# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Why We Build the Wall," "Wait For Me", and More From Hadestown on Broadway

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Beetlejuice the Musical perform "The Whole Being Dead Thing" parody on the Today Show [HD]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sankoff & Hein on Come From Away + "Welcome to the Rock"

# data[].attributes.headline
A show about women, for women, by women 

# data[].attributes.subject
A show about women, for women, by women 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why the Women of 'Waitress' Are Changing Broadway for the Better

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The show features Broadway's first all-female creative team

# data[].attributes.body
A BIG old win for female creatives.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Waitress Tony Performance She Used To Be Mine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Phillipa Soo   Burn Hamilton The Musical

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hamilton cast performs "My Shot" at White House

# data[].attributes.body
Yup. You already know.

# data[].attributes.headline
Also the only Tony speech from 2014 that matters as far as I'm concerned. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Also the only Tony speech from 2014 that matters as far as I'm concerned. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
2014 Tony Awards - Jessie Mueller - Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

# data[].attributes.body
I could write a book on why this show is so amazing and wonderful and important. Amazing music, strong women, dramatically functioning scenes integrated with musicals. Hell yea.

# data[].attributes.body
THE SPECTACLE MUSICAL. No longer can you just be a singer or a dancer or an actor. You truly gotta be ALL three.

# data[].attributes.body
From the writers of South Park

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Book of Mormon performance at the 2011 Tony Awards

# data[].attributes.body
Considered a huge Broadway flop, but was rewritten and has had a large success in publishing and reproduction rights. A trend that will follow suit in the 2010s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Addams Family Musical - When You're An Addams (David Letterman 4-6-2010)

# data[].attributes.body
A musical written about mental health. Originally workshopped at the New York Musical Festival, ran off-broadway and transferred to Broadway in 2009. This is my favorite song that was cut from the newest version.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feeling Electric :: Next to Normal Off-Broadway (+download link)

# data[].attributes.body
Movie musicals galore! Because money.

# data[].attributes.body
Booming off-Broadway musical who's transfer to Broadway was canceled due to effects of 9/11. Another musical in the Brecht style

# data[].attributes.body
Based on the comic book/horror movie style

# data[].attributes.body
Brecht style theatre!! Self-aware comedy style that becomes very popular in the modern musical.

# data[].attributes.body
Now considered one of the music famous musicals of all time, it can be considered a period piece for the historical relevance of the musical

# data[].attributes.body
This article is interesting, it essentially boils down the trends of musicals in each decade. It is greatly over-simplified but it gives an east to follow lay out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With contemporary musicals dominating so many schools and theatres, it seems tempting to overlook some of the older, beloved, traditional musicals. While some of them feel outdated, unrealistic and culturally insensitive, some Golden Age musicals such as "Oklahoma!" and "West Side Story" are timeless classics that are still performed frequently.

Nonetheless, each decade after the Golden Age is distinct in its contributions to the musical theatre art form. Let's take a trip down memory lane and analyze each of the past six decades on Broadway:

While more classical-sounding musicals such as "Camelot" and "110 in the Shade" continued to flourish, budding composers such as Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman and Kander and Ebb were scoring their first hit musicals. Star vehicles such as "Hello, Dolly!," "Mame" and "Funny Girl" catapulted the careers of then-new stars Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury and Barbara Streisand, respectively.

It was common for musicals such as "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" and "Cabaret" to mix elements of light comedic opera with jazz/swing to tell their stories.

Not until the end of the decade did rock musicals such as "Hair" begin to sway the direction of musical theatre toward the dominant styles today.

The success of "Hair" led to more rock musicals coming to Broadway, specifically "Jesus Christ Superstar," "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Grease" and "Godspell."

The '70s also saw a surge of African-American-themed musicals such as "The Wiz," "Purlie," "Timbuktu!" and the black-cast revival of "Hello, Dolly!"

Two of the longest-running musicals from the '70s were "A Chorus Line" and "Chicago." While composers such as Sondheim continued to thrive with hit shows, other names such as Stephen Schwartz and Andrew Lloyd Webber began to achieve their earliest successes in New York.

