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  4. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

  The biggest commercial hit in Broadway history, The Phantom of the Opera was a monster hit in London, and, as soon as casting snafus were untangled, was a pre-sold hit by the time it opened on Broadway in January of 1988. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lush musical treatment of Gaston Leroux’s Gothic horror tale played smartly to the romantic notions inherent in the story and yielded some gorgeous music, including the Phantom’s haunting “The Music of the Night,” heroine Christine’s elegy for her father, “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,” and the clever Puccini pastiche of “Prima Donna.”

  The book and lyrics (by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe) were not up to the level of Lloyd Webber’s music, but the brilliant scenery and costumes of Maria Bjornson, and Harold Prince’s masterful direction, gave the eye much to take in, and the presence of the Phantom, commanding in a deceptively small role, has assured the show’s long-running success. Oh, and that Phantom mask logo sells a LOT of T-shirts and key chains.

  5. LES MISÉRABLES

  The recently-closed Les Misérables was a profiteer of the 1980s Brit-popera phenomenon. About as non-American a musical as you could create, Les Miz began life as a French (really? Wow!) pop spectacle, adapted from the Victor Hugo novel, which attracted the attention of London’s Royal Shakespeare Company. The superb RSC staging, by Trevor Nunn and John Caird, was picked up for a commercial run by eight-hundredpound gorilla Cameron Mackintosh, and it is still running in London today.

  Broadway audiences clamored for the next big thing (especially since the last two Tony winners had been the not-hot, not-sexy, not-foreign Big River and The Mystery of Edwin Drood), and Les Miz set a singleday ticket record when the box office opened in January 1987, and rode high for years as the Broadway engagement settled in, and folks who missed it on tour made a New York field trip to see it.

  Interestingly enough, deep into the run, the show’s production team canned its entire Broadway cast and retooled the show considerably, citing a terrible staleness to the proceedings. Most long-running shows do attempt to “freshen up” from time to time, but Les MisÉrables, in performing a major overhaul on cast and script, went the extra yard and, as a result, ran an extra six years.

  6. OKLAHOMA!

  The first super-hit musical, and rightly so, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! was a cultural phenomenon that changed the way the Broadway game was played. Oklahoma!’s wartime success, unprecedented for any musical, forced Broadway audiences literally at gunpoint to accept and embrace the Rodgers and Hammerstein concept of the integrated musical play and abandon the crudely constructed musical comedies that filled Broadway before it.

  Oklahoma!’s startlingly original stagecraft was wedded to what Oscar Hammerstein called a “heartiness” and a simplicity of message that wartime audiences craved. Word-of-mouth built, as it does with all hits, and Oklahoma! became a template for all the Broadway musicals that followed, both onstage and, thanks to the business acumen of producer Theresa Helburn’s Theater Guild, offstage as well.

  7. NUNSENSE

  Teeny-tiny seems to be the way to succeed off-Broadway. Like The Fantasticks before it, Nunsense is a very small show with a very simple premise. Also like The Fantasticks, Nunsense creator Dan Goggin probably owns a small island by now. By the time it closed it had racked up 3,672 perfromances and spawned countless sequels (including an all-male version, Nunsense A-Men!)

  Goggins’s show—about a small group of nuns (from, uh, Mt. Saint Helen’s School) holding a talent show to raise money—is totally tongue in cheek, yet not really blasphemous (unless an occasional PG curse word knocks your lights out) or disrespectful, and a fairly innocuous evening. Religious groups have obviously gotten a huge kick out of it, and lay folk must get a charge out of seeing roller-skating, ventriloquist nuns as well.

  8. GREASE

  Yet another “little musical that could,” Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s tale of better living and loving through doo-wop ran for over eight years, ending its run in 1980 as the all-time long-running champ, with 3,388 performances. From inauspicious beginnings at Chicago’s dingy Kingston Mines club to the heights of Broadway is a strange journey.

  Grease is notable not only for its long run and the inexplicably popular film version, but it also had a monstrously successful revival in 1994, with many non-Broadway performers like Brooke Shields, Maureen McCormick, Mickey Dolenz, and Jon Secada slipping into and out of the not-exactly-Shakespearean roles of hot-rod guys, good girls, and Pink Ladies.

