British set and costume designer who won five Tony Awards for his work on Broadway, four of which were for musicals. Broadway musical credits include Cats (1982, Tony for Best Costume Design), Les Misérables (1987, Tony for Best Scenic Design), Starlight Express (1987, Tony for Best Costume Design), Miss Saigon (1991), Sunset Boulevard (1994, Tony for Best Scenic Design), and Jane Eyre (2000).
Singing actor who played Wally in I Love My Wife (1977), Stone in City of Angels (1989), and Billy Flynn in the 1996 revival of Chicago. He won Tony Awards for City of Angels and Chicago.
(7 November 1910, New York, 136 performances.) Music by Victor Herbert, lyrics and book by Rida Johnson Young. Commissioned by opera impresario Oscar Hammerstein for his Manhattan Opera Company, Naughty Marietta was one of Herbert’s finest scores, written for some of the best voices ever to appear in any of his shows. Emma Trentini played the title role, a young noblewoman who flees a bad marriage by going to Louisiana. There, she meets Captain Richard Warrington (Orville Harrold). They are attracted to each other but decide they cannot be lovers. She also meets Etienne Grandet (Edward Martindell), who is also the murderous pirate “Bras Prique.” Warrington leads a search for the pirate and finally wins Marietta’s attention, but she will fall in love only with a man who can finish a mysterious melody that has haunted her for years. Warrington does this by singing “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.” Other highlights included the coloratura “Italian Street Song,” the romantic “I’m Falling in Love with Someone,” and the march “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.” The unsigned review in the New York Times called Trentini “phenomenal,” Herbert having written her a part that “would tire any prima donna to sing every night.” The 1935 film version, with a radically altered plot, starred Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.
(Born Beatrice Neuwirth, 1958–.) Dancer, singer, and actress who made her Broadway debut as a replacement Sheila in the original production of A Chorus Line, joining the cast in 1980. She played Boom Boom Girl in the 1982 revival of Little Me, Nickie in the 1986 revival of Sweet Charity (for which she won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical), and Lola in the 1994 revival of Damn Yankees before dazzling audiences as Velma Kelly in the 1996 revival of Chicago, a role that won her a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. On 31 December 2006, she returned to the still-running Chicago revival, this time as Roxie Hart, and played Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (2010). Neuwirth has also appeared on film and television, her most famous role being Dr. Lilith Sternin on Cheers and its spin-off, Frasier.
Located at 214 West 42nd Street, the New Amsterdam Theatre opened in 1903. Built by Klaw and Erlanger, the lavish art nouveau venue was home to the Ziegfeld Follies from 1913. It became a movie palace in 1937. Disney bought and refurbished the theater in the 1990s, choosing The Lion King (1997) to inaugurate the rejuvenated house. Mary Poppins (2006) and Aladdin (2014) followed.
(16 May 1952, Royale, 365 performances.) Music and words mostly by Ronny Graham, June Carroll, Arthur Siegel, Sheldon Harnick, and Michael Brown; sketches mostly by Graham, Peter DeVries, and Melvin Brooks; entire production devised and staged by John Murray Anderson. Broadway revues often launched the careers of young performers, but few have included as many future luminaries as New Faces of 1952. The cast included Robert Clary, Alice Ghostley, Ronny Graham, Eartha Kitt, Carol Lawrence, and Paul Lynde. Among the sketches were send-ups of Death of a Salesman and Gian-Carlo Menotti’s opera The Medium, the Oliviers forgetting which play they were acting, and an impersonation of Truman Capote. Brooks Atkinson, writing for the New York Times, observed that “summer nights may not be so desolate after all.” He found Ghostley “a funny ballad singer and clown,” and Kitt “looks incendiary but she can make a song burst into flames.” He also praised the show’s literate qualities and staging.