The '80s were the peak era for the pop-opera genre, which combines elements of opera with traces of mainstream pop music. This genre is best exemplified by musicals such as "The Phantom of the Opera," "Les Misérables" and "Chess." The latter show produced "One Night in Bangkok," one of the last show tunes to be a pop radio hit in the United States.

These shows were innovative for their groundbreaking sets, such as having a helicopter onstage ("Miss Saigon"), a chandelier falling ("Phantom") and a light-up chessboard platform ("Chess").

American musicals such as "Nine," "Drood" and "Into the Woods" had similarly structured musical scores. Aside from "Phantom," Lloyd Webber's era of commercial peak in the United States included Broadway transfers of "Cats," "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and "Starlight Express."

While the pop opera genre was still popular thanks to musicals by Frank Wildhorn, such as "Jekyll and Hyde" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel," Jonathan Larson's rock musical "Rent" was a turning point in making musical theatre appeal to younger audiences. Like "Falsettos," "Rent" deals with topics such as homosexuality and HIV/AIDS in contemporary New York City, and Larson's musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1996.

Meanwhile, Disney movies such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King" turned into long-running Broadway productions.

A new generation of composers introduced Jason Robert Brown and Michael John LaChiusa, whose biggest successes include "Parade" and "The Wild Party," respectively.

Last decade, there was a plethora of musical adaptations of various films, such as "Hairspray," "Shrek," "Legally Blonde," "The Color Purple" and "Xanadu."

While "Wicked" became the decade's longest-running original musical, more vulgar shows such as "Avenue Q" and "Spring Awakening" received wide acclaim, too.

Disney kept producing Broadway adaptations with "The Little Mermaid" and "Mary Poppins." Furthermore, "In the Heights" brought hip-hop and Latin music to the Great White Way, while more serious musicals such as "Next to Normal" discussed mental illness.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's sleeper hit musical "Hamilton" took the world by storm in 2015, using hip-hop and color-blind casting to tell the life story of one of America's founding fathers.

Meanwhile, female composers such as Cyndi Lauper, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori scored success by winning Tony Awards for "Kinky Boots" and "Fun Home," respectively.

Disney's Broadway adaptations included "Newsies" and "Aladdin," while more mature shows such as "The Book of Mormon" sold out performances for months back in 2011.

Musicals of the 2016-2017 season such as "Dear Evan Hansen" and "Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812" showcased scores influenced by singer-songwriter music as well as EDM and indie rock, respectively.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Broadway Musical Trends By The Decade: Which Is Your Favorite? - Theatre Nerds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With contemporary musicals dominating so many schools and theatres, it seems tempting to overlook some of the older, beloved, traditional musicals. While some of them feel outdated, unrealistic and culturally insensitive, some Golden Age musicals such as "Oklahoma!" and "West Side Story" are timeless classics that are still performed frequently.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Gilead Sciences Inc. stands with Broadway Care/Equity Fights AIDS to make a difference for the most vulnerable. Gilead is a biopharmaceutical company that has pursued and achieved breakthroughs in medicine for more than three decades with the goal of creating a healthier world for all people. The company is committed to advancing innovative medicines to prevent and treat life-threatening diseases, including HIV, viral hepatitis and cancer. Gilead operates in more than 35 countries worldwide with headquarters in Foster City, CA.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Gilead Sciences Inc. stands with Broadway Care/Equity Fights AIDS to make a difference for the most vulnerable. Gilead is a biopharmaceutical company that has pursued and achieved breakthroughs in medicine for more than three decades with the goal of creating a healthier world for all people.

# data[].attributes.body
Became an anthem in the gay community of musical theater

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I Am What I Am - George Hearn - La Cage Aux Folles

# data[].attributes.body
Music by Jerry Herman

# data[].attributes.body
Originally March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, the two were combined to make act one and act two of this musical. Touched on modern Jewish culture and also the AIDS crisis.

# data[].attributes.body
"Save our children"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Love Epidemic, by the Trammps (DJ Reverend P edit)
Your browser does not support the audio element.

It's both easy and hard to explain the rise of the Disco Sucks movement at the end of the Seventies.

In some parts of the world the zenith of disco coincided with the emergence of punk, and two more diametrically opposed styles could hardly be imagined.

