^Same. Most musicals I have seen only in movie form or local productions. Broadway is a rare treat, years apart between shows, because tickets get more crazily expensive every year and we have a kid to put through college!
Ah yes! Book of Mormon! Saw that on Broadway too, thought it was terrific.
And I never saw American Idiot but we like the music so much we have the Green Day album and the Broadway soundtrack (love the Broadway version of 21 Guns). There was a very interesting documentary I saw a few years ago on the evolution of that album into a theatrical show.
Don’t know how I left out A Chorus Line. It was probably the first show I saw as an adult in 1980 (tour) and I have seen it two or three times since.
We have two community theater troupes in my small town. The oldest one does four shows a year and the newer one occupies its own permanent space and does 10 shows. Both are extremely family friendly (so I’ve seen all the R & H), but both do great shows.
The Lion King on Broadway, circa 2006. The spectacle of the animals entering via the aisles was awesome…the entire theater stood and applauded for the entire procession…and this at the very beginning of the show. Kids were around 4-6 years old, truly magical for them. Julie Taymor is a genius. And Russell Crowe and his family sat directly behind us.
Love theater, don’t always love musicals. Have seen many HS and local productions with my kids and nieces/nephews.
Broadway:
The Ferryman - wonderful play
Oslo (Lincoln Center) - drama
Bruce on Broadway - worth the price for sure
Les Miz - several times on Broadway, once regional, and my kid’s summer production.
Rent
Book of Mormon - so funny yet so inappropriate
Lion King (went with my kids and loved it).
An American in Paris (Lincoln Center)
Hair (in Philadelphia many years ago)
Avenue Q was fun with teens. Jesrey Boys was not something I was all that interested in but went with friends and it was very good. Just recently saw Wicked, which was very good.
I was not a fan of The Band’s Visit.
Wanting to see Hamilton, Beautiful and Come From Away and perhaps To Kill a Mockingbird.
I was born in 1950 and grew up in NYC (Manhattan) and lived there my entire life until college.
One of my childhood memories is of being taken by my aunt to a performance of The Sound of Music. Based on my age at the time, I was likely to have seen Mary Martin in the role of Maria, but unfortunately did not keep Playbills and would not have known how significant she was. (That dear aunt is long deceased.) That show was probably my first favorite musical.
Other faves are:
Hamilton, which I first saw with the original cast (saved THAT Playbill!) and will soon see for the fourth time (go once a year).
This show ignited in me an intense appreciation of and interest in the history of our country’s beginnings – which has become a significant current hobby and led me to other related involvements, such as joining a support group for Valley Forge National Park, near where we now live.
I am also a huge fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda.
A non-musical play, Ashes, at the Public Theater in the late 1970’s affected me so deeply that I had to leave the theater briefly to recover from one scene. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/09/archives/theater-truths-captured-by-ashes.html
Other favorites include Carousel, which to me is about the tragedy of a couple who can’t communicate openly about their love for each other. Experiencing it pains my soul.
Almost all of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals are faves, particularly The King and I and Oklahoma.
Les Miz, which I have seen on both sides of “the pond,” is high on my list.
Fiddler on the Roof
A surprise to me has been experiencing some of the musicals staged at our local public high school. I had seen Nice Work if You Can Get It on Broadway, and was disappointed, despite my fondness for Gershwin songs. Yet several years later the local high school mounted the show, and I found it delightful – frothy, yes, but totally entertaining. I have yet to understand why my reaction was so different on the second experience. (I knew none of the local cast members, so it was not due to any personal connections.)
Once on this Island was a show with which I was previously unfamiliar, but which enchanted me when I saw it for the first time in a high school production.
^^^I also love the music from Once on This Island. My own kid was in it twice. I also saw a middle school aged production on a small Caribbean island, which was quite cool. I recently saw the revival on Broadway which was excellent.
And in my own post earlier, I had forgotten to mention Sound of Music…a huge favorite of mine growing up and I still enjoy it.
@HImom - Like you, we really enjoy our local community and semi-professional theaters. Good performances, cheap tickets, small venues with no bad seats. Of course we wouldn’t have learned about most of them if it hadn’t been for Happykid’s (and her pals’) design gigs. But we are getting better at taking in performances now that we are on everyone’s email advertising lists!
Two that are on my mind:
Spring Awakening, Nov 2006. During those years, i was spending 1/2 of each month in NYC for work and I spent a lot of time grabbing tickets-for-one to plays that I knew nothing about. i went to this in Previews, no expectations, and wept at the end.
