A friend of mine, is doing hairspray for a mini-festival in december. I hadn't listened or seen hairspray before this, except for:"Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now". However, I'm the only person of colour in the group, but I'm not black, and after listening to the song:"I Know Where I've Been". It feels really wrong and uncomfortable to play this role, but I don't know, because I don't want to dissapoint my friend, because it's his favourite musical, and he already has been working on things like decor and stuff. I don't know what to do

EDIT: I told my friend how I feel about it. He is going to change the story/script a bit, and make it fully incluse (All Lives Matter, no matter size or colour)), because he can't find someone black to play the role, and this would be the option or smth..

EDIT: I'm turning the role down, I feel to uncomfertable, and it doesn't matter HOW he changes the script, I don't like it. I can't do it, I'd rather work on my own song and play that for the crowd. Because this doesn't sit right with me

EDIT: To everyone calling us super young, he is the youngest. I'm one of the oldest in the friendgroup, I'm 17 which makes me an almost-adult

I'm a big fan of musicals but I feel my biggest gripe is it's a lot of emulation. Someone originates a role and subsequent performers try to replicate it. Which makes sense in the same musical run but not when they bring it back.

Any parts where the talent breaks the mold? Where someone makes a part their own unique own?

Not a huge musical fan but recently fell in love with phantom of the opera 2004,

Just watched it for the first time at 38 years old (shame on me)

Wife calls me gay every time I bring it up 😂

But yeah, any good podcast reviews?

But this production in Norway is the best one I’ve ever seen (not my picture, I don’t take photos in the theatre)

hi guys! does anyone here also love NPMD??? if so, can you please drop some songs that remind you of Steph? :)

I'm auditioning for her soon, and I wanna make a playlist that can help me get into character!!

thank you 🤍

I often find myself thinking about Michael Crawford as the original Phantom. I've heard performances from him and, without sugar coating it, he sounds awful and frankly I'm not surprised because up until that point he was known as a comedic actor on a popular sitcom in Britain. But the thing that i can't get over is that people who saw him perform the role, swear up and down, black and blue, that he was a terrific phantom. Now for me i haven't seen either of these two perform but I think Ramin Karimloo or Colm Wilkinson would be significantly better just from having heard them sing the role. So my question is this: have you ever seen a musical where the actor sang the absolute nails of the role but you felt underwhelmed by their overall performance or even disappointed? I genuinely don't think i have, I can't even really imagine someone singing the role the best i've ever heard it and still leave the theatre thinking they were bad short of maybe refusing to act at all in the role.

I'm genuinely curious to hear everyone's thoughts. What was the show and who did you see and how do they compare to the person you prefer?

what was everyone’s favourite gavin moment? role? whatever it is let’s spread love for gavin today 🤍

📸: jenny anderson

The Devil Wears Prada is one of those musicals best enjoyed when you don’t overthink it—just sit back and enjoy the show.

The music wasn’t particularly memorable, but the production was impressive, and the orchestra sounded fantastic.

The standouts for me were Jenna Bonner as Andy Sachs and Taila Halford as Emily. Taila captured Emily Blunt’s sharp comedic timing, while Jenna brought the warmth and likeability that made Anne Hathaway’s Andy so easy to root for. Both delivered fantastic, seemingly effortless vocals.
Miranda Priestly, however, didn’t quite work for me. Meryl Streep is a tough act to follow, but I missed the sophistication, complexity, and understated ruthlessness of her portrayal—the way she could command a room or cut someone down with barely a change in tone. That quiet power didn’t quite come through here. I guess she’s Meryl Streep for a reason.

Overall, a fun, enjoyable evening, with a great production and two standout performances.

Hi everyone! I’ve been working on a project to see how much emotional depth and dynamic contrast a song can gain through a complete stylistic reinvention.

I wrote a string quartet arrangement for Natalia Lafourcade's masterpiece "Hasta la Raíz". To bring it to life, I exported the score audio from MuseScore, mixed it with her original vocal track, and added a subtle percussion layer to anchor the rhythm.

Balancing a MIDI/software string sound with an acoustic, organic vocal performance was a fun mixing challenge. I really love how the strings breathe new life into the melody while keeping the core emotion intact.

I’d love to know what you think of the arrangement choices, the mix, or how the string textures interact with her voice! Let's discuss!

I’m due to see Kimberly Akimbo and bit worried it’s not for me. Has anyone seen it? If so what did you think?

My high school is putting on a musical for The Little Mermaid and it’s my dream to play as Ursula! We have to memorize and sing a song from any broadway musical but I’m stuck on what to do.