For the most part disco was chic, sleek, well-dressed, celebratory and precision crafted music. Punk was . . . pretty much the exact opposite.

In broad terms one was black and the other white; one was gay and the other either heterosexual or asexual; one was poised and beat-driven and the other pure inchoate energy; one was colourful and the other monochrome; one was apolitical and the other vehemently full of social comment . . .

Only the parallel rise of reggae as a roots music with consciousness (of history and culture) alongside emotionally distant and machine-made synth-pop in the Eighties could compare with the distance between disco and punk.

But there was no Reggae Sucks or Synth-Pop Sucks movements, backlash and aggression.

So, obviously, there was something about disco which got right under the skin of a huge section of young, music-loving society.

That it outsold punk by leagues perhaps had something to do with it: punks could therefore make a greater claim to their marginalization which only confirmed for them the truth of their anti-capitalist, anti-establishment position. Nothing becomes a movement like its own sense of martyrdom coupled with righteousness.

But not everyone was a punk in the late Seventies, and certainly not in the US where it wasn't until New Wave - pop music clipped around the ear by punk and told to sharpen up - that a different, major rock style swept through.

In the US where the Disco Sucks movement took hold the mainstream music was still stadium rock with an overlay of hard rock. The music press was dominated by magazines like Creem and Rolling Stone, and they were staffed by white, heterosexual males who had grown up on guitar bands.

Disco - which emerged out of black, gay clubs in Chicago and New York, and didn't place the phallic guitar at its centre - was anathema to these music writers and their audience.

More charitably, they simply didn't get it.

But a few not only didn't, they didn't want to and wanted to make sure others didn't either.

The figurehead of the Disco Sucks movement in the US was a radio DJ on Chicago's WLUP-FM, an all-rock format: Steve Dahl.

According to Dave Haslam's Adventures on the Wheels of Steel; The Rise of the Superstar DJ (Fourth Estate, 2001), Dahl had previously "resigned from another radio station in the city when they switched to playing disco, and had a thing for scratching the needle across the grooves and then smashing up disco records live on air".

The irony wouldn't have occurred to Dahl that this was exactly what reactionary radio DJs did in the Fifties when rock'n'roll emerged.

Dahl didn't confine his anti-disco activities to just angry on-air antics, he was behind the disruption at a Village People concert where marshmallows (!) with "Disco Sucks" written on them were hurled at the band.

Dahl's major moment however came when he organized the notorious "Disco Demolition Rally" at a baseball encounter at Chicago's Cominskey Park in July '79.

On the day, there were to be two games between the local White Sox and the Detroit Tigers and fans got in cheap if they carried a disco record with them.

Between the two games about 10,000 records were collected and tossed in a container on the field . . . and blown up.

As Ringo Starr once observed about Beatle records being destroyed after Lennon's famous "more popular than Jesus" comment: "There were bonfires of them - what was okay for us because later they rebought them!"

But the event at Cominskey Park attended by 70,000 didn't stop with that, a full-blown pitch invasion ensued where fans burned records, chanted "disco sucks", the field and stadium were damaged, and the invasion prevented the second game being played. It made international news.

Dahl wasn't alone in his dislike if not hatred of disco: record producer Richard Perry - who later did albums for Donna Summer - said in '76, "the disco sound is a sound I abhor. It's one monotonous driving beat. It's as if the human race is a bunch of cattle that's got to be given a beat to move to".

Again, preachers in the rock'n'roll era railed against the evil of "the beat, the beat".

At the time of Dahl's event, disco dominated the charts, the Grammys and had gone global. As the song said, "You can't stop the music".

Saturday Night Fever was the film of its era as much as the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night and Blackboard Jungle had been emblematic of theirs.

The Beach Boys' Here Comes the Night from '67 was extended into a disco dancefloor single.

But Dahl - who pronounced the word "disco" with a deliberate lisp when on air - wasn't alone in reviling disco . . . but that lisp was telling.

At core, there was in rock culture -- which once prided itself on its openness and colour-blindness - a nasty streak of racism and homophobia.

