Spring 1951. You’re at a performance of The King and I, the latest musical from Rodgers & Hammerstein. It features Gertrude Lawrence, one of the theater’s most dynamic stars, leading a Broadway musical for the first time in nearly a decade with a role custom tailored for her. She plays Anna Lenowens, a British woman in 1860s Thailand, then known as Siam, hired by King Mongkut to teach his wives and children. Anna’s fierce independence puts her at odds with the commanding (and charismatic) King. Lawrence enchants the audience with showcase after showcase: the sprightly and inspirational “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” the wistful ode to her deceased husband (“Hello Young Lovers”), the charming production number with the children and wives (“Getting to Know You”), and the frustration-fueled soliloquy (“Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?”). But as charming as Lawrence is, you’re perhaps even more taken in by the striking, though unfamiliar, Yul Brynner as the King. With a shaved head and open shirt, he is controlling, impish, frustrating, and irresistible. His and Anna’s relationship is strictly proper and professional…with a hint of romantic tension. In Act 2, the King hosts a banquet for British ambassadors to prove that Siam is civilized and does not need to become an English protectorate. The plan is successful, and as Anna and the King celebrate in the empty throne room, Anna describes the English manner of courtship. She sings an invitation to dance to an imaginary partner, and is soon lost in reverie. The King demands she teach him the dance, and she takes him by the hands, teaching him a polka. The King points out that the European visitors did not merely hold hands while they danced and places his hands on Anna’s hips—a simple gesture that is somehow more romantically charged than anything you’ve seen onstage before. They swirl around the stage, coming as close to admitting the attraction between them as they dare, and it’s absolutely glorious. (“Shall We Dance?”)

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You’re now 40 songs into this project, and have learned about influential and iconic shows, songs, and creators. Now we’re going to look at a one of musical theater’s most evergreen tropes: Star Turns

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Before we say “Goodbye Old Girl” to our third playlist, I wanted to name the Notable Creatives that we covered. Add these to the folks introduced in Turning Points and Songs Everybody Should Know, and you’re well on your way to being a Broadway expert.

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Summer 2024. You’re attending a performance of Suffs, a new musical produced by, among others, Hillary Clinton and Malala. You’re expecting a sort of “girl-boss” Hamilton. Suffs is based on American history, stars its composer/librettist/lyricist, premiered at The Public Theater with Phillipa Soo (she did not join the Broadway company), and featured non-traditional casting (in this case, all the roles are played by a diverse cast of women). Also, the act 2 opener, “The Young Are at the Gates,” is basically a counter-melody to “My Shot.” But this is not mere attempt to replicate Hamilton’s success—it has a distinct musical and thematic point of view, care of its creator/star Shaina Taub. While the plot maps out the prolonged fight for women’s suffrage, the musical is really about how a single political movement wrestles with a range of conflicting ideologies and finds a way to achieve a final goal. Taub plays Alice Paul, a young revolutionary who is at odds with the more established leaders of the movement, who favor appealing to men by appearing non-threatening and supportive. Paul is also at odds with the black women in the movement, who know the right to vote won’t be extended to them any time soon. (Three groups with conflicting interests in turn-of-the-century America? If Garth Drabisnky wasn’t a misogynist in addition to being a criminal, he would be furious he couldn’t produce this.) It may sound cerebral, but it has a sense of humor and driving urgency. The score is built around extended sequences, anchored by catchy, repeated phrases that will have you muttering things like “you’ve got to find a WAY, FIND a way, you’ve got to find a WAY, FIND a way” for weeks. By the show’s end, you feel like you’ve gotten to know the individual stories of a dozen different suffragettes and their varied, invaluable contributions to the movement. In the final scene, set in the 1970s, Alice Paul—still fighting to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed—meets a young activist who rejects Paul’s methods just has Paul had fought the “old fogeys” in her youth. She reflects on the frustratingly non-linear path of progress, while being inspired that the work will continue after her (“Keep Marching”).

