Greek/Roman Mythology
Stephen Sondheim’s first Broadway musical for which he wrote the music and the lyrics was based on Plautus’ farces and was called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to this Roman public square.
Fprum
Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote these two musicals based on Bible stories, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New Testament.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar
Hamlet was used in part as the basis for a Disney animated feature which became this Broadway musical.
Lion King
Hamilton: An American Musical, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, depicts the life and death of Alexander Hamilton who dies in a duel with this US Vice President.
Aaron Burr
A character in High School Musical says, “A dream deferred and all that,” referring to Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem”; this play by Lorraine Hansberry takes its title from the same poem.
A Raisin in the Sun
Romeo and Juliet is based on this tragic Greek love story which is also humorously performed by the Rustics in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both by William Shakespeare.
Pyramus and Thisbe
Cotton Patch Gospel, with music and lyrics by Harry Chapin, and Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell are mostly based on this book from the New Testament.
The Book of Matthew
The musical West Side Story is based on this Shakespeare play
Romeo and Juliet
The Crucible by Arthur Miller addresses the theme of guilt by accusation in the Salem Witch Trials and by allegory condemns hearings held by this congressional committee.
The House Un-American Activities Committee or McCarthy Trials
Albert Einstein meets this title character, a Spanish painter, at a bar in Paris called the Lapin Agile, in a comedy by Steve Martin.
Pablo Picasso
Eurydice, a play by Sarah Ruhl, is based on this mythological love story where Eurydice’s husband descends into Hades to retrieve her
Orpheus and Eurydice
Like the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, in Paddy Chayefsky play Gideon, the Israelites defeat 120,000 Midianites with this many men.
300
Tom Stoppard borrows characters from this Shakespeare play for his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Hamlet
Eight of Shakespeare’s English history plays cover this civil war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York.
The War of the Roses
Pointillism is the subject of Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Sunday in the Park with this painter.
George Surat
The Gospel of Colonus is an African-American musical version of the second play by Sophocles about this Greek king who killed his father and married his mother.
Oedipus
Oscar Wilde wrote the story of Salome who is famous for this dance and its gruesome reward
Dance of the Seven Veils and the head of John the Baptist
Return to the Forbidden Planet is a jukebox musical, based on this Shakespeare play and the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet which is also loosely based on the play.
The Tempest
The Pacific Theatre in this war is the backdrop for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical South Pacific.
World War II
Art by Yasmina Reza focuses on the fracturing of a friendship over what constitutes art, when one of them buys a painting that is completely this color.
White
Eugene O’Neill wrote a collection of plays called Mourning Becomes Electra based on a classic Greek trilogy about this king.
King Agamemnon
J.B., written by American playwright and poet Archibald MacLeish, is a modern retelling of the story of this biblical figure.
Job
Because Tom writes poems on shoeboxes at work, his coworkers call him Shakespeare in this classic American play by Tennessee Williams.
The Glass Menagerie
Playwrights who have depicted events from the life of this famous French saint include George Bernard Shaw, Maxwell Anderson, Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht, and William Shakespeare
Joan of Arc
The musical My Fair Lady is based on Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw which, in turn, is based on the Greek myth about this type of artist who falls in love with his work of art.
Sculptor