That racism was encapsulated in '79, as Haslam notes, when the pages of The Young Nationalist - a paper from the extreme right-wing British Nationalist Party and aimed at young people - said, "Disco and its melting pot pseudo-philosophy must be fought or Britain's streets will be full of black-worshipping soul boys".

You'd hate to tell them that that horse has long since bolted.

But even mainstream music writers, years after disco's heyday, couldn't get their heads around the phenomenon or quite why so many people enjoyed it.

Haslam again: "The 1989 edition of the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music describes disco as 'a dance fad of the Seventies with a profound and unfortunate influence on popular music' and also laments the existence of anonymous 'disco hitmakers' and record producers using 'drum machines, synthesisers and other gimmicks at the expense of musical values'."

And these "values" might be?

That young women liked disco and danceclubs - where they felt safe amongst gay men - only added to the damnation from white guitar-rock oriented musicians and artists.

And then - just as happened when rap emerged - the walls eventually came tumbling down: the Stones and Kiss mixed in disco grooves, civilians everywhere got the joke of the Village People, early hip-hop turntables riffled through their parents disco records and cut-out stores to find those great beats . . .

But, as we have noted previously at Elsewhere, if you look through the books on popular music there will be considerable space given to punk rock but disco still struggles to be given its due.

Yet its producers were innovative (no one could doubt the genius of Giorgio Moroder, surely), many of the artists like Donna Summer and Loleata Holloway could really sing soulfully, there were great songwriters at work (we start alphabetically with the Bee Gees) and, "Like it or not," as we wrote, "disco was massive from the mid Seventies. The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever has sold in excess of 40 million copies, the only double album to do so.

"That is big . . . and the movie which spawned it returned 70 times its production cost.

"Yet a disco act like Gloria Gaynor (who sang the dance classics I Will Survive and Never Can Say Goodbye, and whose debut album was the first to put a disco mix medley on record) gets less space in the history books than a band like Happy Mondays."

Fortunately it's never too late to discover the shameless pleasure in disco.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE DISCO SUCKS MOVEMENT: Divide and . . . conk out

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's both easy and hard to explain the rise of the Disco Sucks movement at the end of the Seventies. In some parts of the world the zenith of disco coincided with the emergence of punk, and two more diametrically opposed styles could hardly be imagined.

# data[].attributes.body
It was a coded language that combined a bunch of languages together and also made up words. It was originally used by sailors who were gay to find other gay men discretely.

# data[].attributes.body
The word gay was originally from the French word "gai", it was originally used to refer to any promiscuous sexual behavior. The 1970s was when it became specifically associated with the homosexual community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
late 14c., "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree;" also "wanton, lewd, lascivious" (late 12c. as a surname, Philippus de Gay), from Old French gai "joyful, happy; pleasant, agreeably charming; forward, pert; light-colored" (12c.; compare Old Spanish gayo, Portuguese gaio, Italian gajo, probably French loan-words). Ultimate origin disputed; perhaps from Frankish *gahi (related to Old High German wahi "pretty"), though not all etymologists accept this.

Meaning "stately and beautiful; splendid and showily dressed" is from early 14c. Of things, "sumptuous, showy, rich, ornate," mid-14c. of colors, etc., "shining, glittering, gleaming, bright, vivid," late 14c.; of persons, "dressed up, decked out in finery," late 14c.

In the English of Yorkshire and Scotland formerly it could mean "moderately, rather, considerable" (1796; compare sense development in pretty (adj.)).

The word gay by the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back at least to the 1630s, if not to Chaucer:

But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay

Whan that he wolde han my bele chose.

Slang meaning "homosexual" (adj.) begins to appear in psychological writing late 1940s, evidently picked up from gay slang and not always easily distinguished from the older sense:

After discharge A.Z. lived for some time at home. He was not happy at the farm and went to a Western city where he associated with a homosexual crowd, being "gay," and wearing female clothes and makeup. He always wished others would make advances to him. ["Rorschach Research Exchange and Journal of Projective Techniques," 1947, p.240]

The association with (male) homosexuality likely got a boost from the term gay cat, used as far back as 1893 in American English for "young hobo," one who is new on the road, also one who sometimes does jobs.

