Glad to see The Play that Goes Wrong and Secret Garden mentioned. Two that haven’t been mentioned yet-The Bridges of Madison County-I saw it on the national tour-it had mixed reviews on Broadway but I really enjoyed it , and I also loved Cinderella.
Liked some of the usual suspects-Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Beautiful, Waitress.
Seeing Another Country decades ago in London was great , with Daniel Day-Lewis .
Didn’t enjoy Hair or Rent as much as I thought I would, given how popular they are. Wouldn 't really be interested in seeing either of them again.
Phantom, in Toronto. Colm Wilkinson played the Phantom.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Donny Osmond, waited outside after the show and had my picture with him. He was in a car with the window 1/3 of the way down.
Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin. I was about 8.
But honestly, I love musical theater and am rarely disappointed. Lion King and Cats are my least favorites.
Just scored some last minute available tickets to Hamilton on Memorial Day weekend. 4th time to see it.
I saw Mary Martin in Sound of Music on Broadway…it was my very first Broadway Musical show. I was maybe 12. My grandfather took me…and also wanted me to see a straight play so,took me to Rhinoceros…which had this really fabulous cast…Eli Wallach I believe…but what a weird show for a preteen to see. I totally didn’t get it!
I generally dislike musicals unless they have tons of tap-dancing. That said, I fell in love with Cabaret when it was a movie and saw the Alan Cummings version on Broadway. I actually thought it was interestingly different and much more true to the original story. (Liza was way too charismatic for that part really.)
My equally musical hating husband and I also really enjoyed Spamalot. In fact we went twice because we miss the first ten minutes the first time.
My favorite Shakespeare play is Twelfth Night - I’ve seen it many times. The first time was at the Folger Theater in Washington DC in 1972, From a NYT’s article about some of those early Folger productions:
I have seen too many shows in my life to go over but I have fond memories of seeing both Fiddler and Hello Dolly with Carol Channing as a kid, maybe 5th grade or so with my parents as part of big family outings. My parents had many musical soundtracks and grew up listening to scores from Pajama Game, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Sound of Music and so on. Saw many summer stock productions of all these shows and if anyone else out there recalls the days when Jones Beach theater did musicals, I saw many. As far as Fiddler, the current off-Broadway show production in Yiddish is outstanding, I recommend highly. Really enjoyed the Bette Midler Hello Dolly because mostly what I remember about the show with Carol Channing is the staircase and the Hello Dolly number.
In more recent years, Chorus Line with original cast and then the revival, Man of La Mancha which I saw original and then revival, Les Mis, several times and productions, 1776 at the Roundabout, a family favorite, so many shows with Bernadette Peters including Gypsy, Annie Get Your Gun, so many Sondheim shows including Patti LuPone in Sweeney Todd and Company revival with Raul Esparza and at Barrington Stage revival, more summer stock in NH with family on summer vacation, Ragtime both original and revival and at Barrington Stage, Wicked, the night after it opened which happened to be Halloween so many in costume, Cabaret 2x with Alan Cummings and so on and so on and multiple shows with Audra McDonald. More recently loved Come from Away.
Only show I ever considered walking out on was Cats. Couldn’t understand why this was such a huge hit. Took kids when they were younger and what a major disappointing experience.
So to add to my post above, I have to give a shout-out to Hadestown. I haven’t seen the Broadway production but saw it off-Broadway at NY Theatre Workshop, one of my favorite theatre venues in NYC. It is so inventive and I understand the B’way production is outstanding. So I tend to see more plays these days than theatre and I have to also recommend What the Constitution Means to Me… so outstanding, so timely, such an inventive use of theatre and extended into August, also appeared at NY Theatre Workshop.
I love musicals. I have seen lots and lots of theater. When I was growing up, about 90 miles from NYC, it would be a treat to go to NYC to see a show on Broadway. I’ve lived most of my adult life in Vermont and my daughters grew up not only doing musical theater, but they saw a ton of theater. Both sets of grandparents took them to see Broadway shows (we did too), and they saw lots of tours, regional theater, plus community theater and school and theatre camp productions. They live in NYC now and so do I, the place for theater!
