Gypsy Rose Lee.

Although directors and choreographers have been important to musical theatre style since the 19th century, George Abbott and his workers and followers took a big role in fully mixing movement and dance into musical theatre shows in the Golden Age. Abbott started using ballet to tell stories in On Your Toes in 1936, which led to Agnes de Mille’s ballet and dance in Oklahoma!. After Abbott worked with Jerome Robbins in On the Town and other shows, Robbins took on both directing and choreographing, focusing on how dance tells the story in West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Bob Fosse danced for Abbott in The Pajama Game (1956) and Damn Yankees (1957), adding playful sexiness to those hits. He later directed and choreographed Sweet Charity (1968), Pippin (1972) and Chicago (1975). Other famous director-choreographers have included Gower Champion, Tommy Tune, Michael Bennett, Gillian Lynne and Susan Stroman. Well-known directors have included Hal Prince, who started with Abbott, and Trevor Nunn.

During the Golden Age, car companies and other big businesses began using Broadway talent to write private musicals only seen by their workers or customers. The 1950s ended with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s last hit, The Sound of Music, which also became a hit for Mary Martin. It ran for 1,443 shows and shared the Tony Award for Best Musical. With its very successful 1965 film version, it has become one of the most popular musicals ever.

1960s

In 1960, The Fantasticks opened off-Broadway. This small, symbolic show ran for over 40 years at the Sullivan Street Theatre in Greenwich Village, becoming the longest-running musical ever. Its writers made other new works in the 1960s, like Celebration and I Do! I Do!, the first two-character Broadway musical. The 1960s saw many big shows, like Fiddler on the Roof (1964; 3,242 shows), Hello, Dolly! (1964; 2,844 shows), Funny Girl (1964; 1,348 shows) and Man of La Mancha (1965; 2,328 shows), and some edgier pieces like Cabaret, before the rise of rock musicals. In Britain, Oliver! (1960) ran for 2,618 shows, but the long-run leader of the decade was The Black and White Minstrel Show (1962), which played for 4,344 shows. Two people had big effects on musical theatre history starting in this decade: Stephen Sondheim and Jerry Herman.

The first show for which Sondheim wrote both music and words was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962, 964 shows), with a story based on Plautus by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, starring Zero Mostel. Sondheim moved musicals beyond their usual focus on love stories; his work often looked at the darker sides of life, both past and present. Other early Sondheim shows include Anyone Can Whistle (1964, which only ran nine shows, even with stars Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury), and the successful Company (1970), Follies (1971) and A Little Night Music (1973). Later, Sondheim got ideas from unexpected places: Japan opening to Western trade for Pacific Overtures (1976), a famous barber seeking revenge in the Industrial Age of London for Sweeney Todd (1979), the paintings of Georges Seurat for Sunday in the Park with George (1984), fairy tales for Into the Woods (1987), and a group of presidential attackers for Assassins (1990).

While some critics say some of Sondheim’s musicals lack commercial appeal, others praise their word skill and music complexity, and the way words and music work together in his shows. Some of Sondheim’s new ideas include a show shown in reverse (Merrily We Roll Along) and the above-mentioned Anyone Can Whistle, where the first act ends with the cast telling the audience they are crazy.

Jerry Herman had a big part in American musical theatre, starting with his first Broadway show, Milk and Honey (1961, 563 shows), about the creation of the state of Israel, and continuing with the big hits Hello, Dolly! (1964, 2,844 shows), Mame (1966, 1,508 shows), and La Cage aux Folles (1983, 1,761 shows). Even his less successful shows like Dear World (1969) and Mack and Mabel (1974) have famous music (Mack and Mabel was later a London hit). Writing both words and music, many of Herman’s show songs have become popular, including “Hello, Dolly!”, “We Need a Little Christmas”, “I Am What I Am”, “Mame”, “The Best of Times”, “Before the Parade Passes By”, “Put On Your Sunday Clothes”, “It Only Takes a Moment”, “Bosom Buddies” and “I Won’t Send Roses”, recorded by artists like Louis Armstrong, Eydie Gormé, Barbra Streisand, Petula Clark and Bernadette Peters. Herman’s music has been shown in two popular musical revues, Jerry’s Girls (Broadway, 1985) and Showtune (off-Broadway, 2003).