"A Gay Cat," said he, "is a loafing laborer, who works maybe a week, gets his wages and vagabonds about hunting for another 'pick and shovel' job. Do you want to know where they got their monica (nickname) 'Gay Cat'? See, Kid, cats sneak about and scratch immediately after chumming with you and then get gay (fresh). That's why we call them 'Gay Cats'." [Leon Ray Livingston ("America's Most Celebrated Tramp"), "Life and Adventures of A-no. 1," 1910]

Quoting a tramp named Frenchy, who might not have known the origin. Gay cats were severely and cruelly abused by "real" tramps and bums, who considered them "an inferior order of beings who begs of and otherwise preys upon the bum -- as it were a jackal following up the king of beasts" [Prof. John J. McCook, "Tramps," in "The Public Treatment of Pauperism," 1893], but some accounts report certain older tramps would dominate a gay cat and employ him as a sort of slave. In "Sociology and Social Research" (1932-33) a paragraph on the "gay cat" phenomenon notes, "Homosexual practices are more common than rare in this group," and gey cat "homosexual boy" is attested in Noel Erskine's 1933 dictionary of "Underworld & Prison Slang" (gey is a Scottish variant of gay).

The "Dictionary of American Slang" reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense at least since 1920. Rawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. Ayto ["20th Century Words"] calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays, but the word evidently was not popularly felt in this sense by wider society until the 1950s at the earliest.

"Gay" (or "gai") is now widely used in French, Dutch, Danish, Japanese, Swedish, and Catalan with the same sense as the English. It is coming into use in Germany and among the English-speaking upper classes of many cosmopolitan areas in other countries. [John Boswell, "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality," 1980]

As a teen slang word meaning "bad, inferior, undesirable," without reference to sexuality, from 2000.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
gay | Origin and meaning of gay by Online Etymology Dictionary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
late 14c., "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree;" also "wanton, lewd, lascivious" (late 12c. as a surname, Philippus de Gay), from Old French gai "joyful, happy; pleasant, agreeably charming; forward, pert; light-colored" (12c.; compare Old Spanish gayo, Portuguese gaio, Italian gajo, probably French loan-words).

# data[].attributes.body
"Coming out" They were like debutante balls but for gay men.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Culture Shock: Flashpoints: Theater, Film, and Video: Mae West

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Now West sets her sights on Hollywood. Within a few years, she is one of the biggest stars of the era, flaunting her sexual wiles in one hit picture after another. She and the Hollywood censors wage constant battles over the content of her scripts, and West adjusts her humor, replacing the directness of her earlier work with innuendo and double entendre that often escape the censors' notice.

# data[].attributes.body
Jean Malin and Rae Bourbon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elements of Sexuality: 20th Century Images of Gay Men

# data[].attributes.body
Remember this gem?

# data[].attributes.body
A tradition of operetta. The sound of the long heavy dresses was called "dragging". At the turn of the century they were called "female impersonators"

# data[].attributes.headline
Musical Theatre and the LGBTQ Community 

# data[].attributes.subject
Musical Theatre and the LGBTQ Community 

# data[].attributes.body
Created in the West End, the Juke Box musical was created, taking music from popular artists, and creating a musical around the songs. First famous one was the infamous Mamma Mia.

# data[].attributes.body
He started off as a young stage hand at the Theatre Royal, and is now the essential creator of the "mega" or "techno" musical.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sir Tim Rice | The Creative Process With Andrew Lloyd Webber | Oxford Union

# data[].attributes.body
Andrew Lloyd Webber still owns 100% of the rights to his music, unlike Bart who sold the rights to Oliver for way less than it ended up being worth.

# data[].attributes.body
The man, the myth, the total rip off artist.

# data[].attributes.body
Bart wrote Oliver which transferred to Broadway in 1963 and he became hella rich.

# data[].attributes.body
Rock and roll/pop music writer. He grew up watching Yiddish theatre.

# data[].attributes.body
After World War II, there was a huge class upheaval in Great Britain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sondheim & Weidman's ASSASSINS at New York City Center

# data[].attributes.body
All of the music was written to sound like children's play songs, content dictates form. All of the music is based on a string of motifs put together.