(14 May 1957, 46th Street, 431 performances.) Music and lyrics by Bob Merrill, book and staging by George Abbott, dancers and musical numbers directed by Bob Fosse. Eugene O’Neill’s play Anna Christie was hardly the typical source material for a musical, but Abbott and his fellow creators made New Girl in Town sufficiently interesting to allow it to run for more than a year. Gwen Verdon played the title role of Anna, a prostitute trying to recover from tuberculosis and get out of her profession while living with her father, the barge captain Chris (Cameron Prud’homme). Anna falls in love with Irish seaman Mat (George Wallace), but he deserts her when he learns of her former life, although they reconcile by the final curtain. Thelma Ritter played Marthy, Chris’s comic companion. Brooks Atkinson, writing in the New York Times, fretted about the show’s ambiguous tone. He described the musical portions as “lively and gay,” but the show also reminded him that O’Neill’s play “is a wonderful bit of American stage literature.” Merrill wrote some “illuminating songs,” especially three for Verdon: “It’s Good to Be Alive,” “If That Was Love,” and “Did You Close Your Eyes?” Atkinson found Ritter “extraordinarily funny” and thought that Fosse’s dances brought “revelry when the musical comedy formula needs it.”
(19 September 1928, Imperial, 518 performances.) Music by Sigmund Romberg; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; book by Hammerstein, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab; produced by Mandel and Schwab. The last of the great operettas of the 1920s, The New Moon was set in 1780s Louisiana, echoing the time and place of Victor Herbert’s Naughty Marietta. Robert Misson (Robert Halliday), a French aristocrat charged with treason for not supporting the monarchy, escapes to New Orleans, where he falls in love with Marianne Beaunoir (Evelyn Herbert), the daughter of the landowner on whose plantation he works. Robert rallies other dispossessed men around him in the rousing march “Stouthearted Men” and, after overtaking a bride ship, eventually establishes a democracy on the Isle of Pines. Marianne finally admits her love for Robert in the concluding scene as French envoys arrive to announce that France is now a republic, and the entire company offers a stirring reprise of “Stouthearted Men.” Romberg wrote some of his most famous music for The New Moon, including the love duet “Wanting You,” Marianne’s waltz “One Kiss,” and the evocative “Lover, Come Back to Me.” Another of the score’s hits was the tango “Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise,” sung by Philippe as an expression of the scorning power of love. Robert’s valet, Alexander (Gus Shy), and Marianne’s maid, Julie (Marie Callahan), provided comedy in fast-paced songs, such as “Gorgeous Alexander,” as did Clotilde (Esther Howard), the polygamist leader of the bride ship who tattoos her name across the chests of her husbands. Two film versions of the operetta exist, both titled New Moon, one from 1930 starring opera stars Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore and the other from 1940 with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.
Almost since its opening in 1943, New York City Center, located at 131 West 55th Street, has produced revivals of historically significant shows. In 1994, it established the important Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert series, which consists of semistaged revivals of notable Broadway musicals. New York City Center began two other series as a result of the success of Encores!: Summer Stars (2007) and Encores Off-Broadway (2013).
Annual awards for best play, best musical, and best foreign play (although the exact categories vary depending on the season) offered by a group of 20 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines, and wire services in the New York metropolitan area. The group’s founding came in 1935 with awards the following year, but the first citation for the best musical did not come until 1945–1946, when Carousel won. The Drama Critics’ Circle does not give an award if they do not consider there to be a show worthy of the prize.
(8 December 1930, Broadway, 168 performances.) Music and lyrics by Cole Porter, book by Herbert Fields. Based on a story by E. Ray Goetz and Peter Arno, The New Yorkers had all of the makings of a successful musical comedy, but it ran only about five months, partly because of the deepening Great Depression. The cast included several major names, including Hope Williams, Charles King, Ann Pennington, Richard Carle, Marie Cahill, and Jimmy Durante. Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians were also part of this potpourri.
