Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins, in addition to being a series of children's books and a film, has also been adapted for the stage by Disney Theatrical. The West End production opened in December 2004 and received two Olivier Awards, one for Best Actress in a Musical and the other for Best Theatre Choreography. The musical features the film's music and lyrics by the Academy Award winning Sherman Brothers, along with additional music and lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. The book was written by Julian Fellowes. The musical was directed by Richard Eyre and co-directed by Matthew Bourne, who also acted as co-choreographer with Stephen Mear. A Broadway production with a near-identical creative team opened in November 2006, with only minor changes from the West End version.
The stage musical is a fusion of various elements from the film and the books. Some elements from the Mary Poppins series of children's books that had been omitted from the film were restored, such as the walking statue and the ladders rising to the stars. Others were removed, such as the scene in which Uncle Albert gets caught on the ceiling, laughing.

Camelot

Guenevere arrives in Camelot on a wintry morning to marry King Arthur and is greeted festively by the Court. Arthur, shy and nervous, hides in the nearby woods ("I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight?"). Guenevere comes to the woods, uncertain about herself and her future ("Simple Joys of Maidenhood"). She stumbles into Arthur, who tells her about life in Camelot ("Camelot"), and then discloses his identity. They are each happily charmed by the other.
Arthur learns from Merlyn the wisdom of peace and brotherhood before the Wizard is fatefully drawn into the cave of Nimue for his eternal sleep ("Come to Me"), and is inspired to establish the Round Table. The news of this reaches young Lancelot in France, who is determined to come to Camelot and join Arthur's knights ("C'est Moi"). A May Day celebration takes place on the castle grounds ("The Lusty Month of May"), where Arthur introduces his wife to Lancelot. Guenevere takes an instant dislike to the cocky young man and instigates him to engage three knights of the Round Table in a jousting match ("Then You May Take Me to the Fair"). Arthur is dismayed by this and at a loss to understand a woman's way ("How to Handle a Woman").
In the jousting match Lancelot easily defeats all three knights, drawing the admiration of all, including Guenevere. Lancelot falls in love with the Queen and is torn by the conflict between this love and his devotion to Arthur. He asks permission to leave Camelot for foreign conquests. Returning two years later, Arthur makes him a Knight of the Round Table. Arthur is painfully aware of the feelings between Lancelot and Guenevere but remains silent to preserve the tranquility of Camelot. Lancelot reveals his feelings to Guenevere ("If Ever I Would Leave You"). Nevertheless, she remains faithful to Arthur, and helps him in carrying out the affairs of State ("What Do Simple Folks Do").
Mordred, Arthur's illegitimate son, comes to Camelot to dishonour the King and try to gain the throne for himself. He schemes with his sorceress-aunt, Morgan le Fey, to trap Arthur in a forest one night. During this night, Lancelot visits Guenevere in her chambers, where she reveals her love for him ("I Loved You Once in Silence"). Mordred and some of the Knights of the Round Table interrupt, accuse Lancelot of treachery, and imprison him. Lancelot escapes, but Guenevere is sentenced to burn. ("Guenevere") At the last moment, Lancelot rescues her and takes her off with him to France.
For the sake of his own honour and that of Camelot, Arthur must now wage war on France. Just before the final battle, he meets Lancelot and Guenevere, and forgives them both. In camp, Arthur meets a young stowaway who wants to join the Round Table. Arthur knights him on the field of battle and sends him back to England to grow up there and pass on to future generations the ideals of Camelot.