  9. MY FAIR LADY

  My Fair Lady’s success came at a time when America was on top of the world, and Broadway shows were very chic. The biggest hit of the 1950’s, My Fair Lady was what the pundits called a “snob hit,” but without the snobbery. A revival of Shaw’s Pygmalion might have received polite nods of approval, but a musical version adapted by Lerner and Loewe? Starring Julie Andrews? Cha-ching!

  Like Oklahoma! and South Pacific before it, My Fair Lady was a status symbol show, one that people arranged their lives around in an effort to see. The presence of the My Fair Lady cast album in one’s den gave one social Brownie points, and well, dear, if you had tickets, would you like to run for PTA president?

  10. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

  Fiddler on the Roof surpassed Hello, Dolly! to become the all-time longest running musical in Broadway history (not surpassed until Grease, many years later). Many elements, not the least of which was its quality, combined to make it a 3,242-performance success.

  Fiddler was produced by Hal Prince, staged by Jerome Robbins, with score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick and book by Joseph Stein. It starred Zero Mostel. Mercy! But as brilliantly crafted a show as it is, Tevye and his daughters ran forever for two big reasons. One reason was the success with the theater party business, which caters to large ticket-buying groups, many of which are Jewish and play right into the hands of a Jewish-themed show like Fiddler. The other, larger reason was the warm-hearted universality of the show, which was embodied by its magnificent opening number, “Tradition,” which placed the Russian-Jewish village of Anatevka firmly in the Neighborhood of Man. Such loving care assured that the show would play in Oslo, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires as well as Broadway’s Imperial Theater.

  Index

  Abbott, George: The Boys from Syracuse, 65, 175; Damn Yankees, 46; Music Is, 179; Pal Joey, 268; Where’s Charley, 185–86; On Your Toes, 217

  actors, who write, 219–22

  Adams, Edith, 26

  Adams, Lee, 27, 50

  Adler, Richard, 45, 179

  The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, 261–62

  Agron, Salvador, 103

  Ahrens, Lynn, 39, 243

  Aida: The Musical, 69–70

  Ain’t Misbehavin’, 194, 215

  Aldredge, Tom, 75

  Aleichem, Sholom, 172

  Alexander, Cheryl, 101

  Alexander, Jason, 225

  Allegro, 265

  Allen, Debbie, 227

  Allen, Jonelle, 176

  Allen, Peter, 103

  All My Children, 75

  All That Jazz, 93–94

  Amadeus, 93

  Amsterdam, Morey, 74

  Andersen, Hans Christian, 242

  Anderson, Maxwell, 127, 150–51, 169

  Andersson, Benny, 7–8, 48, 149–50

  Andreas, Christine, 216

  Andrews, Julie, 108–9, 114, 237, 279

  Andy Capp, 29

  animals, musicals about, 240–45

  Animaniacs, 257–58

  Annie, 24, 112–13, 165

  Annie Get Your Gun, 49

  Ann-Margret, 115–16

  Antoinette Perry Award, 1–6

  Anything Goes, 57–58, 160–61

  Apolinar, Danny, 211

  Applause, 167

  Arden, Leslie, 66

  Aristophanes, 159

  Arlen, Harold, 88

  Armitage, Richard, 53, 214

  Arnaz, Desi, 46, 205
/>   Arnaz, Lucie, 205

  Aronson, Boris, 111, 266, 273

  art forms, other, musicals on, 196–200

  Ashman, Howard, 51, 102, 121

  Assassins, 102

  Astaire, Fred, 92

  Atkinson, Rowan, 258

  Audley, Eleanor, 260

  Avenue Q, 209–10

  Ayers, Lem, 40

  Azito, Tony, 53

  Babenco, Hector, 208

  Babes on Broadway, 94

  Baby, 194

  Bacall, Lauren, 140

  Bach, Sebastian, 136–37

  Bacharach, Burt, 81

  back stage: movies, 91–94; personnel, 31–37

  Bacon, Lloyd, 92

  Bailey, Pearl, 88

  Baker Street, 67–68

  Bakshi, Ralph, 30

  Ball, Lucille, 111, 130, 205

  The Ballad of Little Jo, 191

  Ballard, Kaye, 90

  Banderas, Antonio, 143

  The Band Wagon, 92–93

  Barnum, 196

  Barrie, J. M., 205

  Bart, Lionel, 166

  Bart, Roger, 2

  Bates, Kathy, 165

  Battle, Hinton, 259

  Beach, Gary, 188

  Beatlemania, 182–83

  Beatles, 148

  The Beautiful Game, 46

  Bee Gees, 154

  Bell, David H., 28

  Bells Are Ringing, 118

  Benedict, Paul, 263

  Bennett, Michael, 5–6, 34; A Chorus Line, 270–71, 275–76; Company, 266; Dreamgirls, 197; Scandal, 248

