Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
JurassicTheatreLover
Joined: 3/4/26
#1Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 3:46pm
Any big new glamorous ones on the way? I miss real sets and big orchestras.
#2Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 9:36pm
Yes, they'll still pop up sometimes but they'll be the exception not the norm. Especially for new musicals.
#3Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 9:41pm
Someone fed it after midnight, your honor.
ER765
Featured Actor Joined: 3/12/14
#4Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 9:46pm
JurassicTheatreLover said: "Any big new glamorous ones on the way? I miss real sets and big orchestras."
HELLO? MODS? How many aliases is this troll going to be able to make?!
#5Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 9:57pm
Sorry I haven't been on the board as much recently and didn't realize. Didn't mean to feed the troll.
ER765
Featured Actor Joined: 3/12/14
#6Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 9:59pm
Mr. Wormwood said: "Sorry I haven't been on the board as much recently and didn't realize. Didn't mean to feed the troll."
So not your fault or problem. This troll multiplies, regardless if you feed it or not.
#7Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 10:38pm
JurassicTheatreLover said: "Any big new glamorous ones on the way? I miss real sets and big orchestras."
Not unless IATSE somehow decides to throw in the towel.
ER765
Featured Actor Joined: 3/12/14
#8Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 10:40pm
Ensemble17591322022 said: "JurassicTheatreLover said: "Any big new glamorous ones on the way? I miss real sets and big orchestras."
Not unless IATSE somehow decides to throw in the towel."
So you really just come on here, log in and out of your aliases, and talk to yourself…?
Seek help.
#9Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 10:53pm
ER765 said: "Ensemble17591322022 said: "JurassicTheatreLover said: "Any big new glamorous ones on the way? I miss real sets and big orchestras."
Not unless IATSE somehow decides to throw in the towel."
So you really just come on here, log in and out of your aliases, and talk to yourself…?
Seek help."
Huh?
7thbighero
Stand-by Joined: 11/9/15
#10Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/5/26 at 12:01am
Go to Vegas. Because if you need lavish sets and big casts to stimulate your brain, you don’t have the capacity to appreciate art.
#11Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/5/26 at 12:11am
7thbighero said: "Go to Vegas. Because if you need lavish sets and big casts to stimulate your brain, you don’t have the capacity to appreciate art."
God forbid people expect sets and cast members to sit on those dozens of massive stages with three-storey prosceniums. Let’s knock them all down and put black boxes in their place - why keep them if we can’t expect them to be used for that which they were built?
7thbighero
Stand-by Joined: 11/9/15
#12Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/5/26 at 12:36am
Ensemble17591322022 said: "7thbighero said: "Go to Vegas. Because if you need lavish sets and big casts to stimulate your brain, you don’t have the capacity to appreciate art."
God forbid people expect sets and cast members to sit on those dozens of massive stages with three-storey prosceniums. Let’s knock them all down and put black boxes in their place - why keep them if we can’t expect them to be used for that which they were built?"
So you need to look at stuff? Not the story? Performances? The material?
We have seen time and time again that more isn’t always better.
SteveSanders
Broadway Star Joined: 3/29/25
#13Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/4/26 at 8:44pm
True, but we've also seen the power of great stories and songs in inspired settings ... l the elements of a production reinforcing and amplifying the others into something where the whole is more than the some of its parts.
I imagine many people on this site can easily recall sets that contributed to the success of a production. Some were no doubt lavish and grand, but others were simpler yet still memorable and evocative.
GirlFromOz68
Featured Actor Joined: 10/1/22
#14Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/5/26 at 2:57am
JurassicTheatreLover said: "Any big new glamorous ones on the way? I miss real sets and big orchestras."
Have you stopped to think why there aren't as many shows with real sets and big orchestras right now? its the expense of doing that for a lot of shows, not an aesthetic choice like Jamie Lloyd for example.
I can think of two currently running revivals that would likely have had more real sets, larger orchestras and more elaborate costumes if all of those things weren't so expensive right now.
It comes down to putting on the show with the minimalist set, less elaborate costumes and a smaller orchestra for a capitalisation of $15-20 million or not putting the show on at all as they know they wouldn't have a chance of recouping $25-30 million with all the bells and whistles.
iluvtheatertrash
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/9/04
#15Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/5/26 at 7:16am
7thbighero said: "Go to Vegas. Because if you need lavish sets and big casts to stimulate your brain, you don’t have the capacity to appreciate art."
1) Scenic design is an art form.
2) Lots of people can appreciate both, but we've had a deluge of minimalism lately and some people miss the lavish sets.