South pacific

South Pacific is a musical play, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The story is based on two short stories by James A. Michener from his book Tales of the South Pacific, which itself was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. The issue of racial prejudice was sensitively and candidly explored, particularly for a 1949 work. James Michener claimed he was pressured to ask Rodgers and Hammerstein to remove the song You've Got to Be Carefully Taught, because of its biting comments about racial prejudice.
South Pacific is generally considered to be one of the greatest musicals of all time [1] [2], and a number of its songs, such as "Bali Ha'i," "Younger than Springtime," and "Some Enchanted Evening," have become worldwide standards. South Pacific is the only musical to date (12/18/2006) to have won all four Tony Awards for acting. It was nominated for 9 Tonys and won all of them.

spamalot

The play begins with the audience being introduced to the golden days of Camelot and the grand country of England (not Finland, as the several actors seem to believe). King Arthur travels the land with his servant Patsy, trying to recruit Knights of the Round Table to join him in Camelot. Sir Bedevere, Sir Robin, and Sir Lancelot meet as they attempt to dispose of the sickly Not Dead Fred. They agree to become Knights of the Round Table together.
Meanwhile, Arthur attempts to convince a peasant named Dennis that he (Arthur) is king of England because the Lady of the Lake gave him Excalibur, the sword given only to the man fit to rule England. When Dennis still doesn't believe him, Arthur has the Lady of the Lake and her Laker Girls appear to turn Dennis into a knight. Cheered on by the girls, the Lady of the Lake turns Dennis into Sir Galahad. Together, with Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Play, they make up the Knights of the Round Table.
The five knights gather in Camelot, where they follow the policy "What happens in Camelot, stays in Camelot". In the midst of their partying, they are contacted by God (who sounds suspiciously like John Cleese) who tells them to locate the Holy Grail. Urged on by the Lady of the Lake, the Knights set off. They meet some very rude French Taunters at a castle they come to and split up shortly afterwards. Sir Robin and his minstrels follow King Arthur and Patsy into a "dark and very expensive forest" where they are separated. King Arthur meets the Knights Who Say Ni who demand a shrubbery. King Arthur despairs of finding one, but Patsy cheers him up and they find a shrubbery shortly after. The Knights accept it, but next demand that King Arthur create a Broadway musical.
The Black Knight appears but King Arthur more or less defeats him by cutting off both his arms and legs and leaving the stump of a body to find Sir Robin. Sir Robin, meanwhile, finds King Arthur and insists that it would be impossible for them to accomplish this next task, since you need Jews for a successful Broadway musical. King Arthur and Patsy promptly set off in search of Jews. While the Lady of the Lake laments her lack of stage time, Sir Lancelot receives a letter from who he assumes is a young damsel being forced to marry against her will. He is a little surprised to find that the damsel is actually a young man named Herbert who is being forced to marry against his will but defends the lad against his violent father, causing them to suspect Sir Lancelot is homosexual.
King Arthur begins to give up hope of ever making the Broadway Musical and feels alone (even though Patsy constantly insists that he's there as well). The Lady of the Lake appears and tells Arthur that he and the Knights were in a Broadway Musical all along. Patsy also reveals he is half Jewish, but didn't want to say anything to Arthur because he is a heavily-armed Christian. All that's left is for King Arthur to find the Grail and marry someone. After picking up on some not-too-subtle hints, Arthur decides to marry the Lady of the Lake following his finding the Grail.
Reunited with his Knights, the king meets Tim the Enchanter who warns them of the danger of an evil rabbit. When the rabbit bites a knight's head off, Arthur uses the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch against it, knocking down a nearby hill and revealing that the "evil rabbit" was actually a puppet that a Frenchman was using. A large stone block showing a combination of letters and numbers is also revealed. After pondering the final clue, Arthur admits that they're "a bit stumped with this one" and asks God for one final bit of help. A large hand points to the audience and Arthur realizes that the letters and numbers refer to a seat number in the audience. The grail is found under the seat and the person sitting in the seat is rewarded. Arthur marries the Lady of the Lake (who reveals that her name is Guinevere), Lancelot marries Herbert, and Sir Robin decides to take up writing Broadway musicals.

