Digital Analogue

Best musicals

In today's Register-Mail, there was a little feature posting some of the staff's picks for the top five best musicals. A response was invited, so here's mine:

1. The Music Man

   Easily the best out there. Pretty much an archetype of the ensemble-cast musical genre. The plot is interesting without being convoluted, there are a lot of good characters, and the music is simply excellent.

2. Evita

   This musical has less parts than it seems---there's really only three, four if you count Magaldi. Plus the chorus, of course. But the show manages to be epic in spite of its really small cast; and the music is really diverse (and, again, excellent). I also have to confess that I was floored by the movie version of this, which had great promise and then went ahead and exceeded it. Madonna can act! Antonio Banderas can sing! Who knew?

3. Moulin Rouge

   It could never be effectively made into a stage musical, but this show is such a clever amalgamation of a classic plot with stunning visuals and a surprising array of music from pop culture. I fear that it won't stand the test of time, but for now it definitely belongs on the list.

4. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

   Musical theatre's answer to the screwball comedy, any decent production of this show will have you in stitches by the end. The music isn't quite as good or as memorable as with the first three, but it's well-suited to the show. Its chief liability (one it shares with some other pretty good musicals like Joseph and Seven Brides) is that it has a good-sized cast but very few decent female roles, so it doesn't get put on very often.

5. The Sound of Music

   I had a hard time picking one show to fill this last slot, but in the end I settled on Sound of Music. It gets a bad rap because it is overplayed, but it's overplayed because it really is good. It's just a bit too cheesy to make it to the top of the list, but the wide range of catchy, memorable songs let it buy its way into the top five.

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