Some of the songs fell flat for me, but overall it was a fantastic show. I got to be brought on stage for the final fight. The fighting scenes alone were worth the price of the ticket. Everything else was just icing on the cake
Slightly different. They had these seats that were called “golden circle” seats that were the first few rows in the center orchestra. For the last 20 mins of the show everyone in those seats were escorted on stage to new bleacher seating upstage, because for the final fight between Rocky and Apollo the stage came out over those seats and a Jumbotron came down from the ceiling to create the feel of being in a boxing arena. We were there all the way to curtain call.
I’m a huge fan of the anime so I put off listening to the musical soundtrack for so long because I didn’t want it to ruin it for me and wow it’s good I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve also been meaning to check out the Japanese with English subtitles slime tutorial on YouTube because I’m obsessed with the art design of that
True, musical adaptations are almost always good starting with any medium, book? The Percy Jackson musical and star kids various Potter parody’s are incredible. Movie? Mean girls, heathers, LEGALLY BLONDE!!?!? Anime? Death note. Greek myth? Hades Town, my beloved! I could go on
I remember telling people about *Death Note: The Musical* to certain people on the sub for the first time and I always say "It has no right to be as good as it is. But it's really good."
There was just a [Phantom Blood musical](https://jojowiki.com/Phantom_Blood_(Musical)) in Japan and it looked unbelievably AMAZING. There were tickets for recordings and a Blu-ray is preorderable. The leads are double cast, so there are two VODS.
The VODs were just Japanese, no official English subtitles. I hope the Blu-ray will. I need to watch them. Araki also had a play based off a non Jojo one shot years ago.
The bluray is coming out this fall, I think. There will be two, they usually make two when double-casting happens.
([JoJo Myu trailer](https://youtu.be/5VdSew3Of1o?si=38wjuynLxxKWsovL))
Cries, I'm currently obsessed with another thing that's an original produced by Toho and everyone is like.... crying and hoping they make a bluray.
(Oh, yeah, this might surprise some people -- [Cross Road](https://youtu.be/lDK1AJztZ6s?si=iJe81-tZj343WCub), a musical about Niccolo Paganini making a contract with a devil. It's.... amazing. If you want cape-swishing Gothic drama with surprising complexity and beautiful music, please take a look!)
If you don't know Dove Attia, he's one of the top composers in France. He premiered another thing in Japan last Fall, about Arsene Lupin.
But thanks for being aware of Japanese musicals! Check r/JapanStage if you're interested in more. Also r/KoreanMusicals and r/InternationalMusicals.
There are plays and musicals for the majority of popular anime out there—Naruto, My Hero Academia, Sailor Moon; they’ve been making them for decades so the list goes on into the hundreds. The Demon Slayer cast was just in New York last weekend.
She has a history of this going back to Lion King. The guy who hired her was my mentor, and he mentioned it once. "She injured a lot of my good people" he said
Idk if this is what you meant but the way you phrased this makes it sound like you’re aware of Julie Taymor but somehow unaware of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, hahaha
Oh I’m well aware of both but I think it’s still crazy she’s the genius behind how The Lion King on Broadway was done and…Spiderman Turn Off the Dark.
I totally get how it could be read like that though LOL
There are multiple actually! I remember a couple years ago in the Netherlands a new Anne Frank musical was being made and one of the Anne Frank foundations loved it and thought it was a beautiful tribute, while the other foundation hated it and was especially hung up on the fact that you buy merch and treats during intermission.
American Psycho, a dark satirical thriller of a serial killer business man… into a musical? And it works! It’s high camp and You are What You Wear is a legendary song
Assassins. If you told someone not in the know that there was a black comedy musical about presidential assassins and that the climax is Oswald shooting JFK, they'd probably think you were making a bad joke.
Come From Away for being "the 9/11 musical". I went to see it yesterday, and there was a lot of chatter in the lobby before the show from people who were confused about how such a premise could work at all.
The key to Come From Away is that the focus isn't exploiting trauma to make a weep-fest story, instead it's about celebrating human connection and bridging cultural gaps.
1) I love Assassins so much I forgot how bat shit the concept is
2) Come From Away absolutely surprised me. I didn’t think a musical about 9/11 could work but it is so much more than that.
2. When it first came out, I read that someone on the production team (I forget who) said “it’s not a musical about 9/11. It’s a musical about 9/12.” I always liked that.
I tell people it’s about Operation Yellow Ribbon, and when people ask what the heck that is, I explain how during 9/11, airplanes needed to be grounded immediately, and it’s the story of one small town that opened their arms to thousands of unexpected guests and the resiliency of the human spirit. It tends to go over pretty well!
Come from Away was too hard for my brain to watch. I had to leave because apparently the whole grief thingwill be forever for that one. Which is a shame because it's so well done but... Nope PTSD brain went "Time to ruin your fun"
When you think about it, Sondheim hardly ever disappoints:
- Old people beefing
- Murder barber
- Fairy tales but wait a minute-
- Friends to enemies (but backwards)
- Emotional manipulation isn't romance: the musical
Between him and Dave a-few-pages-of-war-and-peace and a-musical-inside-a-man's-head Malloy, it's quite embarassing to explain these musicals to non musical fans...