hair

The musical follows "The Tribe", a group of politically active friends, long-haired "Hippies of the Age of Aquarius" fighting against conscription to the Vietnam War and living a bohemian life together in an apartment in New York City. Among them are Claude, the nominal group leader; Berger an irreverent free spirit; Sheila, a New York University (NYU) film student who is in love with both of them, and who is the most focused political activist of the group; Woof a bisexual gentle soul; Jeanie, who is in love with Claude but pregnant by another man; Hud, a Black Panther; Crissy, Dionne, among others, who are struggling 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.
When the men of The Tribe receive a draft notice, they conduct a burning ceremony at a Be-In and destroy their draft cards, except for Claude, whose sense of responsibility restrains him. Ultimately, he goes to fight in Vietnam, as each member of The Tribe reluctantly releases him (Sheila's "good-bye" includes the gift of sex). Symbolically, the sub-plot of Claude's repeated failure to burn his draft card can be interpreted as a hippie take on Hamlet, whose inability to take decisive action causes his demise, as in the last scene, he appears as a ghostly spirit among his friends wearing an army uniform, in an ironic echo of an earlier scene, where he says, "If I was invisible, I could do anything!"

Guys and Dolls

The story revolves around the activities of New York petty criminals and professional gamblers. Nathan Detroit runs an (illegal) "floating craps game", despite constant encouragement to "go straight" by Miss Adelaide, a nightclub singer to whom he has been engaged for fourteen years but will not marry. When a surge of "high-rollers" comes to town, Nathan is pressured to find a place to hold his floating crap game. Due to strong police activity, namely Lieutenant Brannigan, he can only find one spot, the Biltmore Hotel garage. The owner's requirement, however, is a $1,000 deposit for security, money Nathan does not have.
Trying to obtain the money, Nathan comes across Sky Masterson, a high-rolling gambler willing to bet on virtually anything. Nathan proposes a bet which seems impossible to lose: take a doll of Nathan's choice to dinner ...in Havana, Cuba. Specifically, Miss Sarah Brown, a straight-walking sergeant at the Save-a-Soul Mission, a local Salvation Army-like organization. Sarah resists Sky, but her Mission is in trouble, and when he promises to fill her prayer meeting with a dozen sinners, Sky manages to get Sarah to agree to the date, putting Nathan in an even worse position. Over the course of their date, Sky manages to break down Sarah's social inhibitions, and they begin to fall in love with one another.
Nathan is also struggling with his relationship with his fiancée of fourteen years, Adelaide, who has come down with a psychosomatic cold due to lack of a wedding band. Tired of his habitual lying, she walks out on him. Meanwhile Sky is having problems of his own with Sarah as their conflicting lifestyles clash. Convinced that his love for Sarah is true, Sky makes good on a bet he made with Sarah to fill her failing mission with a dozen sinners. Also, he lies about succeeding on his original bet with Nathan and pays him the $1,000. At the same time, Sky wins a bet with the guys at Nathan's crap game that results in them having to appear at Sarah's mission. Nathan also attends, but doing so nearly ruins his relationship with Adelaide.
Sarah fatefully runs into Adelaide to where the two realize that they cannot fight love any longer. Adelaide is relieved when Sarah mentions that Nathan had attended a service earlier in the night, which Adelaide thought he had been lying about.
The show ends happily with Nathan and Adelaide's long-awaited wedding, Nathan having gone (almost) straight. They are joined by Sarah and Sky, who has joined the mission and married Sarah

Music Man

"Professor" Harold Hill is a con man whose scam is to convince parents he can teach their musically-disinclined children to play a musical instrument. Taking pre-paid orders for instruments and uniforms with the promise he will form a band, he skips town and moves on to the next one before he's exposed. Arriving in fictional 1912 River City, Iowa, Hill's modus operandi is compromised when he becomes attracted to local librarian Marian Paroo, who recognizes him for the fraud he is. Nevertheless, she falls in love with the smooth-talking charmer when he draws her self-conscious, lisping brother Winthrop from his shell. When Hill's scheme begins to unravel, he is faced with the choice of escaping yet again or staying with Marian and facing the consequences.