  Benton, Robert, 27

  Bergmann, Ingmar, 246

  Berkeley, Busby, 92, 94

  Berle, Milton, 254

  Berlin, Irving, 49, 97

  Bernstein, Leonard, 38, 54, 83, 171, 174

  Besoyan, Rick, 218

  The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, 79–80

  The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, 132–33, 247

  Bettelheim, Bruno, 21

  Big, 40–41

  big business, musicals about, 76–82

  Big River, 10, 161

  Billy, 160

  Bjornson, Maria, 68, 276

  Blake, Eubie, 269

  Blazer, Judy, 106

  Blitzstein, Marc, 58, 88–89, 92, 147

  Bobbie, Walter, 222

  Bock, Jerry, 16, 79, 98, 123, 253, 279

  Bolger, Ray, 185

  Bosley, Tom, 123, 144

  Boublil, Alain, 66

  Bourne, Matthew, 229

  The Boys from Syracuse, 65, 175

  Bracken, Eddie, 46, 245

  Bramble, Mark, 98, 196

  Bravo, Luis, 229

  Braxton, Toni, 135

  Brecht, Bertolt, 58, 147–48

  Brennan, Eileen, 218

  Breuer, Lee, 168

  Brice, Fanny, 119

  Bricusse, Leslie, 67, 136, 141, 237

  Bridge, Andrew, 68

  Brigadoon, 23, 172

  Brightman, Sarah, 68

  Bring Back Birdie, 181

  Bring in ’da Noise Bring in ’da Funk, 230–31

  Brittan, Robert, 96

  Broderick, James, 205

  Broderick, Matthew, 2, 74, 205

  Brook, Peter, 190

  Brooks, Mel, 94, 156, 188, 245

  Brown, Jason Robert, 106, 195

  Brynner, Yul, 63, 119–20

  Buchanan, Jack, 93

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 259

  Bufman, Zev, 239

  Bullmoose, General, 166

  Burgess, Anthony, 60

  Burke, Johnny, 149

  Burnett, Carol, 112–14, 165

  Burr, Charles, 157

  Burrows, Abe, 41, 76

  Burton, Kate, 203

  Burton, Richard, 203

  Butler, Michael, 214

  Butz, Norbert Leo, 105

  Bye Bye Birdie, 115–16

  Cabaret, 55–56, 117–18, 272–73

  Cabin in the Sky, 170

  Caird, John, 276

  Camelot, 165–66

  Candide, 54, 83–84

  Candy, John, 261

  The Capeman, 9, 103

  Capote, Truman, 88

  Capp, Al, 166

  Carlton, Bob, 177

  Carmines, Al, 211–12

  Carnelia, Craig, 43, 195

  Carnival in Flanders, 149

  Carousel, 151–52

  Carroll, David, 244

  Carroll, David-James, 65

  Carroll, Diahann, 266

  Carson, Johnny, 149

  Carter, Nell, 165, 215

  Carver, Brent, 208

  Carvey, Dana, 72

  Cascio, Anna Theresa, 66

  Casey, Warren, 278

  Casper, the Musical, 27–28

  Cassidy, David, 50, 200

  Cassidy, Jack, 27, 200

  Cassidy, Patrick, 200

  Cassidy, Shaun, 200

  cast albums, 83–90

  Cats, 241, 274–75

  Cavanaugh, Michael, 232

  Celebration, 21–23

  Cervantes, Miguel, 107

  Champion, Gower, 16, 87, 154, 178, 189–90

  Channing, Carol, 109

  Channing, Stockard, 72

  Chapin, Harry, 10–11, 64

  Charisse, Cyd, 93

  Chenoweth, Kristin, 224

  Chess, 7–8, 48–49, 149–50

  Chicago, 210

  A Chorus Line, 210–11, 270–71, 275–76

  Christopher, Sybil, 203

  Chute, B. J., 17, 84

  City of Angels, 197, 198

  The Civil War, 183–84

  Clark, Petula, 138

  Close, Glenn, 91, 142–43

  Coburn, Charles, 151

  The Cocoanuts, 97

  Cohan, George M., 49–50, 125, 220

  Cole, Stephen, 28

  Coleman, Cy: Barnum, 196; City of Angels, 197; I Love My Wife, 249, 253; Sweet Charity, 39; Welcome to the Club, 183; Wildcat, 130

