Posted: 10/9/16 at 12:08pm
What was the first musical you ever saw, whether it was Broadway, community theatre, or something in between? For me, it was my cousin's middle school production of Annie when I was 8.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 12:14pm
Bye Bye Birdie, at my cousin's high school production. I think I was 6 or 7. The Telephone Hour was very strong, and was an early influence on my fascination with musical theatre
Posted: 10/9/16 at 12:43pm
I think the earliest was either Beauty and the Beast or Grease at a local dinner theatre, but that might have been after I was already in high school. The earliest musicals that really stuck in my mind were the 4 that my high school put on while I was there from 2000 - 2004 - Pippin, R&H's Cinderella, A Chorus Line, and West Side Story. I had never heard of Pippin and A Chorus Line before my school did it, and I remember hearing a lot of people acting surprised that a high school would do ACL. My first actual show on Broadway was Avenue Q.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 12:46pm
Peter Pan with Mary Martin and soon after the version with Cathy Rigby played nearly non stop in my house when I was 2. I memorized the whole thing phonetically. I'm not that big of a fan of that show now though.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 12:54pm
I think I performed in a musical before I ever actually saw one. I think the first one I saw was a college production of A Chorus Line.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 1:27pm
Fiddler On The Roof -1971 - Broadway Theater
Posted: 10/9/16 at 1:53pm
Phantom of the Opera Los Angeles 1989 My mom took my out of school to go see it.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 2:01pm
Earliest that I can remember was dirty dancing in its first tour when it came to Chicago and the first one I was told I saw was the lion king in London.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 3:25pm
It was either Peter Pan Starring Sandy Duncan or The Sound of Music with Marie Osmond.
I don't remember which came first, I was four or five, and my mother had gotten a season subscription to our local touring house for myself and her. We also saw The Nutcracker that year which became an annual tradition. So thanks Mom for exposing me to the arts at such a young age!
The next play I remember seeing was when I was six. My babysitter was starring as Mame in Auntie Mame at her high school (which would eventually become my high school). I remember being floored by the production and making my mom take me back to see every performance. Seeing someone I knew and looked up to performing on stage and becoming someone completely different was the first time I understood what an actor was and knew from that moment on that that's what I was meant to do.
My babysitter was brilliant and a star in the making. She is what I imagine seeing someone like Meryl Streep in a high school production was like. However, She didn't go into acting professionally and is now a Russian Literature Professor at Harvard. Her Drama teacher and director of that production would become my high school drama teacher and mentor. My sophomore year, the fall play was Auntie Mame and it was the first time since that production he felt he could revive that show and he would talk about how brilliant she was and how upset he was when she turned down her audition with Juilliard. I played Patrick in that production and until the conversation he had with our cast about her performance—he didn't know that she was my babysitter and that I was the little kid in the front row at every performance that he still remembered to that day. :)
Posted: 10/9/16 at 3:26pm
National tour of Promises, Promises at Chicago's Shubert Theater. The leads were Scooter Teague and Melissa Hart. First show in a Broadway house: Two Gentlemen of Verona at the St James. First summer stock show: Kismet with John Raitt.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 3:35pm
A Chorus Line, original Broadway cast.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 3:39pm
The tour of IN THE HEIGHTS.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 5:45pm
National tour of Cats in 1987. I loved it!
Posted: 10/9/16 at 6:11pm
I was 11 years old in 1967 when the senior campers at my Jewish summer camp (Camp Ramah in the Poconos) mounted a magical production of SOUTH PACIFIC, all in Hebrew of course. I was smitten. That same year I saw my first show on Broadway, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF then starring Harry Goz.
(There's sort of a theme here--I lived in Israel in 1971 when I saw the first class HaBimah mounting of THE ROTHSCHILDS, also in Hebrew. Somehow they duplicated John Bury's dazzling Bway set design for that production--wow!)
But of course, movie musicals were a major part of my wonder years anyway: WEST SIDE STORY in '62, MY FAIR LADY in '64, MARY POPPINS in '64, THE SOUND OF MUSIC in '65, OLIVER in '68. Bway musicals were no mysterious thing by the time we actually got to our first Bway outing.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 6:25pm
First show I actually remember seeing was a tour of Annie back in the late 70s. First "Broadway" show I ever saw was actually West End...the original London production of Sweeney Todd. .(Wow!) First actual Broadway show consisted of a weekend of the fluffy Tap Dance Kid (the great Hinton Battle), then La Cage, with the legendary Hearn performance, then the simply legendary Sunday... (Quite a weekend..)
Posted: 10/9/16 at 6:30pm
Fiddler with Zero Mostel on Broadway. I was 10. My first Broadway show.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 6:39pm
HELLO, DOLLY! with Pearl Bailey at the Shubert Theatre in Boston; 1970.
Updated On: 10/10/16 at 06:39 PM
Posted: 10/9/16 at 6:51pm
My high school's production of My Fair Lady when I was 10.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 7:06pm
It was either Annie or My Fair Lady on Broadway. I can't remember which i saw first but it was one of the two.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 7:26pm
My Fair Lady with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. at the Dorothy Chandler, part of LA's Civic Light Opera - 1969.
Posted: 10/9/16 at 9:27pm
The King and I in my high school.
The Crucible off broadway was my first play.
Miss Saigon on broadway was my first musical
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