West Side Story

The story explores the enmity between two rival gangs of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and is based loosely on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The innocent young protagonist, Anton ("Tony"), who belongs to an established local gang, the Jets, falls in love with Maria, the sister of the leader of the rival gang, the Sharks.
The dark theme, sophisticated music, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in American musical theater, which had leaned previously toward light themes. West Side Story is produced frequently by local theaters and, occasionally, by classical opera companies.
Bernstein's score for the musical has been extremely popular. Some of the songs include "Something's Coming", "Maria", "America," "Somewhere," "Tonight", "Jet Song", "I Feel Pretty", "One Hand, One Heart", and "Cool". Some music that Bernstein wrote that was originally intended for "West Side Story" wasn't used in the production. This music became later integrated into the Chichester Psalms.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

In the town of Salzburg in Austria, Maria, a woman studying for the Roman Catholic sisterhood in a convent, is sent out to be a governess to the seven children of Captain Georg Ritter von Trapp, a widower and a decorated World War I captain in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Von Trapp is also an Austrian patriot at a time when it is safer to be friendly to the ascendant Nazi regime. The children, initially hostile and mischievous, soon come to like Maria, so she teaches them how to sing. She finds herself falling in love with the stern Captain, who is engaged to be married to Baroness Elsa Schräder. He too finds himself warming to the young governess. After winning the children's hearts by teaching the family the joy of song, and after some soul searching by Maria and misunderstandings fostered by the Baroness, Maria leaves the convent and marries the Captain. Maria and the Captain arrange for the family to escape, after a family concert, through the convent and over the mountains to Switzerland so that the Captain does not have to serve in the Kriegsmarine of the Third Reich.

Once upon a matress

Once Upon a Mattress takes place in a fictional medieval kingdom ruled by the devious Queen Aggravaine and the mute King Sextimus the Silent. King Sextimus suffers from a curse that can only be reversed "when the mouse devours the hawk." As the show opens, the populace of the castle complains about an unjust law levied by Queen Aggravaine. She is testing Princess #12; to the queen's delight, the princess misses the last question ("What was the middle name of the daughter-in-law of the best friend of the blacksmith who forged the sword that killed the beast [the dragon killed by St. George]?") and is given a dead bird. The law states that no one may wed until the Prince, Dauntless the Drab, first marries ("throughout the land no one may wed, 'till Dauntless shares his marriage bed") . However, every petitioning princess is sent away after failing an unfair test devised by the Queen. It seems that no one is good enough to marry Prince Dauntless.
The crisis escalates when the leading knight of the realm, Sir Harry, discovers that his girlfriend, Lady Larken, is pregnant. Facing great embarrassment and loss of his station, Sir Harry embarks on a quest to find the last princess in the realm. He soon returns with Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, a brash, unrefined, and muscular princess from the marshlands. She immediately charms Dauntless and most of the townspeople. However, she also succeeds in offending the Queen, who vows to find a way to stop her.
The Queen, assisted by her Wizard sidekick, quickly designs Winnifred's secret "test." They will place a tiny pea beneath twenty thick downy mattresses. If Winnifred is unable to sleep due to the pea, then she will be sensitive enough to marry Dauntless.
As the day of the test approaches, Dauntless and Winnifred fall in love, Harry and Larken break up (only to be later united by Winnifred), and the King, Jester and Minstrel trick the Wizard into telling them of the test. When she finally takes the test, Winnifred cannot fall asleep. She drowsily confronts the Queen the next morning, but Aggravaine insists that the test was rigged. Dauntless tells Aggravaine to "shut up," and the curse on King Sextimus is lifted (the "mouse," or Dauntless, thus devours the "hawk," or Aggravaine). Aggravaine discovers that she cannot talk, and Dauntless and Winnifred are free to be married. The Wizard falls for the King's charm and wit, and leaves the poor Queen hopelessly hopping and skipping on stage.
In the final seconds of the play, the real reason why Winnifred passed the test is revealed. After learning about the test, the King, Minstrel, and Jester stuffed the mattresses full of weapons, jousting equipment, and other sharp items. All the items are removed by the Jester in the Finale. After the items are removed Winnifred still has trouble sleeping until Dauntless takes the pea out from under the mattress, when she then falls asleep almost immediately.
And everyone classically lives happily ever after.