While not naming specific productions, some of my favorite musicals are:
A Chorus Line
Ragtime
RENT
Hair
Gypsy
42nd Street
more recent ones…
Come From Away
Hamilton
Book of Mormon
Beautiful
I didn’t specifically name the shows here, but my daughter is a professional in the musical theater world, as an actor/singer/dancer/musician, and also as a writer, composer, and lyricist. Honestly, I love her work! I hope people here will enjoy it too.
PS, I listen to the Broadway Channel on Sirius Radio whenever I drive my car, including for 6.5 hours today!
Les Miz Third National Tour - Proctor’s Theater Fall of '89 - I was a senior in high school and was blown away. Even better than when I saw it 10 years later on Broadway.
Evita - Also national tour at Proctor’s circa 1991 or 1992
Wicked - Sept. 2015 on Broaday. Took my daughter for her birthday and fortuitously caught Caroline Bowman’s last weekend as Elfaba. (Kicking myself I never got back to NY to see her in Kinky Boots before it ended) Kara Lindsay was also unforgettable as Glinda.
Altar Boys - Cape Playhouse July 2018. (Dennis, MA) Phenomenal. Absolutely hilarious. Even the cranky kids loved it.
White Christmas - Fulton Theatre, Lancaster, PA Dec. 2014. Another show even the cranky kids loved.
We’ve seen a number of great shows at the Fulton, but I especially enjoyed “The Mystery of Irma Vep” last Halloween. Incredible 2-man show with 8 characters. Yes, the 2 actors play all 8 characters - male and female alike. They were absolutely masterful!
My Phantom of the Opera experience in Los Angeles was disappointing. Will have to try again sometime. Saw “An American in Paris” on Broadway a few years ago. It was great. Not one of my all-time favorites, but I’m glad I got to see it.
Man I love plays!
First Broadway play I saw was “Chorus
Line “. 40 years ago? Amazing.
Les Miserables—London—we had worst seats in the house -and everyone in our party fell asleep from heat and plain fatigue. Except me. I was totally entranced.
Wicked —my birthday present. Best ever.
Hamilton—didn’t think I’d like it but loved it instead.
I really enjoy local community theater—it’s very small setting with great talent.
Christmas Carol at this small company called Trinity Rep.- they are great and the cast includes MFA candidates from Brown. Its a joint program with them (for any aspiring actors or parents out there).
They change the period and location for the play on occasion - one particularly good year was set in an early 20th century factory town in the USA.
Oh, and Motown on Broadway - mostly for the audience sing-alongs, especially the men serenading their wives. It was almost an immersive experience. So fun!
Most memorable theater performances (starting with recent and going back):
Come From Away (saw it in February)
Hamilton 2016? original cast (got to go backstage–my D was a classmate of an actor in the ensemble)
Death of a Salesman 2012 Broadway revival with Philip Seymour Hoffman
Book of Mormon Broadway 2011
Mama Mia 2005 (in Madrid, Spain in Spanish–loved it)
Wicked Broadyway 2003 Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel
The Producers 2001 Broadway with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick
Cabaret
First play I ever saw was at the Goodman Theater in Chicago.
I saw a ton of musicals over the years at our local community theaters. We started getting season tickets including our kids from when they were 4 & 6 years old, i believe. We sat in the front rows, by the orchestra and the kids were enraptured.
When we were in NYC, we saw Sunshine Boys with a famous actor I can’t now remember. It was OK. We also saw Bernadette Peters — it was mostly her on stage the whole play and her voice just struck me as VERY strident.
In Bath,UK, we saw Raquel Welch in Millionairess. It was blah but at least we knew we had seen her.
In Vegas, we saw Sigfried & Roy and the famous lovely white tigers & their amazing magic show. It was indeed very good.
All in all, I think I mostly like our intimate community theaters for viewing shows—there are really no bad seats and generally there is great talent on our stage. Also the prices are low and the money stays in our state.