Musicals began to move away from the narrow limits of the 1950s. Rock music appeared in several Broadway musicals, starting with Hair, which also included nudity and strong views on the Vietnam War, race relations and other social subjects.

Social themes

After Show Boat and Porgy and Bess, and as the fight in America and elsewhere for minorities’ civil rights grew, Hammerstein, Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg and others felt bold enough to write more musicals and operas that aimed to make society accept minorities and call for racial harmony. Early Golden Age works that focused on racial acceptance included Finian’s Rainbow and South Pacific. Towards the end of the Golden Age, several shows dealt with Jewish topics and questions, such as Fiddler on the Roof, Milk and Honey, Blitz! and later Rags. The idea that became West Side Story was originally set on the Lower East Side during Easter-Passover celebrations; the fighting gangs were to be Jewish and Italian Catholic. The creative group later decided that the Polish (white) vs. Puerto Rican conflict was more interesting.

Accepting others as important has kept being a theme in musicals in recent years. The final version of West Side Story left a message of racial acceptance. By the end of the 1960s, musicals had black and white actors playing each other’s parts, as they did in Hair. Being gay has also been shown in musicals, starting with Hair, and even more clearly in La Cage aux Folles, Falsettos, Rent, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and other shows in later years. Parade is a careful look at both antisemitism and historical American racism, and Ragtime similarly looks at the experience of immigrants and minorities in America.

1970s to present

1970s

After the success of Hair, rock musicals grew in the 1970s, with Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, The Rocky Horror Show, Evita and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Some of those began as “concept albums” and were then made for the stage, most notably Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Others had no talking or were like opera, with strong, emotional stories; these sometimes started as concept albums and were called rock operas. Shows like Raisin, Dreamgirls, Purlie and The Wiz brought a big African-American influence to Broadway. More different music types and styles were used in musicals both on and especially off-Broadway. At the same time, Stephen Sondheim had success with some of his musicals, as mentioned above.

In 1975, the dance musical A Chorus Line came from recorded group therapy-like sessions Michael Bennett held with “gypsies” – those who sing and dance to support the main players – from the Broadway world. From hundreds of hours of tapes, James Kirkwood Jr. and Nick Dante made a book about an audition for a musical, using many real-life stories from the sessions; some who were in the sessions later played versions of themselves or each other in the show. With music by Marvin Hamlisch and words by Edward Kleban, A Chorus Line first opened at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in lower Manhattan. What was meant to be a short run moved to the Shubert Theatre on Broadway for 6,137 performances, the longest-running show on Broadway until that time. The show won all the Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, and its big song, “What I Did for Love”, became a standard.

Broadway audiences liked musicals that were different from the Golden Age style and substance. John Kander and Fred Ebb looked at the rise of Nazism in Germany in Cabaret, and murder and the media in Prohibition-era Chicago, which used old vaudeville tricks. Pippin, by Stephen Schwartz, was set in the time of Charlemagne. Federico Fellini’s movie 8½ became Maury Yeston’s Nine. At the end of the decade, Evita and Sweeney Todd were early examples of the big-budget musicals of the 1980s that depended on strong stories, big scores and amazing effects. At the same time, old-fashioned values were still liked in hits like Annie, 42nd Street, My One and Only, and popular repeats of No, No, Nanette and Irene. Even though many movie versions of musicals were made in the 1970s, few were big hits with critics or at the box office, except for Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret and Grease.