seussical

Seussical is based on the works of the beloved children's author Theodore Geisel, known to the world as Dr. Seuss.
One would think it an impossible task to condense the major characters and stories of Seuss into a cohesive evening, but Stephen and Lynn have managed to incorporate bits and pieces of at least 14 Seuss classics, including Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches the Egg, Gertrude McFuzz, The Butter Battle Book, If I Ran the Circus, McElligott's Pool, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew and of course,The Cat in the Hat!! The main story involves Horton the Elephant's efforts to save his friend Jojo and the other inhabitants on Who, even though everyone else in the Jungle of Nool thinks Horton is the "Biggest Blame Fool" for believing in people who live on a small speck of dust. But Horton is a determined, loyal and faithful friend who fights for what he knows to be true. In the end, Seussical is really about believing in yourself, keeping promises and the rewards of being an independent "thinker." The Seussical score is a wonderfully eclectic mix of everything from traditional ballads like "Alone in the Universe" and "Solla Sollew" to the funkier sound of "Monkey Around" and the Sousa-inspired sound of "The Military." Of course, Ahrens and Flaherty have a reputation for writing fantastic opening numbers, and "Oh, the Thinks You Can Think" is certainly no exception.
The show had its first 2 week reading in New York from May 3-May 14, 1999, and a month long workshop was mounted in Toronto from July 26- August 21, 1999.The first public performances were held in Boston from August 27- Sept 21, 2000. It opened on Broadway on November 30, 2000 and ran until May 20, 2001.
The first national tour of SEUSSICAL played the U.S. in 2002. A second national tour lasted through March of 2004. The rights for the show were recently released, and Seussical has become one of the hottest properties on the regional /amateur circuit. In a survey conducted by the National Thespian Society, the show was the most licensed property in high schools across America last year!! Also, Seussical now ranks in the top three of all the shows licensed by MTI. There were 650(!!!!!) productions in 2005, and there are already almost 200 productions slated for 2006! Ohh! What a trip!

Rent

Rent is an American Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical, with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson.[1] After previews that began on January 26, 1996, it opened in New York City on February 13, 1996, at the New York Theatre Workshop before moving to Broadway, opening at the Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996.[2] Based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème, the musical centers on a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Alphabet City in the early 1990s, under the shadow of AIDS.
Rent was one of the first Broadway musicals to clearly feature gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender characters. It is also noted for its ethnically diverse cast, which includes many racial minorities in its ensemble and leading roles. Rent is considered revolutionary for bringing controversial topics and counterculture to a traditionally conservative medium, and is credited with increasing the popularity of musical theater in the younger generation.[3] Many critics have also mentioned how the show speaks to Generation X the same way that the musical Hair spoke to those who grew up in the 1960s, calling it "a rock opera for our time, a Hair for the 90s."[4]
The cast album from the show was the most successful recording of an American musical in almost 30 years,[citation needed] featuring both a double-disc "complete recording" collection with a remixed version of the song "Seasons of Love" featuring Stevie Wonder[5] and a single-disc "best of" highlights.[6]
Rent has been enormously successful on Broadway, enjoying both critical acclaim and word-of-mouth popularity. The Original Broadway Cast reunited at the Nederlander Theatre on April 24, 2006, to stage a performance for the rock opera's tenth anniversary.[7] With more than 4,000 performances and still running, it is the seventh-longest-running Broadway show.[8] With no end currently in sight, it is set to become the second-longest-running musical currently on Broadway when Beauty and the Beast ends its run on July 29, 2007. It is still eight years behind The Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running musical in Broadway history, which is still running.
In 2005, the rock opera was also adapted into a full-length motion picture, which features most of the original cast members. Certain plot elements were changed slightly. More noticeably, many of the fan-favorite songs were changed to spoken dialogue, so the movie version is more of a musical film than rock opera.