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Spring 2015. You’re at Fun Home, a musical based on Alison’s Bechdel’s memoir of growing up in a funeral home, embracing her queer identity, and confronting her father’s closeted homosexuality and suicide. As grim as that may sound, the musical is rather, well, fun. It’s staged in-the-round on a sparse stage with eclectic furnishings while Alison, a middle-aged butch lesbian, sits behind a drafting table. She sings a prologue about how “it all comes back,” and for the rest of the performance she watches and comments on episodes from her past. The first memory features a ten-year-old Small Alison and the rest of the Bechdel clan—her father (Bruce), mother (Helen), and siblings—as they prepare their home for an important visitor. Helen tries to keep a positive attitude while both meeting Bruce’s exacting standards and shielding her children from his temper. At the end of the number, adult Alison comments, “Caption: My dad and I both grew up in the same, small Pennsylvania town. And he was gay, and I was gay. And he...killed himself. And I…become a lesbian cartoonist.” Scenes featuring Small Alison alternate with scenes following Medium Alison during her freshman year at Oberlin College. Through these vignettes—connected by a tuneful score by composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist/librettist Lisa Kron that is full of ear worms and heart—we get a picture of Alison’s complicated relationship with her parents, their difficult marriage, and her own sexual orientation. Late in the show, Adult Alison remembers fateful visit to a luncheonette with Bruce. Small Alison sees a butch delivery woman, prompting a sweet moment of personal discovery, “Ring of Keys.”

Spring 2009. You’re watching the new musical Next to Normal. You had missed its off-Broadway production a year prior, which had gotten a mixed-response, and you’re curious as to why people are more on board with the Broadway incarnation. The musical opens on the Goodmans, a quintessential suburban family, as Mom (Diana Goodman) helps her teenaged children (Gabe and Natalie) and husband (Dan) get out the door on a typical morning. A crack starts to show as Diana is packing lunches and soon begins covering the counters and floor with sandwiches. The evening becomes an exploration of Diana’s struggles with bipolar disorder, the slew of treatments that are often worse than the disease (which will ultimately include electroshock therapy), and the toll it takes on the entire family. Even though the subject matter is serious (and taken seriously), there’s a lot of humor. Alice Ripley’s Diana has rock vocals and amusingly unpredictable reactions, blended with touching pathos. It makes sense that Ripley is a manic ALL CAPS twitterer IRL. After Natalie brings her new beau (Henry) over for an ill-fated dinner, she expresses her frustration at living in that shadow of an absentee brother who garners a disproportionate amount of Diana’s love and attention (“Superboy and the Invisible Girl”)

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Spring 2005. You’re at Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a new musical based on a Steve Martin movie you’ve been meaning to watch. To be honest, the main reason you’re here is to see Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz reunite after they starred in Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years back in 2000. The show opens on the French Riviera and boasts a bright jazzy score with genuinely funny lyrics by David Yazbek. You meet Lawrence Jameson, a refined con-man (John Lithgow) who is on the lookout for a mysterious, more infamous con-man known only as “The Jackal.” Lawrence comes across a course American con-man named Freddy (Norbert Leo Butz), deduces Freddy is The Jackal, and initiates a guarded partnership between the two. They join forces with a hilarious scheme that has Freddy posing as Lawrence’s deranged brother to fend off one of Lawrence’s past victims (who NOT Sherie Rene Scott—when does she show up?) As much as Freddy and Lawrence enjoyed their collab, they realize the Riviera’s con-man economy can only support one of them. They make a wager: they will select a target and whoever is the first to swindle her out of $50,000 gets to stay while the other will leave town. (Have they not seen Guys and Dolls or My Fair Lady? Don’t they know that making a bet on a woman in a musical never ends out like they think it will?) When they hear that a soap heiress, Christine Colgate is coming to town, they decide to make her their mark. A crowd gathers, humming and looking upstage in anticipation of Christine’s arrival, only for a woman in the crowd (Sherie Rene Scott, finally) to turn around and say, “oh, that’s me” before launching into an infectious and charming introductory number (“Here I Am” ).

