Well, I was wondering if anyone likes musical theatre? I, for one, love it-Les Miserables is my favorite musical as of now (yes, I know; horribly mainstream, but it’s amazing nonetheless), as well as The Last Five Years, even though I don’t know about that one very well. My favorite Broadway stars are Michael Crawford (the man is AMAZING. Flawless. Perfection) and Kristin Chenoweth (ditto).
OT: Musical theatre
I 
LOVE musicals. My DH just took me to see Irving Berlin’s White Christmas in Detroit for Christmas.
I saw a ton when I was growing up and some of my all time favorites are Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, and Singing in the Rain
I love musicals, but unfortunately most of them are to expensive for a student. I’ve seen miss saigon, the lion king and some smaller musicals like tsjechov and fame and I loved every one of them (although I liked the lion king best)
I love musicals, I’ve seen so many I don’t think I could pick a favorite (Les Mes, Phantom, Damn Yankees…I love them all)!! Being orginally from CT (and not far from NYC) my mom and I used to go on Wednesdays to get 1/2 price tickets in Times Square for musicals. I’ve seen dozens of shows this way, its such a great deal if you want to go to Broadway but are on a budget.
I haven’t seen anything in years but I used to go to shows with my Mom a lot when I was in HS and college. I’ve seen Les Miserables, Phantom, Miss Saigon, Sunset Boulevard, The Secret Garden, and Beauty and The Beast. I’m trying to convince my DH that we should go see the Lion King when it comes to town this summer.
ETA: I forgot about Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat! With Donny Osmond! How could I forget?
My brother’s a music major, but last year (his senior year of high school), he had the lead role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and I got to be the accompanist! That was loads of fun. Fiddler on the Roof and Pirates of Penzance (does that count as musical theater?) are two of my favorites.
Oh, and my mom taught Kristen Chenowyth when she was in middle school!
I’m not too keen on musicals, although I do love just about everything by Stephen Sondheim. I love the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, which I know are operettas and therefore not technically musicals but they are wonderful and very accessable. And I love…opera. Does this make me a music snob? I hope not.
Nadja xxx
I’m a musicals snob - Sondheim rules, Lloyd Webber makes me cringe. (My mother is the same.) I’ve seen three productions of Sweeney Todd (original B’way, revival with Bob Gunton, can’t remember when exactly that was, latest revival with Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris), just saw the revival of Company on B’way in November, two NY revivals of Pacific Overtures (1985 or so and last year), the original B’way Sunday in the Park in 1984 (twice) and one revival here in Chicago, Passions in NY and Bounce in Chicago (didn’t like either… has Stephen lost his touch?)… that might be it, I’m spacing at the moment…ETA: A Little Night Music, productions at my college and at City Opera! I did, I admit it, enjoy Cats when I saw it on B’way in 1982, but I can’t bear it now…
I guess I’ve seen a lot of other musicals, some fabulous (Nathan Lane in Guys and Dolls and A Funny Thing Happened… oops, that counts as Sondheim too…), some forgettable (the amazing Mandy Patinkin in The Secret Garden, Nathan Lane in a concert version of something I can’t even remember the name of…), one of my all-time favorites, 1776 (National Tour in 1971 or so, revival on B’way in the late 1990s), A Chorus Line (late late late in the original run), a revival of My Fair Lady in the mid-1970s (Ian Richardson as Higgins), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (original B’way and a production in Toronto), the original original Annie (pry those songs out of my brain with a crowbar…), La Cage Aux Folles (eh… not good)… and I do adore Gilbert & Sullivan, including the Linda Ronstadt-Kevin Kline Pirates - first place I ever saw Kline, back in the late 1970s was it?
Er… OK, enough of that. Suffice to say, yes, I like musicals…!
ETA: OMG, I just remembered I saw a production of Forum in Scotland in the early 1970s with Phil Silvers as Pseudolus, when I was a kid!
Was that the one that was on Broadway around thinks 12 years ago?
My dad and his then-girlfriend took me to see it, because I loved the book.
I, er. Fell asleep.
I LOVE Les Mis so much that I’m attempting to slog through the book. :waah: I also LOVE the soundtracks to Rent and Songs for a New World, though I’ve never seen them. Tommy was good, and I think that about sums up the musicals I’ve seen. Oh, wait, saw “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” with Matthew Broderick, but I was 10 and remember nothing. :teehee:
I love musicals, and since I live just an hour north of NYC, I’ve been to many shows. One I remember really well was in the 70’s, my dad took us to see Two by Two, starting Danny Kaye. Kaye had a broken leg, but since he didn’t use understudies, he performed anyway. When I looked it up on the internet, it said he used a wheelchair, but I remember him dancing on stage in his cast. It must have been a pretty good show if I remember that far back!
We really want to go see Wicked this year, but getting tickets is ridiculously difficult …
Oh, and how could I forget SPAM-A-LOT!
I was lucky enough to see it with the original cast last April. For FREE.
I really want to see Evil Dead the Musical and sit in the splatter-zone. :teehee:
“This is my BOOM-STICK!”