The Pajama Game

The story deals with labor troubles in a pajama factory, where worker demands for a seven and a half cent raise are going unheeded. In the midst of this ordeal, love blossoms between Babe, the complaint committee head, and Sid, the new factory superintendent in from Chicago.A strike is imminent at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory. The union is seeking a wage raise of seven and a half cents an hour. Sid and Babe are in opposite camps yet a romance is born between them. At first Babe rejects Sid and he is forced to confide his feelings to a dictaphone. During the picnic for the factory workers, he makes better progress, but their estrangement is reinforced when they return to the factory. A slow-down is staged by the union, strongly supported by Babe. Sid, as factory superintendent, demands an "honest day's work" and threatens to fire slackers. Babe is enraged by his attitude and kicks her foot into the machinery, causes a general breakdown and is immediately fired by Sid.
Hines, the popular efficiency expert, is in love with Gladys, the company president's secretary. Periodically, he brings a more optimistic outlook to the life of the factory. Becoming convinced that Babe's championship of the union is justified, Sid simulates an interest in Gladys by taking her out for the evening to the night club, Hernando's Hideaway. Through her help, he is eventually able to gain access to the firm's books and discovers that the boss Hasler has already given the raise, but is keeping all of the money for himself.
Sid then brings about Hasler's consent to a pay raise and is able to bring peace to the factory and to his love life. Everyone goes out to celebrate—at Hernando's Hideaway.

My Fair lady

Henry Higgins, an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics who boasts to fellow linguist Colonel Pickering that he can train any woman to speak so properly that he could pass her off as a duchess, including Eliza Doolittle, a poor girl with a strong Cockney accent whom he encountered selling flowers in Covent Garden. Pickering is intrigued by Higgins's boast and wagers that he cannot make good on his claim. Higgins takes on the challenge and begins an intensive make-over of Eliza's speech, manners and dress in preparation for her appearance at the Embassy Ball.
Complicating matters is Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), a cheerfully amoral and drink-loving dustman, who shows up to extract money from Higgins for compromising Eliza's virtue. Higgins is impressed by the man's natural gift for language and his brazen lack of moral values ("Can't afford 'em!") and flippantly recommends Doolittle to an American millionaire who is seeking a lecturer on moral values. In the end, Doolittle gets a surprise bequest of four thousand pounds a year from the millionaire, raising him uncomfortably into middle-class respectability.
Meanwhile, Eliza endures speech therapy, endlessly repeating phrases such as "In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen” (to demonstrate that "h"s must be aspirated) and "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" (to emphasize the "a"). Just as things seem hopeless, she suddenly "gets it" after Higgins eloquently speaks of the glory of the English language, and thereafter her speech is transformed into an impeccable upper class English accent. For her first public tryout, Higgins takes her to Ascot Racecourse, where she makes a good impression with her polite manners but shocks everyone by her vulgar Cockney attitudes and slang (thus establishing one of the show's themes, that good elocution is only "skin deep.") However, she still captures the heart of an eager young man named Freddy Eynsford-Hill.
The final test hinges on Eliza's passing as a lady at the Embassy Ball, which she does successfully despite the presence of a Hungarian phonetics expert, who seeks to unmask her identity. After the ball, Higgins's ungrateful boasting of his triumph and his pleasure that the experiment is now over leaves Eliza feeling used and abandoned. She walks out on him, leaving the seemingly clueless Higgins mystified by her ingratitude. But Higgins soon realizes that he has "grown accustomed to her face". Eliza eventually tentatively returns to him, and the musical ends on an ambiguous moment of possible reconciliation between teacher and pupil.

man of la mancha

After tax collector, soldier, and author Miguel de Cervantes and his assistant, Sancho, foreclose on a church that failed to pay its taxes, the two men are thrown into prison by the Spanish Inquisition. Soon the other prisoners steal Cervantes's possessions, but he convinces them to allow him to win back a package of papers that would not be of value to other people. Pleading his case, Cervantes gives a dramatic defense by reenacting the story of Don Quixote of La Mancha: the passionate and poignant tale of a noble knight who lives in a world of madness and cannnot see that chivalry has died. His holy quest is a mission of salvation to find compassion not for himself but for others. Don Quixote falls in love with the fair maiden, Aldonza(Dulcina), and convinces her to live a moral life. When Quixote is being knighted, the muleteers brutally assault Aldonza. Quixote and Sancho quickly come to Aldonza's rescue but in the end, Quixote only preaches forgiveness. Next, Quixote fights off his darkest foe, the Enchanter. Moved by the story, the prisoners return Quixote's manuscript just before he is called before the Inquisition