When you're older, you'll come to realize that some of the greatest theatrical experiences of your life have been in plays and musicals that are not on your arbitrary and meaningless "Tier 1" list: whether because of a performance or a dazzling production or a moment that captures your imagination.
A production of "tier 2" play that captures a spirit or re-creates an era or simply allows an actor or a pair of actors or an ensemble of actors to do great work may very well be among your most prized theatrical memories.
They are of mine.
I remember, in high school, going to a Saturday matinee of a British play called Home, by David Storey, a playwright who seemed very Tier 1 for a bout a year or two but whose works are relatively forgotten now.
The play was set in a mental asylum, although that was the big surprise at the end of the show (sorry, spoiler). Setting plays in mental asylums seemed immediately profound back then.)
But the two stars were the elderly Sir John Gielgud and the even more elderly Sir Ralph Richardson. It doesn't matter that the play was not "Tier 1." I realized when I left that I might never again experience such thrilling interplay between two of the greatest actors of their day.
(It turns out I did--several years later, the two men came back to Broadway in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, both of them even more elderly but still at the tops of their games. The play was, arguably, more Tier 1 than Storey's Home, but it wouldn't land on your list either.
I could go on.
A word to the DecoTodd who sat next to the teenage girls who groaned at Betty and Adolph's "forced" humor: Betty and Adolph's humor was sketch humor to begin with, like Saturday Night Live. You either enjoy the silliness or you don't.
But I learned long again not to judge the world by what teenage girls find funny.
As to the posters who failed to be excited by the dancing in On the Town, all I can say is that I wish for you to learn a little more about what dance is and has been and can be. Broadway dancing doesn't get much better than what you saw on that stage. You'll won't see much that's much better than that--in your lifetimes.