1980s

The 1980s saw the effect of European “megamusicals” on Broadway, the West End and elsewhere. These usually have music with a pop feel, big groups of actors and amazing designs and special effects – a falling chandelier (in The Phantom of the Opera); a helicopter landing on stage (in Miss Saigon) – and very big budgets. Some were based on books or other works of literature. The British group of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Mackintosh started the megamusical trend with their 1981 musical Cats, based on the poems of T. S. Eliot, which passed A Chorus Line to become the longest-running Broadway show. Lloyd Webber followed with Starlight Express (1984), performed on roller skates; The Phantom of the Opera (1986; also with Mackintosh), from the novel of the same name; and Sunset Boulevard (1993), from the 1950 movie of the same name. Phantom passed Cats to become the longest-running show on Broadway, a record it still holds. The French group of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil wrote Les Misérables, based on the novel of the same name, whose 1985 London production was made by Mackintosh and became, and still is, the longest-running musical in the West End and on Broadway. The group made another hit with Miss Saigon (1989), inspired by the Puccini opera Madama Butterfly.

The megamusicals’ huge budgets changed ideas about money success on Broadway and in the West End. In earlier years, a show could be called a hit after a few hundred performances, but with multimillion-dollar production costs, a show had to run for years just to make a profit. Megamusicals were also copied in shows around the world, growing their profit chances while widening the world audience for musical theatre.

1990s

In the 1990s, a new group of theatre writers appeared, including Jason Robert Brown and Michael John LaChiusa, who began with shows off-Broadway. The biggest success of these artists was Jonathan Larson’s Rent (1996), a rock musical (based on the opera La bohème) about a struggling group of artists in Manhattan. While the cost of tickets to Broadway and West End musicals went up beyond the budget of many theatre-goers, Rent was sold to attract younger audiences to musicals. It had a young cast and a rock-influenced score; the musical became a hit. Its young fans, many of them students, called themselves RENTheads, camped out at the Nederlander Theatre hoping to win the lottery for $20 front row seats, and some saw the show many times. Other Broadway shows followed Rent’s example by offering big discounts on tickets the day of the show or standing-room tickets, although often the discounts were only for students.

The 1990s also saw big companies affect the making of musicals. The most important has been Disney Theatrical Productions, which began changing some of Disney’s animated movie musicals for the stage, starting with Beauty and the Beast (1994), The Lion King (1997) and Aida (2000), the last two with music by Elton John. The Lion King is the highest-grossing musical in Broadway history. The Who’s Tommy (1993), a stage version of the rock opera Tommy, ran for 899 shows but was criticized for making the story safer and “musical theatre-izing” the rock music.

Even with the growing number of big musicals in the 1980s and 1990s, a number of lower-budget, smaller musicals found both critical and money success, such as Falsettoland, Little Shop of Horrors, Bat Boy: The Musical and Blood Brothers, which ran for 10,013 shows. The subjects of these pieces are very different, and the music ranges from rock to pop, but they are often shown off-Broadway, or in smaller London theatres, and some of these performances have been called creative and new.

2000s–present

Trends

In the new century, being familiar has been liked by producers and investors worried about getting their big money back. Some took (usually small-budget) chances on new and creative material, such as Urinetown (2001), Avenue Q (2003), The Light in the Piazza (2005), Spring Awakening (2006), In the Heights (2008), Next to Normal (2009), American Idiot (2010) and The Book of Mormon (2011). Hamilton (2015), changed “under-explored American history” into an unusual hip-hop hit. In 2011, Sondheim said that of all kinds of “modern pop music”, rap was “the closest to old musical theatre” and was “one way to the future.”

However, most big-market shows in the 21st century have taken the safe way, with repeats of familiar shows, such as Fiddler on the Roof, A Chorus Line, South Pacific, Gypsy, Hair, West Side Story and Grease, or with changes of other proven material, such as books (The Scarlet Pimpernel, Wicked and Fun Home), hoping that the shows would have a ready audience because of this. This pattern is especially strong with movie changes, including The Producers, Spamalot, Hairspray, Legally Blonde, The Color Purple, Xanadu, Billy Elliot, Shrek, Waitress and Groundhog Day. Some critics have said that re-using movie stories, especially from Disney (like Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid), makes Broadway and West End musicals into tourist attractions, rather than creative places.

