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The Musical Theatre Portal
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole.
Musical theatre works, usually referred to as "musicals", are performed around the world. They may be presented in large venues, such as big budget West End and Broadway theatre productions in London and New York City, or in smaller Off-Broadway or regional productions, on tour, or by amateur groups in schools, theatres and other performance spaces. In addition to Britain and the U.S., there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in Germany, Austria, Philippines, France, Canada, Japan, Eastern Europe, Australia, and other countries.
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. The musical broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of the "rock musical", utilizing a racially-integrated cast and inviting the audience onstage for a "Be-in" finale.
Hair tells the story of the "tribe", a group of politically active, long-haired "Hippies of the Age of Aquarius" fighting against conscription to the Vietnam War and living a bohemian life together in New York City. They struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their pacifist rebellion against the war and the conservative impulses of their parents and society.
After an off-Broadway debut in October 1967 at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and another run in a midtown discothèque space, the show opened on Broadway in April 1968 and ran for 1,750 performances, followed by a successful London production, which ran for 1,997 performances. Numerous productions have been staged around the world since then, and numerous recordings of the musical have been released. Several of the songs from its score became Top 40 hits, and a successful movie adaptation was released in 1979.
Angela Lansbury CBE (born October 16, 1925) is a Tony-winning, Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated, and Emmy-nominated English actress, best-known for playing mystery writer Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote.
On Broadway, Lansbury received good reviews from her first musical outing, the short-lived 1964 Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle, which co-starred Lee Remick. Two years later, she was offered what proved to be the biggest triumph of her theatrical career, the title role in Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the novel and subsequent film Auntie Mame, which had starred Rosalind Russell. Opening at the Winter Garden Theater on May 24, 1966, Mame ran for 1508 performances. Lansbury's portrayal, opposite Bea Arthur as Vera Charles, earned her the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. She and Arthur became life-long friends.
Lansbury returned to the Broadway stage for the first time in more than 25 years in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally, co-starring with Marian Seldes. The play previewed at the Music Box Theatre on April 11, 2007, and opened on May 6, 2007 in a limited run of 18 weeks. Lansbury received a Tony nomination in the category of Leading Actress in a Play for her role in this production, but did not win the Tony that year.
The show is explicitly an homage to the PBS children's television program Sesame Street. Both Marx and puppet designer/original cast member, Rick Lyon have previously worked for Sesame Street, as have the other puppeteers in the original cast. However, unlike Sesame Street, Avenue Q openly addresses adult topics such as racism, infidelity, and masturbation; in fact, because of its adult language and content and "full puppet nudity" (including simulated sex between puppets), the show specifically disclaims any connection to the Children's Television Workshop or The Jim Henson Company. In an interview with Britain's The Times, addressing the question of potential conflicts with Henson, Marx claimed, “During early previews in the States we invited Jim Henson's widow and children and they could see that what we were doing was a homage and love letter to 'Sesame Street.'”
- Musicals Musical films, Broadway musicals, West End musicals, Off-Broadway musicals, Musicals by year, Jukebox musicals, Rock musicals, Edwardian Musical Comedy
- Composers and Lyricists Lynn Ahrens, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock, Mel Brooks, Jason Robert Brown, Ivan Caryll, George M. Cohan, Cy Coleman, William Finn, Stephen Flaherty, George Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Sheldon Harnick, Sidney Jones, Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, John Kander, Jonathan Larson, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Alan Menken, Lionel Monckton, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Adrian Ross Stephen Schwartz, Richard Sherman, Robert Sherman, Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weill
- Awards Drama Desk Award, Drama League Award, Evening Standard Awards, Laurence Olivier Awards, Outer Critics Circle Award, Tony Award
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- Articles needing a content fork
- Mainly, these are articles on films and either their source or subsequent musicals. There are a couple where the musical needs to be "forked" from the source material. Feel free to add or remove as necessary. Important: If you split an article, please make sure that you move all the relevant links from the first article to the new one. To find which links to move, click on "What links here" at the old article and look through the list to see which links should be pointed to the film related link (for example, articles on actors in the film). Then, click on those links and update them to point to the film article. Thanks!
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