Broadway dramas.
Dear Evan Hansen is an original musical written by Pasek and Paul, with the book by Steven Levenson.[1]
The musical opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in December 2016, after its world premiere at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC in July 2015 and an Off-Broadway production in March to May 2016.
Fun Home is a musical adapted by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori from Alison Bechdel‘s 2006 graphic memoir of the same name. The story concerns Bechdel’s relationship with her gay father and her attempts to unlock the mysteries surrounding his life. It is the first Broadway musical with a lesbian protagonist.[1]
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, and produced by Cameron Mackintosh. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make what is known as “the Jellicle choice” and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. Cats introduced the song standard “Memory“. The first performance of “Cats” was in 1981.
Les Misérables (pronounced /leɪ ˌmɪzəˈrɑːb/; French pronunciation: [le mizeʁabl(ə)]), colloquially known in English-speaking countries as Les Mis or Les Miz (/leɪ ˈmɪz/), is a sung-through musical based on the novel Les Misérables by French poet and novelist Victor Hugo. Premiering in Paris in 1980, it has music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, with an English-language libretto by Herbert Kretzmer. The London production has run continuously since October 1985 – the longest-running musical in the West End and the second longest-running musical in the world.
Shuffle Along is a musical with music and lyrics by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, and a thin revue-style connecting plot about a mayoral race, written by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles.[1][2]
The piece premiered on Broadway in 1921, running for 504 performances – an unusually long run during that decade. It launched the careers of Josephine Baker, Adelaide Hall,[3] Florence Mills, Fredi Washington andPaul Robeson, and became such a hit that it caused “curtain time traffic jams” on West 63rd Street.[4] A Broadway adaptation, Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, has a book by George C. Wolfe about the challenges of mounting the original production and its effect on Broadway and race relations. It began preview performances in March 2016.
American Psycho is a musical with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. It is based on the controversial 1991 novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis,[1] which also inspired a 2000 film of the same name, which starred Christian Bale. Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman.
Hughie is a short two-character play by Eugene O’Neill set in the lobby of a small hotel on a West Side street in midtown New York during the summer of 1928. The play is essentially a long monologue delivered by a small time hustler named Erie Smith to the hotel’s new night clerk Charlie Hughes, lamenting how Smith’s luck has gone bad since the death of Hughie, Hughes’ predecessor. O’Neill wrote Hughie in 1942, although it did not receive its world premiere until 1958, when it was staged in Sweden at the Royal Dramatic Theatre with Bengt Eklund as Erie Smith. It was first staged in English at the Theater Royal in Bath, England in 1963 with Burgess Meredith as Erie.[1]
God of Carnage (originally Le Dieu du Carnage) is a Tony Award-winning play by Yasmina Reza, first directed by Jürgen Gosch and performed in Zürich on 8 December 2006.[1] It was first produced in English in London on 25 March 2008, in a translation by Christopher Hampton.[2] The play is about two pairs of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park, who meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening devolving into chaos. In 2009, God of Carnage was given the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.[3] God of Carnage won Best Play at the 2009 Tony Awards.
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical’s profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy.[1] The musical broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of “rock musical”, using a racially-integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a “Be-In” finale.[2]
After Miss Julie is a play which relocates August Strindberg‘s Miss Julie (1888) to an English country house in July 1945. In this radical re-imagining of theatre’s first “naturalistic tragedy” the events of Strindberg’s original are transposed to the night of the British Labour Party’s “landslide” election victory.
