I like Oliver and The Sound of Music the best and in fact own them on Blu-ray and DVD.  I also bought the original soundtracks of the movies on CD’s. I have the soundtrack of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, which was one of the finest. Many of the best musicals were made in the 1950’s and 60’s by great artists like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Today there are fewer of them, and they are not often broadcast on television.  It’s kind of sad thing because they are very wholesome and family friendly. I think many people see them as something nostalgic from decades ago, and they have fond memories of them.  🙂

I grew up getting to know the Rogers and Hammerstein type musicals (stage and screen) of my parents' era. We had at least three theatre groups here who put on excellent shows, often at professional level. 

In my childhood Mary Poppins, and then The Sound of Music, came out, with such good singable songs. That's what I expect of a good musical 

Modern musical theatre (since Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice late 1960s on) has a lot of modern music, so if I don't want rap, hiphop or rock, I have to make good choices for myself. I also have to find out beforehand if I'm going to like the subject material and language.

In 2018 I caught some touring shows while living in the north of England. I worked next to a theatre, and went to Legally Blonde (very entertaining if I ignored the omp song), and a couple more. The following year I had an evening to fill, and got the last ticket to The Book of Mormon, after a friend said it was funny and fine. Oops, it was full of a word I hate, and had obscene material. 

Another modern show - which I totally loved - is Come From Away. It has likeable folksy music and some gentle solos. It's sad, beautiful, and caring, with humour and inspiration. (The town in Newfoundland that hosted nearly 40 planeloads of passengers and crews after 9/11)

Local theatres sometimes write their own material, and I have been privileged to visit and work with The Logos Theatre in South Carolina. In the last few years they staged several excellent musicals, including this year's The Scarlet Pimpernel.  [this is the theatre opening their play of The Horse And His Boy this weekend] Their music is much more to my taste.

My current favorite is Hadestown. It's an adaptation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but with bluegrass jazz. The set and general staging are reminiscent of a jazz club with Hermes introducing the plot and characters.

Recently, I've also been enjoying Six: The Musical. It's definitely not one I recommend to most people though because there is a lot of innuendo and it is very much a hip-hop musical. The general concept is the wives of Henry VIII form a band to tell history from their perspective. Each queen's solo is based on the style of a modern pop singer. Catherine of Aragon sings in the style of Beyonce, Jane Seymour in the style of Adele, etc.

My all time fave though is Les Miserables. I've been listening to the 10th anniversary concert album for years.

Les Miserable is a good one, too. I wonder what Victor Hugo would've thought when his two best known novels, Les Miserable and The Hunchback of Notre Dame were made into musicals.  

I think the musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is worth checking out, especially for those who enjoy the original book more than the Disney version.

And the original book of Les Miserable is much longer than the musical version. It has such beautiful music as well.

Even Jekyll and Hyde is worth checking out. The book is a very short read, but the musical is more in depth about the different personalities of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

A Christian school in West Palm Beach, Florida, King's Academy, have put on different musicals that you can actually watch on youtube. Here are some of my favorites:

Here's a Facebook post I made a while back. Hope you guys find it as amusing as my Facebook friends did. 

I've been thinking about my favorite movies which were adapted from stage musicals, The Sound of Music (1965), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Les Misérables (2012.)

Each of them has a historical/political backdrop and a more intimate, personal main plot. All of them are about relationships between parents and children. Each of them features a daughter who has a romantic relationship she keeps a secret from her father. They're all arguably about whether it's ever OK to defy authority. And they're all about someone who is trying to find what God wants them to do with their lives.

What does all this mean?

That I have way too much time on my hands for overthinking things.

Musicals do have a purpose, though a lot of it can be challenging. In Jekyll and Hyde, it's a really hard task to depict the dual personality of Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde, especially in a musical. Even Hunchback of Notre Dame is a huge risk, especially when it's set during the time when church was corrupt.

And some of the songs are really hard to sing, especially hitting the high notes. "Close Every Door" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is a really hard song to sing. It ends on a really high note.

Is opera and operetta included? My two favorites, which have strong childhood memories for me, are The Merry Widow and Carmen. It's mostly the music, though, and not so much the plot. In my adult life, I've grown to like Turandot and The Magic Flute.

Posted by: @cobalt-jade

Is opera and operetta included? My two favorites, which have strong childhood memories for me, are The Merry Widow and Carmen. It's mostly the music, though, and not so much the plot. In my adult life, I've grown to like Turandot and The Magic Flute.

Since we are talking about musicals, opera and operetta count as well. Opera and Operetta was the entertainment people have way before Broadway even existed. I think a majority of operas are tragic love stories.

When it comes to musicals, do any of you prefer musicals with dialogue or without dialogue, like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Les Miserable?

Posted by: @coracle

Another modern show - which I totally loved - is COME FROM AWAY. It has likeable folksy music and some gentle solos. It's sad, beautiful, and caring, with humour and inspiration. (The town in Newfoundland that hosted nearly 40 planeloads of passengers and crews after 9/11.)

Agreed, and I haven't even seen it! (Deterred by a cloud of COVID near the performance site, grr.) Got no closer than the soundtrack and assorted articles.

If you had told someone to try a musical about September 11 as told from Canada's point of view, others might think you'd imbibed the screech. But the Tony Award was well-earned, and they should have won the other seven Tony nominations, IMHO. (No offense to the other nominees.)

COME FROM AWAY witnesses that love is stronger than hate. Also, it's really good.

For the past few days I can't get the song "The Wells Fargo Wagon" from The Music Man out of my head! I've been improvising new lyrics even  

@the-old-maid I bought the CD when I saw Come From Away (in London) and I listen to it from time to time, especially around September 11. I use it to show special respect to all who were involved in USA, in Canada,  abd across the world.  There are always tissues at hand, as it brings tears running down my face in a way other musicals don't.

So we might as well share our favorite aspects of our favorite musicals.

In the musical version of Hunchback of Notre Dame, it's nice to see something that follows the book more closely but still kept in the elements from the Disney version. Though there's not so much detail about the architect of the cathedral like there is in the book.

If I pick an aspect that was added to the musical, they made an another cathedral guard named Frederic as sympathetic and Phoebus's best friend, like Phoebus is portrayed in both Disney and the musical. There's a moment where Dom Claude Frollo tells the guards to seize the cathedral, and Frederic is like, "The laws of sanctuary", making him realize how horrible Frollo was. I think there could have been more sympathetic cathedral guards, but Frederic kind of has a purpose.

In the musical version of Jekyll and Hyde, it's more in depth than it is in the book. It's a dark musical, but the book is actually quite dark as well. It's more in depth about Dr. Jekyll being a well-mannered person and Mr. Hyde being wild and murderous. In the musical he gets so caught up with his experiment and work, he led him further away from his fiancee, Emma Carew. And what she doesn't know that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one and the same. And she's the one who finds him dead after he had killed himself.

Today I have listened to the soundtrack of West Side Story again and was amazed at Leonard Bernstein’s talent.  I wondered if he was the only conductor who ever composed his own music for musicals. He had a great talent for both conducting and composing.  I would highly recommend the recordings of his versions of Beethoven’s symphonies as well as his own music.