AG2 - I am not here to pick on you but some of the statements made are not quite true...
Showboat - first book musical
-No, actually musicals had had books -even serious ones - before SHOW BOAT. There were THE MERRY WIDOW, THE DESERT SONG, THE STUDENT PRINCE to mention just a few.
2.Oklahoma - first musical to use dance
-No, not at all. Musical comedies had always had dance and as for ballet ON YOUR TOES was the first musical to include ballets.
It was, however, Broadway's first blockbuster. Until then no musical had run more than 2,000 performances. Also, virtually the entire score became a hit - not just individual songs.
4.Porgy and Bess - Gershwin's finest/first "black" musical
-No there weer "Black" shows before PORGY: BLACKBIRDS OF 1928, SHUFFLE ALONG etc.
5.South Pacific - one of the first musicals to push boundaries
-Well, didn't SHOW BOAT push boundaries with teh miscegenation scene? Or PORGY by showing a murder - 2 actually - on stage? Or CAROUSEL which kills off its leading man and ends bittersweet?
6.Guys and Dolls - bringing a different sound to broadway
-GUYS AND DOLLS is a great show and deserves to be on the list, but the "sound" of GUYS AND DOLLS was pretty much the sound of Broadway in that era.
7.West Side Story - introducing our finest men on Broadway
-Another classic and deserving but Bernstein, Laurents and Robbins had already had long careers on Broadway. Only Sondheim was introduced to Broadway with this show.
8.Gypsy - perhaps the finest comedy musical
-no argument, and perhaps one of the last great star vehicles.
9.Hair - pushing a new audience in
-I think HAIR didn't so much as try to include younger audiences so much as it tried to cater to them exclusively. Older theatre-goers were alienated by the show's frankness. You could say it was the first Broadway musical that deliberately tried to alienate a portion of the theatre-going audience.
10. Fiddler on the Roof - moving traditional musicals forward to an new era
-Not sure what you mean by this. It was certainly successful but I would be hard pressed to trying of any techniques used in FIDDLER that had not been used before.
11.Hello, Dolly! - Herman's finest and ultra Broadway show tunes
-"Show tunes" had been popular long before Herman came along, and even that 4/4 style had long been a staple. DOLLY was, however, the first musical to use its one hit song - the title song - as a virtual commercial for show.
12.Cabaret - first musical to break away from plots to go into "limbo" and pushing topics for musical
-and perhaps the first times a musical used songs to comment on the action rather than advancing it.
14.La Cage Aux Folles - first successful gay musical
-on Broadway yes, but off-Broadway's MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS had been a huge hit 2 years earlier.
18.Cats - the first of the marketing musical/all family musical
-oh not at all. MERRY WIDOW (1905) was the first heavily merchandised musical: MERRY WIDOW hats, MERRY WIDOW Corsets, MERRY WIDOW dresses, MERRY WIDOW cigars, MERRY WIDOW pins plus sheet music, and records swept the world in the year following the show's premiere. As for an all family show, most musicals in the 40s/50s were considered family shows: SOUND OF MUSIC in particular, and ANNIE predates CATS by at least 5 years.
I would also include:
CAROUSEL - considered Rodgers & Hammerstein's finest score
THE KING AND I - considered R & H's strongest book
KISS ME KATE - Cole Porter's biggest hit and best overall show, even if ANYTHING GOES yielded more hit songs
MY FAIR LADY - Lerner and Loewe's best and the biggest hit of the 1950s
THE MUSIC MAN - for innovative use of dialogue set to rhythm, barbershop quartets, and creative reuse of a tune: Goodnight My Someone morphs into 76 Trombones a scene later - and few people even picked up on it until the two were reprised together late in Act II
Cast albums are NOT "soundtracks."
Live theatre does not use a "soundtrack." If it did, it wouldn't be live theatre!
I host a weekly one-hour radio program featuring cast album selections as well as songs by cabaret, jazz and theatre artists. The program, FRONT ROW CENTRE is heard Sundays 9 to 10 am and also Saturdays from 8 to 9 am (eastern times) on www.proudfm.com