The show included amoral characters and a nightclub atmosphere, prefiguring Pal Joey. The cynical plot revolves around New York socialite Alice Wentworth (Williams), who falls in love with the bootlegger Al Spanish (King). Brooks Atkinson reported in the New York Times that the show is “as overpoweringly funny as a weak-muscled theatregoer can endure.” He described several of Durante’s stunts, noting that he “delivers a knockout blow every ten seconds and ruins all the props in sight.” Porter’s score included the suggestive “Love for Sale,” “The Great Indoors,” and “Let’s Fly Away.”
(29 March 2012, Nederlander, 1,004 performances.) Based on a 1992 Disney film that had limited success at the box office but enjoyed a lucrative afterlife on home video, Newsies found an audience and ran more than two years on Broadway. With a story inspired by the newsboy strike of 1899, the show offered appealing, youthful energy and a plethora of athletic dances choreographed by Christopher Gattelli. Director Jeff Calhoun and book writer Harvey Fierstein worked these numbers into a show that the New York Times reviewer believed to be the musical theater equivalent of screaming tabloid headlines. Although not finding Gattelli’s dances especially original, the Times writer admitted that they “have enough raw vitality to command the attention and even stir the blood.” Such terpsichorean prowess from a watchable young cast was enough to help guarantee Newsies a moderate level of success. The Tony Award–winning score was by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Jack Feldman, providing the requisite energetic numbers for the newsboys as they discover the power of unionizing and, in a totally different vein, the combination patter song and inspiring anthem “Watch What Happens,” sung by a young female reporter who takes the side of the newsboys. The cast included Jeremy Jordan as leader of the newsboys, John Dossett as the villain Joseph Pulitzer, and Kara Lindsay as the reporter.
(15 April 2009, Booth, 733 performances.) Next to Normal’s plot focuses on a suburban housewife who suffers from bipolar disorder and the effect this has on her family. It offered a frank depiction of challenges that bipolar disorder poses for not only families but also the medical profession, with treatments including drugs and electroconvulsive therapy. Its gritty realism was enhanced by Tom Kitt’s music and Brian Yorkey’s book and lyrics, described by the New York Times as a “surging tidal score.” The Times reviewer stated that the show was “sensitively directed” by Michael Sach and that Yorkey’s lyrics were “more likely to take the form of questions than answers.” At the center of the show’s success was Alice Ripley as the housewife Diane Goodman, bringing what the Times called an “astounding . . . performance.” Other members of the fine cast included J. Robert Spencer as her husband, Dan, and Aaron Tveit and Jennifer Damiano as her children, Gabe and Natalie. Adam Chanler Berat played Henry, Natalie’s bong-addicted boyfriend, and Louis Hobson played the dual role of Diana’s physicians, Dr. Madden and Dr. Fine. The musical was the first to be performed on Twitter, the popular social media site.
(24 April 2012, Imperial, 478 performances.) Since both nostalgia and the songs of George and Ira Gershwin remain powerful forces in the musical theater imagination, newly created musical comedies that mimic the conventions of the 1920s and use the team’s songs might never fully disappear from Broadway theaters. Directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall and with a book by Joe DiPietro (that borrowed liberally from the plot of the 1926 show Oh, Kay!), Nice Work If You Can Get It was a funny send-up of the musical comedy’s distant past starring two well-known Broadway talents: Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara. Broderick played Jimmy Winter, a millionaire playboy seemingly bored by life until he discovers his love Billie Bendix O’Hara’s bootlegger character while dancing with her to “’S Wonderful.” O’Hara played a self-sufficient woman (hilariously singing “Someone to Watch over Me” while holding a rifle) who pretends that she is a Cockney maid at one point. Her fine renditions of Gershwin standards were among the show’s most memorable moments. The excellent cast also included Judy Kaye, Estelle Parsons, Jennifer Laura Thompson, and Matthew McGrath. Marshall made sure that her dancing chorus mastered the Charleston and kept the proceedings moving smoothly, and singers and orchestra handled the score effectively. The New York Times, in a lukewarm review, called the production “good-looking, amiable.”