# data[].attributes.body
It originally included many more fairy tale characters such as puss in boots and humpty dumpty.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Into the Woods - On the Steps of the Palace (Lyrics) 1080pHD

# data[].attributes.body
It was a string of "fairytale psychology". The woods equated to the fairy tale space.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Finishing the Hat - Sunday In The Park With George

# data[].attributes.body
Won the Pulitzer Prize. It took a look at the romantic side of creating art, vs. the art industry. It was based on minimalism music.

# data[].attributes.body
50 people in the painting, none of them looking at each other. Art always leaves someone out, this time, the painter.

# data[].attributes.body
He had a background in photography and graphic design, which made him oddly, the perfect person to direct Sunday in the Park with George.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sunday in the Park with George, Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by James Lapine

# data[].attributes.body
Ps. he was the second best best character on Law and Order SVU HANDS DOWN. We love versatile actors.

# data[].attributes.body
Based on a play by Kaufman and Hart. The entire musical is told in reverse. It is the story of old friends, showing how they were once new friends. It is thought that Sondheim is still working on perfecting this. He said that he could never really get the told in reverse thing right.

# data[].attributes.body
It is a through-composed, pseudo-opera. Sondheim's idea was to make everyone on the edge of their seat the ENTIRE show.

# data[].attributes.body
The music in Sweeney Todd was based on the scores to classic horror films, especially Alfred Hitchcock. Think psycho and vertigo.

# data[].attributes.body
It is all based on the pentatonic scale. The original production was done in the Kabuki style of theatre, the revival was done in the Noh style. Also, originally the female parts were played by men.

# data[].attributes.body
It was about imperialism, specifically the naval entrance into Japan. Most of the music mimics traditional sounding Japanese music

# data[].attributes.body
Based on the movie "Smiles on a Summer Night". It is all about love triangles, so all of the songs are in some form of 3. Content dictates form dudes.

# data[].attributes.body
A musical about the Zigfield follies having a reunion. A bunch of sad, drunk old ladies.

# data[].attributes.body
This was the first naturalistic musical. It was meant to be episodic and not have a through plot line. The concept was simply, "marriage" and was specifically about different types of marriages, and couples that needed a third person to the the catalyst in their relationships.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Stephen Sondheim once joked that an album of his chart-topping songs would have to be titled Sondheim's Greatest Hit, since he had only one, "Send In the Clowns." Hal Prince, the legendary producer and director, has had a few more. Prince of Broadway, the revue that finally had its Broadway opening (Aug. 24, 2017) after five years of financing and creative delays, could have legitimately been subtitled Hal Prince's Greatest Hits. (It's set to close on Oct. 29, 2017.)

As a celebration of his seven-decade career, from The Pajama Game (1954) to Prince of Broadway itself, the show was a crowd-pleaser when I saw it on a rainy Saturday night over Labor Day weekend. As an exploration of Prince-Sondheim collaboration that resulted in eight original Broadway musicals - some landmarks, some now cult phenomena - it felt like a lite yet drawn-out version of David Loud's A Good Thing Going, first presented at the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 2015 and returning to the city on Dec. 4, 2017, for a sold-out performance at Kaufman Music Center's Merkin Concert Hall.

Directed by Prince, with Susan Stroman as co-director and choreographer, the show might be considered a companion piece to the Roundabout Theater Company's 2010 Sondheim on Sondheim, now making the rounds in a concert version. (In July 2017 it played at Tanglewood and the Hollywood Bowl.) There Sondheim comments on his life and work on video; here the nine cast members stood in for Prince, one by one reciting his reflections.

That, and the sort-of not-quite chronological order of three-dozen songs from Prince musicals, was the extent of the book by David Thompson, who let the numbers speak for themselves. One minute Emily Skinner was recounting Prince's first meeting with Sondheim at South Pacific; the next, their partnership had begun with West Side Story. The logic of some segues was elusive. A lively "You've Got Possibilities" from It's a Bird ... It's a Plane ... It's Superman (1966) led straight into Follies, perhaps because of the need to assemble a Loveland-like set for "Beautiful Girls" behind the comic-book curtain.

