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

[Link Larkin Wanabe]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 12:55pm

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

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 1:00pm

RENT and FLOYD COLLINS

[iRuvPrinceton]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 1:01pm

Rent, definately.

[Link Larkin Wanabe]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 1:03pm

Hah...Rent is pretty much a given...I'm looking for others...Borstalboy, I was going to cover Floyd Collins in my "more experimental" section of the talk.

thanks guys...keep 'em coming

Akiva

[CapnHook]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 1:14pm

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.

[Link Larkin Wanabe]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 1:17pm

Thanks so much for your suggestions CapnHook...I am definitely going to talk about musicals to movies and visa versa, and that relationship over the past few years.

Akiva

[sean martin]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 1:54pm

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.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 1:58pm

I truly believe AVENUE Q is. Regardless of the plot and everything else, its pivitol for its use of puppetry.

Puppet shows used to be IT! Not only would children go to and enjoy them, but adults as well.

AVE Q brought them back. (You could argue LION KING - but they were more costumes).

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

[pab]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:02pm

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".

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

[sean martin]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:03pm

Sorry, really cant agree about PRODUCERS and HAIRSPRAY (well, and the inevitable WICKED, for that matter). Yeah, they were movies turned into musicals, but so what? DAMN YANKEES was based on a book,. I DO I DO was based on a play. TWO BY TWO was based on the Bible. Turning things into musicals from other media is no major stretch; Broadway's been doing that for years. But if you're gonna talk shows that really changed the course of Broadway, you have to be far more discerning and consider what, exactly, made that show unique and pivotal in the medium's history.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:07pm

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.

[Jon]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:08pm

TWINTIETH CENTURY was based on a play which laster became a movie.

TWO BY TWO waas actually based on Clifford Odets' play, THE FLOWERING PEACH

[pab]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:09pm

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.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:13pm

No - I believe they DID start the trend because of how successful they were.

Others have done it and failed, such as SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Not so much a box office success.

But PRODUCERS and BEAUTY & THE BEAST and LION KING and HAIRSPRAY - they all racked in the numbers.

[pab]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:28pm

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.

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

[WOSQ]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:47pm

Artistically musicals from 1990 on have evolved slowly and somewhat timidly. The Lion King is not that good of a show wrapped in a spectacularly good production for instance. Many shows are Sondheim imitations both vivid and pale. Even Sondheim hasn't had a financial success since Into The Woods (87) and before that, Night Music (73).

No, I'd aim for how the musicals have been marketed. How hit shows used to run for two years and tour for one more and make a tidy profit all around.

Now shows need to run 3-4 years to make a profit and sometimes they fail to pay off. The job is now getting people to part with increasingly large sums of money to go see a show that might not be that good.

How much of the theatre-going dollar does it take to get people into the theatre? Examine advertising campaigns in print, tv, radio and/or web.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 2:47pm

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)

[BlueEyedKate]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 3:20pm

First, I gotta say RENT, but for a different reason. RENT was one of the first musicals, IMO, that looked at more of a "alternative" lifestyle in a mode of art that had long been viewed as stuffy and frequented by people with money. It looked at the problems of modern day society (i.e., the AIDS pandemic, drugs, acceptance of sexual orientation) in non-tinted glasses. It opened the world of live theatre up to an entirely new audience, and RENT's grit and substance lied in stark contrast to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals that focused on the glitz and the glamour.

Second, I'm going to say Beauty and the Beast - it was the first time an animated film had been made into a musical (to my recollection), and it did two major things. (1) it lead the Disney invasion of the Great White Way (the Lion King and Aida), and (2) it showed that not only can you take a movie and put it in live theatre form (something that has been done for a number of years), but moreover, you can take something that was drawn on paper and move it into a theatre and have it be a success.

I would also go into the revival craze - during the 1990s, there was a ton of revivals of earlier plays.

[Westopher]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 3:40pm

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?

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 3:43pm

Instead of just focussing on the modern musical and it's impact on *Broadway* per se, you should also talk about how it's impacted pop culture in general.

For that, I would say that RENT, the Producers and Mamma Mia are the most influential shows of the '90s. Particularly with The Producers and Mamma Mia, it became such a phenomenon that it was a mainstream recnogizable production even OUTSIDE of the NYC/Bway circle.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 3:55pm

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).

[sean martin]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 4:36pm

>> I would say that RENT, the Producers and Mamma Mia are the most influential shows of the '90s

RENT perhaps, but THE PRODUCERS? C'mon, people had been asking Mel to adapt it for the stage since the film came out in the last 60s. If it was influential, it was on the basis of being the first show to break the $100 barrier, but beyond that, it was all marfketing.

MAMMA MIA? A jukebox show based on the songs of ABBA? It had sure-fire hit written all over it and was simply a reflection of the then-current craze for nostalgia. It's no different from FEVER or FAME or FOOTLOOSE, for that matter.

No, the shows in the 90s that were influential were the ones that demonstrated the power of marketing. PIPPIN opened the doors for that, and certainly it got exploited a bit more through out the 70s and 80s, but in the 90s, it became an art form unto itself. Face it: you never saw hardbound books about a specific Broadway play's production until PHANTOM. Now, every Disney musical is greeted with some lavish edition. RENT had its own as well. Mysteriously, so did TITANIC. One might say that the develop of the 90s was in the publishing industry.

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 4:48pm

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.

[sean martin]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 5:43pm

Not to quibble, but that's nothing new. Before movies became blockbusters and rock groups became superstars, folks outside NY knew about Broadway shows thanks to sheet music, photospreads in TIME and LIFE and LOOK, 78 recordings (which were treated with the same reverance as opera recordings, actually). Broadway shows provided fodder for popular recordings (which is how a number of Gershwin and Porter songs became accepted standards). Getting known outside the NY area isn't anything new, just a reinvention.

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 11/4/04 at 5:51pm

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.