1931-1954
This show was considered the first American musical with a completely satirical tone. Written in 1931, Herbert Hoover was President, the Great Depression was in its second year, and Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Presidency, and the democratic process itself were all targets of this satire, starring William Gaxton and Victor Moore as President Wintergreen and Vice President Throttlebottom.
Of Thee I Sing
This show was the launching pad for the company 'Flying By Foy', which has been responsible for some of the most technologically challenging flying and visual effects in Broadway for the past 70 years.
Peter Pan
From Hal Princes Journal: Sept. 22, 1967 (New York): Herschel Bernardi and Joe Stein have obviously been having some dish sessions backstage at Fiddler. Each of them has approached me individually about doing _____ as a musical. I can’t for the life of me understand why it interests them. I don’t think I’m crazy to do all Greek music on the stage.
Zorba
Daily Double
Daily Double
You Pay To Pee
Urinetown
This show had a successful tryout in Philadelphia, but the opening night was marred by an ugly incident all too in tune with the times: the stars Clifton Webb, Marilyn Miller, and Helen Broderick refused to take a bow with Ethel Waters. Irving Berlin told the three that he would respect their feelings – there needn’t be any bows at all. The other leads took their bows with Waters at the next show.
As Thousands Cheer
The son-in-law of a professional performer commissioned this musical about his mother-in-law.
Funny Girl
Many people have tried to turn this show about the Founding Fathers into a musical. In 1925, Rodgers and Hart wrote a Broadway musical called Dearest Enemy and in 1950, there was Arms and the Girl, with music by Morton Gould, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and book by Herbert Fields, Dorothy Fields and Rouben Mamoulian.
1776
This show began as a line of greeting cards, and subsequently spawned six sequels, three spinoffs, and one of the longest Off-Broadway runs of all time. Tainted vichyssoise didn't hurt.
Nunsense
This musical was written twice for the same Broadway season, but while one made it to Broadway, this creator's version of the show only lived Off-Broadway
The Wild Party (Andrew Lippa)
The star of this show, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, was credited by both Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller as a teacher and mentor, and he claimed to have invented the word 'Copacetic.
The Hot Mikado
The star of this show, Anthony Newley, stated that he was starring in the show only with great reluctance. In an interview with Kevin Kelly of the Boston Globe, he said, "I want to act in this like I want to shoot myself."
The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd
Originally titled The Girls Upstairs, this musical was to be produced and directed by Hal Prince. He agreed to work on The Girls Upstairs if Sondheim agreed to work on a little-known show called Company. He was "intrigued by the psychology of a reunion of old chorus dancers and loved the play on the word '______'".
Follies
This show was described as one of the first 'bookless book musicals', a first for its age, and explores the everyday struggles of the modern world, from unrequited adoration, to aging, to Muzak.
Closer Than Ever
This rocking musical lifted part of its plot from Twelfth Night and "The Eve of the Feast of Epiphany", where servants dressed up as their masters, men as women, and would lead to the general inversion of the order of things, most notably gender roles.
All Shook Up
This show failed in 1948 due to a musicians' strike, it being a star vehicle show for only Ray Bolger, and the fact that before and after it was in the St. James Theatre, it was sandwiched by two incredibly successful Rodgers & Hammerstein shows.
Where's Charley?
This musical deals with Extrasensory Perception, otherwise known as the Sixth Sense of Cryptaesthesia, but by time the show opened, all fascination with this type of psychology had fallen out ofashion.
On A Clear Day You Can See Forever
During the filming of this musical, Carol Burnett underwent surgery to correct her overbite and align her jaw. As quoted in the Chicago Tribune, she told her director about her concerns. "Mr. Huston," she remembered saying, "Two months ago, when I went into the closet, I didn't have a chin." "Dear," he responded, "just come out looking determined."
Annie
This show was originally written as a movie musical in the 1940s, and was not turned into a stage musical until the 1990s, well after both composer and lyricist had passed away.
State Fair
This musical makes fun of Aladdin, was funded entirely by Kickstarter, and the company behind it has been creating satirical musicals for the past 15+ years.
Twisted
This entire musical exists around the following basis: a 7 1/2 cent per hour wage increase.
The Pajama Game
The source material of this musical was post a night of heated lovemaking (according to the playwright). “Idea for a musical comedy: Girl jewel-thief vs. the world’s greatest detective, or a young rising one.”
Drat! The Cat!
This show started out as a BBC1 Teleplay before being turned into a musical for the West End, running for 77 performances.
Bar Mitzvah Boy
The composer of this musical had this to say about its source: "It's funny," he muses, "some things in your childhood you have total recall, and some things you can't remember at all. I'll never forget that place. It really was elegant. Men got dressed up to walk on the boardwalk. You wore a tie and jacket. Paul Whiteman had a casino there, and Isham Jones was playing in our hotel. It had three movies going and a circus, and there was dancing at night. The memory of that is still with me. So when we started working on this, the whole thing had a resonance just for me."
Steel Pier
While writing this show, the creatives decided that the show should focus on something highly prevalent in today's society: social Media, and its impacts.
"We all noticed a really fascinating, bizarre phenomenon of public grieving on social media. Whenever a celebrity would die or something really tragic would happen, there was this outpouring online of people kind of making it about themselves."
Dear Evan Hansen