Some Musicals I like

I try not to inundate DA with a deluge of useless journals pontificating about nonsense I honestly have no genuine insight or authority regarding. ("I try!" being the operative word.)

Having failed at that heretofore, I'm going to tone things down and just gush about musicals I like.

1)Galavant

Nnnot a musical per se, more like a self-aware fantasy comedy with musical numbers, but it's produced by Alan Menken, the melody-mill behind the Disney Renaissance that was the soundtrack of my bizarre (ref. Mormon) childhood--since the series was produced and scored by Menken, I say it's a musical and anyone who wants can @ me. Oh, did I mention it has Giles from 'Buffy' (who crushed it in 'REPO')? Because that happened and it kicked ass!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVjRE_YI4sw

2)Little Shop of Horrors

Now this, actually, is a musical. About a nebbish nobody who accidentally grows a man-eating plant that plots world domination. Voiced by one of the Four Tops.

Oh, and Martin 'I'm Lucky Day!' Short plays a sadistic dentist* with delusions of Elvis Presley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoWom0CCRKM

3)Reefer Madness

 It's a parody of a 30's PSA that portrayed anyone who smoked weed as a degenerate, giggle-fueled looney tune. The musical also portrays everyone who smokes as a degenerate, giggle-fueled looney tune, with cannibalism thrown in for good measure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P_qjLhtA74

4)Beetlejuice: The Musical

 It's an unapologetically raunchy celebration ( and low-key meditation) on death, dying and moving on. It's a flimsy script (because it's based on the original, which was cobbled together from wet dog shit and wishful thinking**) but the music is hilarious. (The fact that the show got canned because of COVID, just as it was getting its feet is criminal.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU30XH7kZz8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbKN624c6As

"If you die during this performance, the show will not stop." Is probably the best line in any musical this century, barely beating out "Yeah? Well, that was a soliloquy; so you're the one who's being rude." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdaKCveCdkM&t=232s

I'm going to post this clip for the sake of circulation (because Youtube is being actively scrubbed of all BJ footage, even thought that's the only way the show will get ANY publicity!)

5)Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

 If it wasn't blatant by now, I love anything that's a marriage of the camp and the macabre. Sweeney Todd is a hammer horror gore fest, replete with a lecherous Alan Rickman, a Johnny Dep coifed like the Bride-of-Frankenstein and Jamie Bower, playing a classic straight man (Anthony) who straddles the line between the romantic and the saccharine with ease.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xamDprXBtBg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zygTvmzlBp4

For anyone who wants a more technical exaltation of the film, here's a video by Sideways where he gushes about the score's use of leit motif to foreshadow the story's plot twists and themes:

While the goofy gory stories hold a special place in my heart, that's because they glorify the satirical and self-aware theatricality of musicals that have existed since their inception, going back to the operettas like 'Pirates of Penzance'...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv_Uqj1kPRM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfjAJn4SC-w

(Those are the lyrics from the original operetta, btw, from the late 19th century. They're not dated, they're meant to be that hilarious.)

 But, as with any parody worth a damn, what makes a musical legendary isn't having its tongue spot-welded to its cheek, poking fun perpetually at the genre it's exploiting, it's being ultimately sincere.

 That's how musicals like 'Carrie' climb above the self-aware rank and file, and why it ranks much higher on my list:

My favorite musical, of all time, however, is, hands down, 'Fiddler on the Roof':

 Besides its sincere and timeless story, dealing with the need for any functional society to retain what traditions sustain it, while also embracing change that promotes the happiness of its members, thus ensuring their motivation to preserve the culture from whence they sprang, the movie oozes with that quintessentially bleak Eastern European humor. This is the part of the world that has folk sayings like, 'It's like trying to shear a pig, lots of blood but no wool.' by way of Russia, and 'Not my circus not my monkeys.' by way of Poland. 'Fiddler' adds to that gallows-thumping tradition with, "If the rich could pay the poor to die for them, we'd all make a nice living!" ; and then drops the mike, because there is no follow up!

 And the movie is packed with classic one-liners, like that.

'As the good book says, 'When you spit at heaven it falls on your face.'

'Money is the world's curse!'

'Then may God strike me with it, and may I never recover!'

'Let's get them back! As the good book says, "An eye for an eye!"

'Then the whole world will be blind and toothless.'

Some honorable mentions, since I'm really not gonnuh rhapsodize about every musical I love, because that's a rambly text wall nobody wants:

Wicked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZyQwjVRT5c

Jesus Christ Superstar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqoeM18vCaU

My Fair Lady https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxOMTK5bYFA

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrsKWzC4WxE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xh8duZ1-j0

Grease https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW0DfsCzfq4

Les Mis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urxk4mveLCw

Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjK387DVX7I

Heathers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h80Sr15n4M

Avenue Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTFI9sQdpGo

REPO: the Genetic Opera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7rARRopvuQ

(The movie is hot garbage, just listen to the soundtrack, because Rupert Giles from 'Buffy' is on it.)

Hamilton

(Despite being the world's shittiest history lesson and brainwashing an entire generation of soft-headed millenials into thinking John Lawrence, the Founding Father who proposed armed manumission, was from New York, not North Carolina, and the son of the governor of NC, the most powerful planter in the State; that Hamilton invented the federal Constitution, not James Madison, after Hamilton pouted out of the Philadelphia Convention after his proposal to make the President an elected king for life was shouted down; and that Jefferson didn't do more to end slavery than Hamilton, when he was 24, when he tried and barely failed to legalize manumission in Virginia, than Hamilton did in his entire life.)

When watching 'Hamilton' here's a good rule of thumb: every time Lin Manual gaps his yap to talk-sing? Tune out. Every time the Skyler girls glide into the scene? Instant gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bkqXVc_1go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg6UC0bVDS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pR-PeeRYVc

Cats (The Lloyd Webber original)

(Actual, fuck 'Cats'. Just listen to 'Memory', only 'Memory'.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gd_ohoPzYc

*Fun Fact: My father was a dentist and he cosplayed as Martin Short's character for Halloween.

**Look, I love the Burton movie as much as anyone, but, I've read the original script and all you Hot-Topic-squatting mall rats need to cop to it: 'Beetlejuice' isn't a story. Without a main character (and Lydia doesn't count, because she shows up like 20 minutes into the movie) you don't have a story, you just have a situation.

 Here's how you know the difference: you can take Adam or Barbara and replace them with practically anyone else, and they would do exactly the same things as Adam or Barbara in the synopsis. There's no protagonist with a unique want/need, ergo there's no story; it's a situation. A memorably bizarre situation? Oh, certainly, and I love it, and own it, on Bluray and DVD both, but it's still shitty writing.