The Prom. Okay, so this is a new one but on a visit to my college daughter two years ago, I was lucky enough to catch this on the road before it opened in NYC. Same actors, same everything…I sent out a tweet that night that said, “this is going to win everything and i’m saying this now so I can “i told you so” later” and i was right! (a bit of trivia…a friend in NYC has just texted me to say that Chasten – husband of Mayor Pete – is doing a walk-on in the play tonight…i would have LOVED to see this).
I’ve seen virtually every Broadway show, and off-Broadway, regional and touring production for several decades. Family and friends involved in theatre, a daughter who is, and I am involved on the producing side.
It’s impossible to pick one favorite but a few would be the classic generational hits - Hair, Rent (have seen it dozens of times), Hamilton. Ragtime is a beautiful show with a terrific score, and memories of Audra McDonald and Stokes Mitchell are some of my favorites.
Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet is a unique and wonderful production. Come From Away is a show that everyone should see, especially Americans! I’m a little biased because friends of mine conceived of and wrote the show.
Some other wonderful productions : Cabaret with Alan Cumming. Jesus Christ Superstar with Ted Neeley. Phantom of the Opera with Colm Wilkinson (best Phantom ever). Company with Raul Esparza. Avenue Q. Elegies. A Chorus Line with Jason Tam. The Wild Party. Assassins.
Plays - I Am My Own Wife. The Pillowman. Take Me Out. Angels in America. The History Boys. August: Osage County.
Too many to list! Oh, and I can confirm that Soozievt’s D is incredibly talented. 
My husband and I just saw The Music Man at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, CT. We had never been there before and loved the whole experience. We were chatting with a few people before the musical and one of them mentioned that she knew the third grader who played Winthrop, so we felt a little connection to him (and he was adorable!).
How could I forget Next to Normal? Oh my gosh, local community theatre did it and I went in not knowing what to expect. WOW, still have intense feelings about that show.
Other community productions that I have loved: Pippin, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, Matilda, Fools, Steel Magnolias, God’s Favorite, Glass Menagerie, Godspell, and most recently Silent Sky!
I forgot August Osage County. First serious play we brough our then HS-aged son to and it was wonderful
Some of my favorites:
-Sweeney Todd is probably my favorite musical of all time. There’s a great concert version on Youtube with Patti LuPone and George Hearn (the original Sweeney). I saw a good college production of this at my alma mater.
-Mathilda was great on Broadway. The songs are clever and the production quality is really good. “When I Grow Up” had me in tears.
My best show experience of all time:
-Something Rotten. This show is hysterical and when it first opened, it was at the St. James theater. I have a friend who is a New York native who was aware that this show had amazing rush tickets. Since the front row doesn’t have view of the stage floor, it was considered partial view and those tickets went on rush sale. We lined up around 7:30AM and sat front row center for $35 a ticket.
Shows I’m not fond of:
-West Side Story: unpopular opinion I’m sure but I hate Romeo and Juliet. Plus I saw this on Broadway (my first show) and I was super disappointed because it was a revival where they did a bunch of the songs in Spanish with no subtitles. I’d never seen the musical before so I had at best a rough idea of what was going on during some parts.
-Rent: a lot of the music is great but I think the ending is really cheesy.
-Spring Awakening: again, lots of great music but I think it tries to tackle too much in one show and comes off a little too after-school-special.
That would be a first for an after school special written in 1891! 
Rent is the one that seems to have come up now a few times as either a favorite of some or one of the least favorites by others. I saw it a few years ago on a national tour and thought it was just okay . Same with Hair . Maybe the timing was off when I saw them.The different perspectives make this an interesting thread.
Memorable: Seeing Herschel Bernardi in Fiddler on the Roof with my mom. One year, we each got to go to a show with her. It was the first time I saw “grown-up” theater. Magic.
Most fun: Spamalot in London with the family. The girls loved it and we spent the rest of our trip shouting out lines from it.
Awestruck: Hamilton in London last summer. American revolution with a bunch of Brits. Couldn’t ask for more.
The girls and I spent many seasons at the Seattle Children’s Theater. I was always reminded of my childhood attendance at Seattle Junior Programs. So much fun and so many memories made.
Slightly off topic–has anyone noticed that theater audiences tend to be largely made up of folks over 40?? Sure, there are some exceptions, but IME most theater audiences are definitely not made up of many folks in the 20-40 yo range… Why? Price of tickets? Younger folks prefer other entertainment?
This has been a joke in my family for many years. We go see a show and look around and we are the youngest in the audience. This was true when we went in our 20s-30’s, and still mostly true as we are now in our 50’s (although when we bring our 25 year old daughter she is the youngest in the audience by decades.)
That isn’t my experience, other than at matinees, where it is common. This might be dependent on where you see shows and what shows you see. There are lots and lots of young people interested in theatre. Just have a look at the theatre and MT forums here on CC.