Audience members arrived in the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Freidman Theater to find a now-commonplace empty stage, furnished with a ghost light and lots of pulleys. "Broadway Baby" led off the overture arranged by music supervisor Jason Robert Brown (whose Parade was among the Prince productions represented in the show). To purists, it was jarring to hear snippets of Sondheim songs interspersed with those of other composers, as in the mini-mashup of "Maria" and "Evita." Yet the show served as a reminder that there's a lot more to Prince than just Sondheim, from Damn Yankees to Kiss of the Spider Woman. Projected titles of his shows were truly impressive, both in number and in execution as they floated in the air seemingly without touching the scrim. Beowulf Borritt's set and projection designs also included subtle bands of light on a drop of the Cotton Blossom that kept "Ol' Man River" from Prince's 1994 revival of Show Boat visibly rolling along.

The quick shifts from one show to another meant quick changes for the actors as well. In the early scenes it seemed as if they might never truly become their characters, as opposed to just singing their songs. Then came Follies, and Karen Ziemba brought Sally to life, as Skinner did Phyllis. Later Ziemba traded in her normally bubbly persona for world-weariness and ultimately conviction as Fraulein Schneider in "So What?" from Cabaret.

Michael Xavier's Frederik in "You Must Meet My Wife," from A Little Night Music, was a hyper-accented British twit, perhaps a misguided homage to Jeremy Irons in the role at New York City Opera in 2003. While following suit with the accent, Skinner's Desirée was far more successful in "Send In the Clowns," ravishingly accompanied by 15-musician orchestra conducted by Fred Lassen.

In another disconnect, the show moved from there into Fiddler on the Roof with Chuck Cooper (Ben Stone in Follies just two scenes before) as Tevye. The shape-shifting Cooper later sang "Ol' Man River" a good octave higher than Paul Robeson or William Warfield ever did, and Sweeney Todd's "My Friends" to Ziemba's convincing Mrs. Lovett.

The second act opened with Company, in which three-and-a-half couples serenaded Bobby on his birthday. Beyond a short blond wig, Skinner made no attempt to channel Elaine Stritch in "The Ladies Who Lunch," offering a softer Joanne, but her "Ah-h-h-h-h-'ll drink to that!" came out as a primal scream. Later Skinner gave an incisive "Now You Know," from Merrily We Roll Along.

Throughout, Stroman's choreography was largely unobtrusive - except when it wasn't. Brandon Uranowitz's "Tonight at 8" from She Loves Me" borrowed heavily from Gene Kelly's twirl around a lamppost in Singin' in the Rain. Tony Yazbeck, playing Follies' Buddy as a hoofer, turned "The Right Girl" into a tap extravaganza, most effective (as Eleanor Powell so memorably proved) when the steps were small, quick and light. For those who experienced 1970 firsthand, Ziemba's Swim and Jerk moves for Company rang a delightful bell.

Janet Dacal, Bryonha Marie Parham and Kaley Ann Voorhees rounded out the cast in roles ranging from ingénues (Maria, Christine Daae) to divas (Evita, Sally Bowles).

After an obligatory three-song nod to The Phantom of the Opera that felt as tired as the show itself, now in its 30th year, Prince of Broadway closed with a new song by Brown, "Do the Work." It summed up Prince's philosophy - take a chance, find your voice, tell the story - and the audience lapped it up.

The hardcore Sondheim crowd, though, would have found its takeaway early in the show in one of Prince's reflections: "Never confuse hits and flops with success and failure." Who knows that better?

DIANE NOTTLE is a New York-based writer on the arts, language and travel. She was an editor at The New York Times for 20 years, specializing in cultural news.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
(Hal) Prince of Broadway - Everything Sondheim

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Stephen Sondheim once joked that an album of his chart-topping songs would have to be titled Sondheim's Greatest Hit, since he had only one, "Send In the Clowns." Hal Prince, the legendary producer and director, has had a few more. Prince of Broadway, the revue that finally had its Broadway opening (Aug.