If it does, we can be snobs together! I grew up with opera–my dad sings, and has a fantastic voice. Now that I’m taking voice myself, nothing makes me happier than working on an aria…I’m working on some from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro right now, which I wasn’t familiar with before. I only knew the Rossini version. There’s just so much darned beautiful music out there!!
Was that the one that was on Broadway around thinks 12 years ago?
My dad and his then-girlfriend took me to see it, because I loved the book.
I, er. Fell asleep.
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1993, apparently: http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4640 And the very funny thing is that, as I somehow dimly remembered, John Cameron Mitchell was in it! Not quite the sort of thing he’s doing now! :roflhard:
Yeah, I don’t remember it much, and I too loved the book as a kid. It certainly had a good cast, though!
Oh, about opera… I know almost nothing except that I adore (time to groan at the obviousness, opera buffs!) La Boheme and weep (inexplicably, to me) at the end. Saw it at City Opera about eight years ago. I have NO idea why it happens, and it’s such a damn cliche… but it does! :shrug:
(I really liked the Baz Luhrmann production, too - saw it on PBS a while back and need to get a copy of it.)
Hey, nothing wrong with Boheme! I think those are some of the most beautiful melodies in all of opera. And it’s such a tragic story! Of course you’re weeping! Who isn’t?? :teehee:
To be honest, I think they could probably sing the phone book to the music at the end of Boheme and I’d still weep - something about it just breaks my heart… and I realize it’s nothing new or extraordinary (think Cher in Moonstruck! :teehee: ), but I just find it so odd to watch myself every time… even just to think about the ending…gulp… :pout: I was listening to it on my Walkman at work once and almost bawled while sanding wood in the shop! :teehee:
One of my first trips into NYC was in 1972 at age 15 to see Pippin with Ben Vereen Irene Ryan (Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies). That whole experience transformed my life. I had, up until that time, rarely ventured outside of my little city in eastern CT and it opened a whole other world for me. I went on to see the Ritz with Chita Rivera, Irene with Debbie Reynolds, the original Sunshine Boys, Chorus Line and Bette Midler in the Half shell review among others. I also saw a lot of drama in those years-Henry Fonda playing Clarence Darrow and Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst in a Moon for the Misbegotten. Not long ago I found the ticket stub for that first show: It cost me $4.50.
Hello everyone! This is my first post on here, but I’ve been reading the forum for about a month now. I saw this thread and had to post.
I love musicals! As of right now, musical theatre is what I intend on majoring in, but I still have another year to change my mind. I was recently in the chorus of a local community theatre production of Once Upon a Mattress, and I am currently rehearsing for the role of Schroder in You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. Forum auditions are in the late spring, and I cannot wait.
Yesterday, I went to go see Into The Woods, and the cast did an amazing job. That show is one of my favorites. It is rumored that they will be doing it at the theatre where I did Mattress next year. I hope it works out. A local college is currently rehearsing for Sweeny Todd; I can’t wait to see that.
Some of my other favorites include Little Shop of Horrors, The Last Five Years, and Rent. Now, I know this is very mainstream, but I also love Wicked. I know it’s not the greatest show out there and is quite over-rated, but there is something about it that I can’t get enough of. After listening the CD and watching YouTube videos of the show, I got to see it this fall in Portland with Shoshana Bean and Megan Hilty. It was a good show. I also have tickets for Aida and Hairspray, which are two shows I don’t know very much about, but I’ve heard good things about both.
Anyway, sorry for the randomness/disorganization of that post. Future ones will be of better quality. I just love to talk about musicals. 
Jeremy, my mother just asked me if I want to see Kevin Spacey and Colm Meaney in Moon for the Misbegotten when we’re in town again in May… I did say no (other choices were Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking, which I really want to suffer through, er, I mean see [I suspect intense depression…] and Jefferson Mays in whatever Jefferson Mays is going to do, I don’t care what it is, he was so brilliant in I Am My Own Wife that I don’t care!). I’m not a huge O’Neill fan, to be honest (my mother is) - I saw Glenda Jackson in… damn, forgetting the name, the one where they keep addressing the audience directly - which was parodied in a Marx Brothers movie :teehee: - and Brian Dennehy in Long Day’s Journey at the Goodman in Chicago before it acquired V. Redgrave on Broadway. I just… :shrug: I don’t know, I just find myself wishing the plays would be over. I felt the same when I finally saw Death of A Salesman (the Dustin Hoffman production on B’way, with John Malkovich as Biff, IIRC) - I just couldn’t understand why attention must be paid!
md21, I think incoherent rambling is a requirement of postings about the theater! :teehee: I envy you your involvement in the theater!
ETA: How could I have forgotten Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson in Anna Christie!? I think Rip Torn and Anne Meara too, maybe? Don’t remember caring for the play, but that was when Neeson and Richardson first met and became involved and the chemistry was certainly there. Then again, I was convinced Neeson should have seen me in the audience and gone for me…
I still remember the TV ads for Pippin… man, that must have run forever, because I think that was in 1976! And I think Ben Vereen was still in it? (I never did see it though - probably a big mistake!) But anyway, wasn’t that the first musical they did TV ads for?