The 12 Most Groundbreaking Musicals of the Last Six Decades

Broadway musicals have been on my mind for more than half a century. I discovered them in grade school, not in a theater but electronically. On the radio, every weeknight an otherwise boring local station would play a cast album in its entirety; on television, periodically Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night variety show would feature an […]

This Month: Mean Girls Finally Makes Its Broadway Debut

She had a varied, flourishing career that included dancing for Lar Lubovitch, touring with the Bad Boys of Dance, and performing at Radio City Musical Hall and in Broadway shows. But Kamille Upshaw really wanted to make Mean Girls happen. Not because she’d known Reginas or Plastics in high school—at Baltimore School for the Arts, […]

Andy Blankenbuehler Brings His Choreographic Talents to Bandstand

It doesn’t look like your great-grandfather’s jitterbug. Yes, the year is 1945, and yes, the setting is a jazz club. But these swing dancers are in the new musical Bandstand, directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler. The number, “Nobody,” is a paean to determination—”You know who tells me, ‘Stop’? Nobody.” The choreography begins as metaphor […]

Glenn Close Earns Her Spot On Broadway

As more and more stars from movies and television get their kicks doing Broadway musicals, more and more choreographers have to find steps for them to dance. Sometimes it’s not hard: Denis Jones discovered that Tony Danza had trained in tap when they worked on Honeymoon in Vegas; Spencer Liff had spent years choreographing for […]

Hamilton: A Broadway Revolution

Hamilton may pave the way for hip hop in musicals A rap breaks out. Photo by Joan Marcus, Courtesy Hamilton. Given the Revolutionary War battles, pistol duels, political rivalries, sex scandals and explosive cabinet meetings taking place during Alexander Hamilton’s short, busy whoosh through American history, his life hardly seems to have the makings of […]

Not Just a Number

How age affects the ensemble’s casting The cast of Kinky Boots. Photo by Matthew Murphy, Courtesy O+M Co. In Hollywood, it seems it’s always kids putting on a show. But on Broadway, musicals are populated with dancers who may indeed be kids and those who manifestly aren’t. Often the shows themselves dictate how old an […]