Today, it is less likely that one producer, such as David Merrick or Cameron Mackintosh, backs a show. Big businesses support Broadway, and often groups join together to make musicals, which need an investment of $10 million or more. In 2002, the credits for Thoroughly Modern Millie listed ten producers, and among those names were groups made of several people. Usually, off-Broadway and area theatres make smaller and therefore cheaper musicals, and the making of new musicals has more and more taken place outside New York and London or in smaller places. For example, Spring Awakening, Fun Home and Hamilton were developed off-Broadway before being shown on Broadway.

Several musicals returned to the big-show style that was so successful in the 1980s, remembering big shows that have been put on at times throughout theatre history, since the old Romans put on fake sea fights. Examples include the musical changes of Lord of the Rings (2007), Gone with the Wind (2008) and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011). These musicals had writers with little theatre experience, and the expensive shows generally lost money. On the other hand, The Drowsy Chaperone, Avenue Q, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Xanadu and Fun Home, among others, have been shown in smaller shows, mostly without an intermission, with short times, and did well financially. In 2013, Time magazine said that a trend off-Broadway has been “deep” theatre, naming shows such as Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (2012) and Here Lies Love (2013) where the design takes place around and inside the audience. The shows set a shared record, each getting 11 nominations for Lucille Lortel Awards, and have modern scores.

In 2013, Cyndi Lauper was the “first woman composer to win the [Tony for] Best Score without a male partner” for writing the music and words for Kinky Boots. In 2015, for the first time, an all-woman writing group, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, won the Tony Award for Best New Score (and Best Book for Kron) for Fun Home, although work by male writers is still made more often.

Jukebox musicals

Another pattern has been to make a small story to fit a group of songs that have already been hits. Following the earlier success of Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, these have included Movin’ Out (2002, based on the songs of Billy Joel), Jersey Boys (2006, The Four Seasons), Rock of Ages (2009, featuring classic rock of the 1980s), Thriller – Live (2009, Michael Jackson), and many others. This style is often called the “jukebox musical”. Similar but more story-driven musicals have been built around the songs of a certain pop group including Mamma Mia! (1999, based on the songs of ABBA), Our House (2002, based on the songs of Madness) and We Will Rock You (2002, based on the songs of Queen).

Film and TV musicals

Further information: Musical film

Live-action movie musicals were almost gone in the 1980s and early 1990s, with exceptions of Victor/Victoria, Little Shop of Horrors and the 1996 movie of Evita. In the new century, Baz Luhrmann began a return of the movie musical with Moulin Rouge! (2001). This was followed by Chicago (2002); Phantom of the Opera (2004); Rent (2005); Dreamgirls (2006); Hairspray, Enchanted and Sweeney Todd (all in 2007); Mamma Mia! (2008); Nine (2009); Les Misérables and Pitch Perfect (both in 2012), Into The Woods, The Last Five Years (2014), La La Land (2016), The Greatest Showman (2017), A Star Is Born and Mary Poppins Returns (both 2018), Rocketman (2019) and In the Heights and Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story (both in 2021), among others. Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (2000) and The Cat in the Hat (2003), turned children’s books into live-action movie musicals. After the huge success of Disney and other companies with animated movie musicals starting with The Little Mermaid in 1989 and going through the 1990s (including some more grown-up movies, like South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)), fewer animated movie musicals were made in the first ten years of the 21st century. The type came back starting in 2010 with Tangled (2010), Rio (2011) and Frozen (2013). In Asia, India keeps making many “Bollywood” movie musicals, and Japan makes anime and manga movie musicals.