Soprano for whom Victor Herbert wrote principal roles in his operettas The Serenade (1897), The Fortune Teller (1898), and The Singing Girl (1899). Her Broadway success established, she embarked on an operatic and concert career.
(2 February 1920, Liberty, 313 performances.) Music by Jerome Kern, lyrics and book by Anne Caldwell, produced by Charles Dillingham. Based on a French farce by Alexandre Bisson, The Night Boat had a fine score and ran for almost 10 months. Bob White (John E. Hazzard) is a husband who pretends to pilot a night boat up the Hudson River to Albany, when he really was having an extramarital fling. One night, his suspicious wife (Stella Hoban) and mother-in-law (Ada Lewis) sail on the craft to check out his story. White steals a uniform from a captain with the same name, but his story breaks down elsewhere. The unnamed reviewer in the New York Times found the story “conventional,” but it “moves briskly and breezily.” The critic noted that Hazzard looks “more like William Jennings Bryan than ever” and that Lewis “is a terrifying if grotesque mother-in-law.” Kern provides tunes “which will be popular,” such as “Left All Alone Again Blues,” “Whose Baby Are You?,” and “A Heart for Sale.”
(20 September 1930, Majestic, 137 performances.) Music by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Irving Caesar, book by Otto Harbach, directed by J. J. Shubert. Set in Peru, the operetta was the tale of Nina Rosa Stradella (Ethelind Terry) and attempts to take over her gold mine. The score’s highlights included “Nina Rosa,” “Payador,” and a created version of an Incan religious ceremony.
(9 May 1982, 46th Street, 729 performances.) Music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, book by Arthur Kopit, directed by Tommy Tune. Based on Italian director Federico Fellini’s film 8 1/2, Nine was one of director-choreographer Tune’s most ambitious efforts. The show was about a film director, Guido Contini (Raul Julia), who struggles through a midlife crisis, spent largely in his head, where he analyzes his relationships with females. Besides a boy playing young Guido and some playmates, the remainder of the cast consisted of 21 women, including Guido’s dead mother (Taina Elg); his wife, Luisa (Karen Akers); his mistress, Carla (Anita Morris); and the woman who sexually initiated Guido, Saraghina (Kathi Moss). The set consisted of a white-tiled spa; each woman had her own pedestal. Guido solves his problems as the audience watches his memories, dreams, and thoughts come alive in routines reminiscent of the Folies-Bergère and comic operas, with generous amounts of sexual imagery. Frank Rich of the New York Times gave Nine a mixed review, noting that anyone interested in Broadway will have to see the show for the “rich icing” of the imaginative musical sequences, but called it a “complex mixture of ecstatic highs and crass lows.” He described Yeston’s score as “a literate mixture” of traditional Broadway songs and opera, but his lyrics can be “pedestrian.” Antonio Banderas starred in the 2003 Broadway revival.
(30 April 2009, Marquis, 148 performances.) Based on the 1980 film of the same name, 9 to 5, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton, had a short Broadway run but found continued life in touring productions and in regional theaters. Allison Janney, Stephanie J. Block, and Megan Hilty played the three legendary female employees at Consolidated Industries who execute revenge on their boss, played by Marc Kudisch. Ben Brantley panned the show in his New York Times review, calling it a “gaudy, empty musical.”
(16 September 1925, Globe, 321 performances.) Music by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, book by Harbach and Frank Mandel. One of the most famous musical comedies of the 1920s with huge hits from its score and a successful revival in 1971, No, No, Nanette had extended runs in a number of cities prior to its arrival in New York. Louise Groody played the title role, an independent-minded young woman. Her guardian is Jimmy Smith (Charles Winninger), a Bible publisher with sidelines that are less than scriptural. Nanette’s boyfriend is Tom Trainor (Jack Barker), who finds himself stretched by her thinking. All confusion relents when Smith’s wife (Eleanor Dawn) shows up and cleans up her husband’s act and makes sure that Tom and Nanette get to the altar. The show nearly died in Detroit but was improved with a new cast and fresh material, including two hugely popular songs: “Tea for Two” and “I Want to Be Happy.” The unsigned review in the New York Times is brief but illustrates why No, No, Nanette was so popular: the plot was secondary to the songs and the “energetic cast of well selected comedians.”