It’s 1998, and you’re one of the lucky few to catch Parade during its short run at Lincoln Center Theater. You’ve heard good things about the score by a talented young composer, Jason Robert Brown, but you’re a bit apprehensive about the show’s subject matter. You’re settling in for an evening that will explore a rape and murder in Atlanta, the trial of the falsely accused Leo Frank, and the antisemitism-fueled lynching after Frank’s death sentence is commuted to life in prison. “So why is it called Parade?,” you ask as you flip through the Playbill before it starts. That question is soon answered. The lights come up on a Confederate soldier singing to his unseen sweetheart before he leaves to fight in the Civil War. As he leaves, the scene transforms into a Confederate Memorial Day parade fifty years later (1913). The soldier, now an old man, again sings with pride about the community he fought to protect as the chorus sings along and Confederate flags wave (“The Old Red Hills of Home”). It’s a glorious rousing song, which makes its sentiment all the more chilling. This is the Atlanta Leo Frank, a New York Jew, lives in, and he will learn first hand the lengths to which they will go in order to preserve their delusions of pre-Reformation glory.

It’s 1998, and you’re watching Ragtime a lavish and epic musical that takes the scale and scope of the 1980s British mega-musical and filter it through distinctly American voices and material. The expansive narrative focuses on three distinct groups in New York at the turn of the 20th Century—upperclass suburban whites, Eastern European immigrants, and African Americans—along with notable celebrities of the day like Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, and vaudeville star/murderess Evelyn Nesbit. It seems like a lot, but there’s an excellent opening number that explains everything quite clearly. Mother tends the home in New Rochelle. While Father is away on an expedition, mother discovers a black baby buried in her garden, which she learns belongs to a young woman named Sarah. Mother takes in Sarah and her baby, even as she knows her husband would find it unthinkable were he around. When the baby’s father, ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker, hears about Sarah’s condition, he woos her in his new Model T (befriending Mother in the process). Reconciled, the couple and baby take the car on a country picnic and imagine the world of opportunity available to them (“Wheels of a Dream”). As the narrative proceeds, a fire chief initiates a confrontation with Coalhouse and destroys his car. Sarah attends a political rally hoping to appeal to the Vice Presidential candidate, but when someone mistakenly claims she has a gun, the security detail beats her to death. Coalhouse leads a series of violent protests and demonstrations, ultimately dying at the hands of police. In the face of all this tragedy, the musical ends with a reprise of “Wheels of a Dream,” a radical act of hope that the true American dream of liberty and justice for all will prevail…eventually.

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It’s 1992, and you’re watching the musical Falsettos. It’s the Broadway premier of two off-Broadway musicals from the 80’s, now presented as a single piece. William Finn wrote its eccentric score and co-wrote the book with director James Lapine. The simple set is a red platform and a freestanding door, with furniture coming and going as needed. The opening number, “Four Jews in a Room B******g,” sets the irreverent tone. It’s a contemporary story about idiosyncratic New Yorkers: Marvin, his son Jason, his ex-wife Trina, his boyfriend Whizzer, and his therapist Mendel (who starts dating Trina). The first act covers these shifting relationships and the new type of “tight-knight” family that evolves (even as Marvin and Whizzer’s romance falls apart). The storytelling is impressionistic, told through non-linear songs and sequences, which are themselves full of non-sequitors and surprising turns of phrase. It’s like if ADHD was a musical. (Not that anyone really understands ADHD, because it’s the 90s.) The second act takes place two years later and adds “the lesbians from next door”: Charlotte (a doctor) and Cordelia (a Kosher caterer). As the adults start to plan Jason’s Bar Mitzvah—and Whizzer and Marvin start to reconcile—Dr. Charlotte worries about a mysterious new disease affecting gay men, a disease that soon affects Whizzer. The gang gathers in Whizzer’s hospital room on an “up” day, hopeful that things will improve (“Days Like This”).

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