  Colette, 157

  Collins, Judy, 150

  Comden, Betty, 38, 118, 153, 181, 252

  comics, musicals based on, 24–30

  Company, 266–68, 267

  Connelly, Marc, 170

  Connick, Harry, Jr., 103, 104

  Contact, 228–29

  Cook, Barbara, 20, 84

  Corman, Roger, 101

  Cotton Patch Gospel, 64

  Courtenay, Tom, 29

  Courts, Randy, 106

  Coward, Noel, 162, 219

  Cox, Nikki, 226–27

  Crabtree, Howard, 208

  Cradle Will Rock, 92

  Crane, Bob, 260

  Crane, Richard, 163

  Crawford, Michael, 68, 164, 184

  Crazy for You, 54–55, 129

  Cricket, 51

  Crivello, Anthony, 66, 101

  Cross, David, 263

  Crothers, Scatman, 72

  Crouse, Russel, 57

  Crouse, Timothy, 57

  Crowley, Bob, 70

  Crumb, Robert, 29–30

  Cryer, Gretchen, 261

  Cullum, John, 254

  Cumming, Alan, 55

  Curtis, Tony, 97

  Cusack, John, 92

  Cyrano, 60–61; the Musical, 60–61

  Da Costa, Morton, 118

  Dames at Sea, 161

  Damn Yankees, 45–46, 120

  dance captain, 35

  dance musicals, 228–32

  Dance of the Vampires, 184

  Dancin’, 228

  Daniele, Graciela, 105, 193, 250

  Daniels, William, 119, 235–36

  Dante, Nicholas, 210–11, 222, 270–71

  Darin, Bobby, 147

  Darion, Joe, 173, 245

  Darnell, August, 9–10

  Das Barbecu, 131

  David, Hal, 81

  Davies, Ray, 8

  Davila, Diana, 176

  Davis, Bette, 143–44

  Davis, Clifton, 176

  Davis, Frenchie, 135–36

  Davis, Luther, 61


  Davis, Sammy, Jr., 50

  Dead Like Me, 227

  Debbie Does Dallas, 250

  DeLuise, Dom, 262

  de Mille, Agnes, 23, 265, 272

  Dempsey, John, 127

  Demy, Jacques, 157

  DePaul, Gene, 19

  de Shields, Andre, 215

  Destry Rides Again, 129–30

  Diamonds, 51

  Dick, Seth III, 261

  The Dick Van Dyke Show, 74, 259–60

  Diener, Joan, 137

  Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, 135

  diva moments, 233–39

  Doctorow, E. L., 39

  Do I Hear a Waltz?, 253–54

  Dolenz, Mickey, 279

  A Doll’s Life, 181

  The Donkey Show, 178

  Dooley, Paul, 263

  Doonesbury, 25–26

  Doyle, Arthur Conan, 67

  drag, characters in, 185–91

  Drake, Alfred, 61, 157

  Drat! The Cat!, 145–46

  Dreamgirls, 197–99

  Drew, Anthony, 243

  Driver, John, 175, 211

  duelling musicals, 60–70

  Duke, Vernon, 170

  Durante, Jimmy, 233

  Durocher, Leo, 48

  Eagan, Daisy, 4

  Easton, Sheena, 137

  Eastwood, Clint, 132

  Ebb, Fred, 15, 51, 55, 142, 208, 272

  Edwards, Blake, 237

  Edwards, Sherman, 15, 119, 128

  Egan, Susan, 226–27

  Eighty Days, 8

  Eliot, T. S., 241, 275

  Ellington, Duke, 179

  Elton, Ben, 46

  Emick, Jarrod, 226

  Encore! Encore!, 223

  Epstein, Julius J., 40

  Epstein, Philip, 40

  Essex, David, 163

  Evans, Albert, 190

  Everything’s Ducky, 243

  Evita, 113–14, 124–25