Most Influential Musicals of the 90's and the new millenium

I have to do an oral presentation for my Buisiness Communication class in university and I am going to do it on the evolution of the musical from the 90's to the present. I was interested in seeing what you guys felt were the most influential musicals in that period...maybe a ranked list of 10 or twenty or so...and maybe a reason why it was so influential. Also if anyone can think of any trends that developed during that time (ex: Movies made into musicals, the "mama mia, we will rock you, good vibrations" trend).

Hopefully that will give me some ideas and maybe help narrow down my research feild of what I want to concentrate on. Any help would be much appreciated.

Akiva

Rent, definately.

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Your presentation could include Top 10 musicals, and why. Don't have to be Broadway musicals, just musicals in general.

Let's see...

MOULIN ROUGE (got the moviegoers interested in musicals again)

RENT (Rent-heads, got many teens interested in Broadway. The music, etc)

THE LION KING (a reinvented way to do theatre. an already popular story, now live on stage. sold out for years.)

CHICAGO (the movie was highly popular. won oscars. this film sparked interest in producers to do more movie musicals, and more are coming soon: Phantom, Producers, Rent, Hairspray, etc.)

You could also include THE PRODUCERS (movie to musical), WICKED, LES MISERABLES (1987), HAIRSPRAY (movie to musical), CABARET (revival), RAGTIME, MAMMA MIA!, URINETOWN, AVENUE Q.

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LION KING definitely, not only for Taymor's brilliant direction but for the way it was marketed by Disney. (You could also mention the lesser known GREEN BIRD, also directed by Taymor, that influenced visual design in a few productions I've seen since.)

But y'know, it's funny --- beyond that, the pickings get a little slim. The only other shows I can think of that could be considered developmental would be the packaged shows -- SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and that ilk -- that did their part to redefine what is considered a "Broadway" show. The other ones mentioned thus far in the thread -- sure, they were hits, but were they pivotal? Not really.

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CapnHook wrote:

"PRODUCERS & HAIRSPRAY & SAT NIGHT FEVER all because they were non-musical films turned into Broadway musicals. (OK, they were movies with music"

That influence started before the 90's. One example is "On The Twentieth Century".

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Updated On: 11/4/04 at 02:02 PM

I'm not really talking about just Broadway, but entertainment in general: tv, film, and theatre.

Also they weren't the first to do it, they were pivitol because they started a trend, that is not going away. Look what we have coming: MARY POPPINS, CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA (even though based on TV), TARZAN, etc.

Changed Broadway because more producers are now thinking of films to transfer, instead of original musicals.

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CapnHook Wrote:

"Also they weren't the first to do it, they were pivitol because they started a trend, that is not going away."

But that was the point of my post, THEY did not start the trend it's been happening for years.

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Well, the following successful show started out as a book and then became a movie years before "The Producers", "Beauty and The Beast", "The Lion King" and "Hairspray" became Broadway Musicals so I still don't see how they started the trend:

Les Miserables

And I don't think that I should even have to mention "Phantom of The Opera" but I will.

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Updated On: 11/4/04 at 02:28 PM

I think I agree with Pab. They've been adapting movies into stage musicals very regularly and successfully since the 60s:

Sweet Charity (1966 -- Nights of Cabiria)
Promises Promises (1969 -- The Apartment)
Zorba (1969 -- Zorba The Greek; it was a novel first)
Applause (1970 -- All About Ave)
Sugar (1973 -- Some Like It Hot)
Shenandoah (1975 -- Shenandoah)
On The Twentieth Century (1978 -- Twentieth Century; play and movie)
42nd Street (1981 -- 42nd Street)
Woman of the Year (1981 -- Woman of the Year)
Nine (1982 -- Fellini's 8 1/2)
La Cage Aux Folles (1984 -- play and movie of the same name)
Big Deal (1986 -- Big Deal on Madonna Street)
Grand Hotel (1990 -- Grand Hotel)
Meet Me In St. Louis (1990 -- Meet Me In St. Louis)
Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1993 -- film and novel of the same name)
The Goodbye Girl (1993 -- The GOodbye Girl)
Tommy (1993 -- film and concept album of the same name)
Passion (1994 -- Passione d'Amore)
Beauty and the Beast (1994 -- animated film of the same name)
Sunset Boulevard (1995 -- Sunset Boulevard)

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Cats was the longest running, but I don't know how much of an impact this has. I guess it was more family oriented that it appealed to a more general public?

Good points WOSQ. The big story of Broadway is the 90s is how costs increased exponentially and the fact that ticket prices more than doubled in less than a decade, completing changing the tenor of the street and the kinds of shows producers (increasing corporations) were willing to invest in. With runaway costs and the chance of recouping ones investment becoming more and more remote, producers began to rely more on seemingly ""sure-things" that were far less risky artistically. Shows have gotten much smaller in an effort to keep costs down (look at Brooklyn and Avenue Q).

I'd definitely mention that more than ever before, since 1990 the vast majority of the artistically challenging and groundbreaking shows began life off-Broadway, where lower costs make taking risks more feasible. The off-Broadway influence on the Broadway mainstream really started in the late 60s and 70s (Hair, Godspell, A Chorus Line, Ain't Misbehavin), but in the last 15 years more and more new shows have begun life off-Broadway or in regional theatre (Once On This Island, Falsettos, Rent, Bring in Da Noise, Contact, The Wild Party, Parade, James Joyce's The Dead, A Class Act, Urinetown, Little Shop, Avenue Q, Caroline or Change).

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Again, Sean, if you read my post, I said this was NOT because of any particular value they bring to the Broadway stage (I agree with you that they aren't), but because they became recognizable household names that caused mainstream middle America *outside of the NYC/Bway community* to pay more attention to Broadway and cause them to be the box office phenomenons that they are.

This is significant, especially for a Business Communication course. THAT'S what I was saying.

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I'm okay with quibbling because at least you're nice when you disagree with me. You're right though, it was a reinvention, not something new (otherwise POTO, Les Mis, Cats, etc., etc., would be foreign to most people, for better or for worse). So I guess a better assertion on my part is those are the few musicals of the '90s to illicit that response.

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