(15 March 1962, 54th Street, 580 performances.) Music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers, book by Samuel Taylor, staged and choreographed by Joe Layton, presented by Rodgers in association with Taylor. Famous as the one show for which Rodgers wrote both music and lyrics, No Strings was a critical success that ran for about 17 months. Diahann Carroll played Barbara Woodruff, a successful African American fashion model in Paris. She meets and falls in love with David Jordan (Richard Kiley), an American novelist who has spent six unproductive years in Paris since winning the Pulitzer Prize. They break up briefly when Jordan discovers that Woodruff has a wealthy admirer, but they are soon back together. The writer decides, however, that he must return to his native Maine to be able to write again. He does not wish to attempt to have a biracial romance in the United States, nor does she want to leave her lucrative career. David Hays designed stylish scenery and lighting inspired by photographic props. The show opened and closed with “The Sweetest Sounds,” sung by Carroll and Kiley, a lovely tune that served as an effective framing device. Other memorable songs included the title song, “Nobody Told Me,” and “Look No Further.” Ralph Burns’s orchestrations included no strings, not only keeping with the title but also giving the orchestra a distinctive sound. Howard Taubman raved in the New York Times, noting that Rodgers as a lyricist “is good enough to walk—and sing—alone.” He found the music enchanting but Taylor’s book too lightweight and sentimental. Carroll “brings glowing personal beauty to the role . . . and her singing captures many moods.” He especially praised her rendition of the angry blues, “You Don’t Tell Me.” Kiley was “forthright and warm-hearted,” and Taubman praises other members of the cast as well.
Writer, librettist, and lyricist who won the 1991 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for The Secret Garden (1991). She also wrote the book and lyrics for the short-lived The Red Shoes (1993) and the books for The Color Purple (2005) and The Bridges of Madison County (2014). Norman won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play ’night, Mother.
British director whose work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre has earned him tremendous respect. He brought many of his British productions—both musical and nonmusical—to Broadway. Nunn created a major Broadway dance show with choreographer Gillian Lynne in Cats (1982) and cultivated the operatic muse in Les Misérables (1987), Sunset Boulevard (1994), and The Woman in White (2005). Other Broadway credits include Starlight Express (1987), Chess (1988), Aspects of Love (1990), and Oklahoma! (2002 revival). His lyrics appeared in the revue André DeShield’s Haarlem Nocturne (1984).
(12 December 1985, Cherry Lane, 3,672 performances.) Music by Michael Rice, written and directed by Don Goggin. A light, delightful piece poking gentle fun at Catholicism, nuns, and life in general, Nunsense became the second-longest-running show in off-Broadway history (after the perennial The Fantasticks) and extremely popular around the country. The premise is thin but entertaining. The Little Sisters of Hoboken throw a variety show to pay for the multiple funerals of their late colleagues, all of whom died of food poisoning in the school cafeteria. The show contained ample puns and gags. The variety show and act of putting it on provides opportunities for singing, dancing (ballet and otherwise), clowning, and even ventriloquism, the latter performed by one sister with her dummy a likeness of the Reverend Mother. Herbert Mitgang of the New York Times was appreciative if perhaps a bit surprised at the show’s silliness. For including such stunts “as putting a Carmen Miranda fruitbowl hat over a nun’s wimple,” he suggested that the writer should “do penance.” The 1994 sequel Nunsense II pushed the concept too far and ran for only 149 performances.