# data[].attributes.body
This was called a "mercy collaboration" with Richard Rodgers in memory of the late Oscar Hammerstein. Rodgers had developed quite a drinking problem and was so miserable to work with that he and Sondheim essentially stopped talking forever and this was when Sondheim decided that he would work alone from then on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Anyone Can Whistle 1995 - Me and My Town - Miracle Song - There's Always a Woman - Stereo

# data[].attributes.headline
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 1962

# data[].attributes.subject
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 1962

# data[].attributes.body
Based on the concept of Roman and Greek comedies. It had a poor audience reaction until Jerome Robins told Sondheim to tell him what the show was about and he said "comedy", and they rewrote and created one of the most famous opening numbers ever.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Comedy Tonight" - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (OBC, 1962)

# data[].attributes.body
All of Sondheim's works can really be boiled down to being about one thing, and pretty much never is that theme a romantic one. While there are romantic plots in his musicals, it is usually not the biggest focus, but more of a setting to the real theme. A lot of the romance gets deconstructed to reveal the ideas underneath.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Into the show : an in-depth analysis of the musical Into the woods : [an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Into the Woods, a musical by Stephen Sondheim, is based on four familiar fairy tales: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk,� and Little Red Ridinghood.� In the show, Sondheim develops several themes and characters through his text, music, and the use of fairy tale motifs.

# data[].attributes.body
He believed that writing lyrics was a craft and not an art form. This was not romantic or divine inspiration, it was a fucking job. Music writing, that is an art.

# data[].attributes.body
This song from Evening Primrose is an excellent example of how he would write like speech. All of the pitch movement is exactly the way the natural inflection would happen.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Lyrics aren't poetry (they have to be understood quickly)
2. Lyrics must sound like speech (the characters are still talking in songs)
3. Perfect rhymes are best (get out of here with your slant rhymes pop music)
4. Balanced
He was very interested in non-metaphorical and DIRECT writing. He told actors ALL THEY NEEDED TO KNOW AND INTERPRET with his music. A lot like Shakespeare, you don't have to do any extra work...like please don't.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Content Dictates Form
2. Less is More
3. God is in the Details
this makes clarity. Kinda good life advice too. Hmm.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sondheim teaches 'Not Getting Married' from Company

# data[].attributes.body
He had the understanding that there needed to be not only a dramatic purpose to each song, but dramatic action. Something needed to HAPPEN in each song for the musicals he wrote.

# data[].attributes.body
A musical called Saturday Night was technically the first musical written by Sondheim, but it was not very successful, so he used it as a sort of portfolio to show his work to producers and directors.

# data[].attributes.body
At age 17, Sondheim worked with Hammerstein on Allegro as an intern. No big deal.

# data[].attributes.body
His mentorship has three components.
1. Critical Honesty
2. Musicalization Challenge
3. Ruthlessness

# data[].attributes.body
Oscar Hammerstein was a mentor and a father figure to Sondheim. Sondheim went to Hammerstein while in high school and asked him to critique some of his work. Hammerstein asked if he wanted to be critiqued as a professional or a high school student and Sondheim said, professional of course. So Hammerstein said it was the worst thing he had ever read, but agreed to help him with it all afternoon and became his mentor.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stephen Sondheim discussing Oscar Hammerstein

# data[].attributes.body
Has won an Oscar, Grammy, and a Pulitzer.....but he kinda doesn't give a fuck, it's his job.

# data[].attributes.body
"Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other."

# data[].attributes.body
It was a federal loan scheme that wanted to better certain neighborhoods and did not give loans to others because the were considered "high risk" but this essentially meant that they were primarily black neighborhoods. This created white flight to suburbia and the blockbusting of real estate agents.

# data[].attributes.body
Welcome to some federal racism bullshit.

# data[].attributes.body
This was a musical written after the time the chorus union and the actors equity union finally combined and there were not separate unions for dancers and singers and actors. It is a story that takes the competitive nature of musical theatre and the desire to the the "one" and tells the unsung stories of the chorus dancers.

# data[].attributes.body
This was a musical written by actors about their lives in the theatre. Groups of actors would gather in studios or apartments and sit in a circle and drink and smoke tons of weed and just tell each other stories about their lives. Pretty much all of A Chorus Line is a real story about someone's life.

# data[].attributes.body
Hamlisch and Kleban.
Directed and choreographed by Michael Bennet.