Made-for-TV movie musicals were popular in the 1990s, such as Gypsy (1993), Cinderella (1997) and Annie (1999). Several made-for-TV movie musicals in the first ten years of the 21st century were changes of the stage version, such as South Pacific (2001), The Music Man (2003) and Once Upon a Mattress (2005), and a shown-on-TV version of the stage musical Legally Blonde in 2007. Also, several musicals were filmed on stage and shown on Public Television, for example Contact in 2002 and Kiss Me, Kate and Oklahoma ! in 2003. The made-for-TV musical High School Musical (2006), and its several sequels, did very well and were changed for stage musicals and other media.

In 2013, NBC began a group of live TV shows of musicals with The Sound of Music Live! Although the making got mixed reviews, it was a ratings hit. More shows have followed including Peter Pan Live! (NBC 2014), The Wiz Live! (NBC 2015), a UK show, The Sound of Music Live (ITV 2015) Grease: Live (Fox 2016), Hairspray Live! (NBC, 2016), A Christmas Story Live! (Fox, 2017), and Rent: Live (Fox 2019).

Some TV shows have made episodes as musicals. Examples include episodes of Ally McBeal, Xena: Warrior Princess (“The Bitter Suite” and “Lyre, Lyre, Heart’s On Fire”), Psych (“Psych: The Musical”), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“Once More, with Feeling”), That’s So Raven, Daria, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, The Flash, Once Upon a Time, Oz, Scrubs (one episode was written by the makers of Avenue Q), Batman: The Brave and the Bold and That ‘70s Show (the 100th episode, “That ‘70s Musical”). Others have had scenes where characters suddenly start singing and dancing in a musical style during an episode, such as in several episodes of The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Hannah Montana, South Park, Bob’s Burgers and Family Guy. TV series that have often used the musical style have included Cop Rock, Flight of the Conchords, Glee, Smash and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

There have also been musicals made for the internet, including Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, about a low-budget super-villain played by Neil Patrick Harris. It was written during the WGA writer’s strike. Since 2006, reality TV shows have been used to help sell musical repeats by holding a talent contest to choose (usually female) leads. Examples of these are How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?, Grease: You’re the One That I Want!, Any Dream Will Do, Legally Blonde: The Musical – The Search for Elle Woods, I’d Do Anything, and Over the Rainbow. In 2021, Schmigadoon! was a joke of, and tribute to, Golden Age musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.

2020–2021 theatre shutdown

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the closing of theatres and theatre festivals around the world in early 2020, including all Broadway and West End theatres. Many performing arts places tried to change or cut losses by giving new (or wider) digital services. In particular this led to the online showing of already-recorded shows by many groups, as well as special crowd-sourced projects. For example, The Sydney Theatre Company asked actors to film themselves at home talking about, then acting out, a speech from a character they had played on stage before. The casts of musicals, such as Hamilton and Mamma Mia!, got together on Zoom to entertain people and groups. Some shows were shown live, or outside or in other “socially distant” ways, sometimes letting audience members connect with the cast. Radio theatre festivals were broadcast. Digital, and even crowd-made musicals were created, such as Ratatouille the Musical. Filmed versions of big musicals, like Hamilton, were put out on streaming services. Andrew Lloyd Webber put out recordings of his musicals on YouTube.

Because of the closing and loss of ticket money, many theatre groups were in danger. Some governments gave emergency help to the arts. Some musical theatre markets started to open again in steps by early 2021, with West End theatres moving their opening from June to July, and Broadway starting in September. Through 2021, however, increases in the pandemic caused some closings even after markets opened.

Main article: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and entertainment industry

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and entertainment industry

Subdivisions

The main subdivisions of musical theatre include musical comedy, operetta, Golden Age musicals, megamusicals, rock musicals, and jukebox musicals.

Social themes

The main themes explored in musical theatre have included racial tolerance, acceptance of minorities, homosexuality, antisemitism, and historical American racism.

Awards

Notable productions

Notable composers and lyricists

Notable performers