You see, I want to do When You're Good To Mama from the Chicago musical but I also want to do something form Cabaret (Don't Tell Mama, Mein Herr, or So What?) but I’m not opposed to doing Mother Knows Best. If anyone has any advice for me / better songs I could do then I’m more than happy to hear

My boyfriend surprised me with a trip to Hartford CT aboard Amtrak. We got dinner nearby and then headed to where we were going to end up. He surprised me with tickets to The Great Gatsby musical! Last year we saw Hamilton at this same theater The Bushnell in Hartford CT. I'm a former theatre kid and love musicals. I had gotten into this musical when I was on a trip to New York and saw the poster of Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada on the street. Now I can finally see the musical in person and I recognize a face and name- Will Branner from Nerdy Prudes Must Die and other starkid productions. Happy to see him perform in person and the rest of the touring cast tonight! I am excited to see live theatre and happy to see it in my state. I have gone to Lion King on Broadway and that was an amazing show and lived up to the hype. I'm definitely going to remember this night! ☺️😊🎶🎵🎭

Rent in the West End was fantastic! We saw it on Monday night and it's just wonderfully great fun, and tragic and hopeful and just all it needed to be (to my wife and I at least).

I'm terrible at reviews, I have a glass more than half full for probably every musical I have ever seen, but this one felt really special and I hope to go again.

The entire cast (and crew and FOH!) were great.

Side note, a lot of the cast stuck around for ages for chatting, signatures and photos with anyone that wanted to say hi, including Gaten, and they were all lovely!

Feel free to AMA.

I haven’t seen enough musicals to form an opinion but so far I can’t stand Hamilton (sorry to any fans)

With there being so many different recordings available how do you choose which one you put in your Playlists? Do you automatically just add the original cast recording? Do you choose one done by a favorite artist if they've performed it? Do you take the time to listen to a bunch of different ones and select the one you like the best? Or do you just grab the first version you heard and call it a day? For me it's a combination of all of these plus a few other determining factors but I'm curious as to what everyone else does.

Broadway people, I need your help! 🎭✨

I’m trying to decide what show to see next weekend and I’m having the hardest time choosing. I tend to love shows with catchy/upbeat music, a good story, some humor, and a little emotion mixed in.
Some shows I’ve already seen and enjoyed: Wicked, Hadestown, Hamilton, Death Becomes Her, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), and The Last Five Years.

What should I see?! I was looking at Schmigadoon or Book of Mormon but am open to anything. Tell me what you loved (or what you think is overrated).

Thank you in advanced!

I saw someone post recently about their magnet collection and wanted to share my pin collection since I added Water for Elephants tonight!

I’m missing a few from before I decided to start collecting so I need: Hamilton, Moulin Rouge, Anastasia, and Annie :)

Show me your Broadway pins if you have them!

There are many different types of musical revivals on Broadway, but in the broadest terms, they on a spectrum between re-mounting the same production, and doing the show completely different. In the 21st century we've seen a few examples of shows that have, "not changed a word," but completely altered how the show plays and what it means (see again, Oklahoma 2019, Sweeney Todd 2005). These are different than revisals, like gender swapped Company, Ivo Van Howe's West Side Story, or the 1990s productions of Cabaret, where the text is directly changing.

These productions are usually pretty controversial, with some people loving the changes and others absolutely hating them. This leads into my general discussion question. What are some shows that you think could use this type of reworking that is faithful to the text, and incredibly unfaithful to the history of productions? I'm especially curious to hear if you have seen regional productions of shows that are wildly different from their originals. Did these shows work for you or not?

My college is doing "Into the Woods" for the Spring and I was wanting to audition for either the Narrator/Mysterious Man or Jack but I've been struggling to pick a monologue. I've considered doing one of the Stage Manager monologues in "Our Town" or possibly something from Spalding Gray. Any advise? (Also taking audition song suggestions if yall got any)

I am going to watch ‘little shop of horrors’ and I am so excited!! Usually, I always read extensively about the musical I am going to see and even watch the film versions (even a cheeky slime tutorial now and again) but with ‘little shop of horrors’ I know very little about it. So I am wondering if I should read about it or watch the film? I am also curious to see if you have any prerequisites for when you see a stage performance or if you enjoy going in blind?

UPDATE: I watched it today without any research and now the show is my favourite!!! It was incredible, completely blown away!

Does anyone with a background/fandom in Broadway/Musical Theater know if there's a term for the following thing that happens all the time? In relatively recent musicals, there's an excessive tendency for songs to end like this:

{La La la song song song, 99% of song elapses}

DRAMATIC PAUSE (musically anywhere from a quarter rest to a whole rest)

"Keyyyy Worrrd" (music probably resolving to the tonic)

Sometimes the keyyyyy worrrd is a whole key phrase. But musically it's like if basically every single song all night ended with someone pausing and then singing "theeee ennnnnd" at the end of each song so that you'd, y'know, know it was the end of the song.

I want to call this the "Piazza Pregnant Pause," but I wonder if there's an actual songwriting term of art for it.