3) Try, just a little, being less of an arrogant, condescending snob. You catch more bees with honey.
#16Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/5/26 at 7:51am
iluvtheatertrash said: "7thbighero said: "Go to Vegas. Because if you need lavish sets and big casts to stimulate your brain, you don’t have the capacity to appreciate art."
3) Try, just a little, being less of an arrogant, condescending snob. You catch more bees with honey."
Thank you. The type of post you're responding to is what makes this board so deeply unpleasant.
"Michael Riedel...The Perez Hilton of the New York Theatre scene"
- Craig Hepworth, What's On Stage
Theatrefan2
Stand-by Joined: 3/27/22
#17Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/6/26 at 1:20am
The way people here are dismissing a whole section of the theatre industry as unimportant and an irrelevant art form in performance and storytelling, is wild!
Even if this thread was started by a 'troll', the actual post make a valid point and some peoples reactions are worse than any troll in this instance.
RippedMan
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/14/05
#18Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/6/26 at 2:12am
As someone who enjoys production value, i think it depends what you mean by big? Like big stories (Les miz) or big productions? I’d say Maybe Happy Endingd is the newest show with a giant production value. But big sweeping shows might be trending out.
JayVenclaw
Swing Joined: 1/8/24
#19Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/6/26 at 9:47am
Maybe Happy Ending has EXCELLENT production value as does Death Becomes Her (both in the last year). And not every show NEEDS that overly produced production design. Oh, Mary got it perfectly right with its “flimsy” design because it’s a flimsy show but it’s about camp and being ridiculous. It’s perfect the way it is and if it had more production it wouldn’t have been the right choice.
Wrapping up: let the designers design and either spend your money on the product or don’t. If you have the money to provide the production with lavish sets, you’d love being a producer!
#20Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/6/26 at 10:41am
Big musicals never left. Great Gatsby is crammed with sets and pyrotechnics, Lost Boys is attempting a Spider-Man level of immersive special effects. What's changed is that most musicals are shooting for a midbudget instead, and the current musical theatre sounds rarely demand casts of sixty or more and an orchestra over 25 pieces the way they used to.
If you think every new musical is Two Strangers or Mincemeat levels of pared-back intimacy, you're just raising a strawman. The average musical is not a super-spectacle with a cast of thousands, but we're certainly getting some ponderously huge shows nearly every season still.
#21Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/6/26 at 1:53pm
I do think there have been a few too many musicals of late where the set design didn't feel like minimalism was a design choice so much as a budget concern. We see this a lot with revivals that start at Encores. The current Ragtime is stunning, but to me that is true in spite of its design which doesn't add much to the show. The Into the Woods and Once Upon a Mattress revivals similarly felt underbaked in terms of set design.
For me, this season's most disappointing designs have to be Chess and Two Strangers. In my opinion, Chess feels like an Encores production from top to bottom minus maybe the neon sign and the bed that raises through the floor. And Two Strangers, for me, feels like a designer's first idea. "It opens in an airport, so...luggage?" I am CERTAIN more thought went into it. And plenty about how that set unfolds and reconfigures is clever. That said, I really didn't enjoy looking at it.
But as others have mentioned, while minimalism is a touch more dominant than in other eras, we're certainly still seeing shows with eye-popping sets. Look no further than Stranger Things. Or, as mentioned, Maybe Happy Ending. Or let yourself remember that sometimes minimalism can be incredibly beautiful and deeply warranted. I feel like the designers who have been working with Jamie Lloyd and (less recently) Ivo van Hove consistently find incredible beauty even with relatively stark design.
All of this said, I would absolutely kill to see another set as impressively OTT as John Napier's original Sunset Boulevard! :)
#22Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/6/26 at 5:33pm
There've been plenty of musicals on Broadway with big production values in the last few years-- they just haven't been that good. I'm thinking of NEW YORK, NEW YORK; QUEEN OF VERSAILLES; BACK TO THE FUTURE (and I'd include GREAT GATSBY and MOULIN ROUGE in that list too although that's a minority opinion, I know.) It's a bummer when the most fabulous sets accompany a less than great show, but Broadway has always been thus. Shouldn't we celebrate the great designs on great shows like MAYBE HAPPY ENDING and DEATH BECOMES HER all the more for their rarity?
#23Big Musicals - Will They Come Back
Posted: 3/7/26 at 9:23am
Sauja said: "I would absolutely kill to see another set as impressively OTT as John Napier's original Sunset Boulevard! :)"
Absolutely!
"Michael Riedel...The Perez Hilton of the New York Theatre scene"
- Craig Hepworth, What's On Stage
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