It's not surprising to me that there's a SpongeBob musical, but it's surprising to me that there's a SpongeBob musical with songs by artists like Brian Eno and They Might Be Giants. Amazing.
Sometimes I feel like whenever producers want to put on new musical they just throw a dart at a a dart board of random films and go with whatever film the dart hit.
in this case, the writers (Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs) approached the rights holders (which in this case I believe was just Mitchell Lichtenstein, who wrote and directed the film).
Operation Mincemeat is probably up there. “So that one time that James Bond’s creator tricked the Nazis by yeeting a dead guy out of a submarine with fake documents? Let’s make a campy West End show about it with a gender-bent cast of 5 and lots of quick-changes.
I can never find it, so I guess they must have taken it down, but I stg back in the day there was an Onion headline “Everything Ever to be Adapted Into a Broadway Musical”
My friends and I literally have an in-joke about how Lolita would be the worst idea for a musical adaptation ever, but it was always just a funny hypothetical because of how inherently terrible of a concept it is. I hadn't heard that MULTIPLE VERSIONS ALREADY EXIST?!
Whenever there's a conversation about biggest irrational fears or worst ways to die, I'll often bring up Floyd Collins (and John Jones). People always agree with me that getting trapped in a narrow passageway of a cave and slowly dying over the course of several days while help is so near yet so far is a horrific way to go. People also always think I'm kidding when I follow up with "yeah and they made a musical about Floyd Collins too!"
Beetlejuice works so well because they used the original idea of it being PG13/R rated and leaned into how messed up it (and Beetlejuice especially) is, it also works because it has enough of a feel of the movie but also is its own story that it’s a perfect combo
They took elements of the film, the cartoon and the legendary unproduced screenplay to create the musical. Things like the girl scout and Beetlejuice being a demon instead of a poltergeist are taken directly from that earlier screenplay draft.
It's a movie I think is very okay but my favorite musical of all time. Eddie did a great job on the music and the redo of the story with an absolutely great set made it work so well.
i genuinely believe that the musical is better than the movie! the writing is so much more developed and i feel like beetle juice is more rounded out character than in the movie (no offense to Michael Keaton, i love him). I also like the ending of the musical a lot better!
Let's have a bunch of people crawl around on stage in unitards and leg warmers. Singing a bunch of only semi related poems set to music. But we will be pushing the technology to the limit and give each of them an individual radio mic stuffed in a condom.
As much as I love it, I can't believe that Cats got made.
I had to scroll way too far to see this. Like, we’ve just lived with it for decades and now we’ve just accepted it as a theatrical icon without it considering how fucking weird it is.
It's done by Takarazuka Revue, using the names from the English translation. They've done 3 in the series, I think. I think they recently announced one based on the 19th-century set games?
Animal Farm.
I believe there are a few versions of this. I didn’t know it was a musical until I did it for a community musical. Honestly, best show I’ve ever done. The songs are proper bangers (even if they were a nightmare to sing as an alto!). Heck, Napoleon has a jazz number at one point.
I need to check this out- Animal Farm is one of my favorite books (I originally read it at twelve, when I was obviously too young to really grasp the symbolism but old enough to grasp the basic idea) and this sounds amazing.
I had never read Animal Farm until I did this. And, yeah, it’s a pretty great book! I was fortunate to play Boxer and he’s such a sweet character to play!
Annoyingly though, there is so little online! The only recording I could find for the version I did is by a school done over a decade ago. You can also listen to the [backing tracks on Soundcloud](https://m.soundcloud.com/ljemmett/sets/animal-farm-backing-tracks)
You know that one time Weekly World News made one joke article about a half man half bat? Yeah, let's do that, but let's set it in the most hick town to ever hick with an evil murderous doctor, an obsession with cows, bat on human sex, accidental incest, the batboy somehow becoming british, and oh right, THE LITERAL GOD PAN LEADING AN ANIMAL ORGY.
And by god, is it one of the most fun musicals I've ever seen, it's wonderful and I love it.
Oh my god I was coming here to say bat boy. I haven’t seen it yet but I’ve read the synopsis and my friends and I are planning on having a bat boy watch party
I came here to suggest this exact play. If there was ever a concept that should never have become a musical, it's Bat Boy from Weekly World News. Yet, it's fantastic.
We accept it as a given now, but a mainstream musical, on a major Broadway stage (and not Off-Broadway), in 1959, centering on the life of a stripper and the mother who toxically dominates her and those others around her, starring an established, mainstream Hollywood/Broadway actress.
The TikTok Ratatouille musical was a weird one, I thought it was like a cute concept and there’s a lot of creativity on TikTok. I thought if they were actually gonna do the show, it will have a small budget but take a lot of the concepts Tiktokers thought up and bring them to life (like puppets and whatnot). Then they drop a digital musical that felt rushed and I was like oh…this exists.
A boy in New Jersey with poor mental health and poor social skills gets a supercomputer in his brain that looks like Keanu Reeves and tells him how to be more chill, all so he can get a girlfriend.
I could have a lot more to this synopsis, but that would take like 5 years.
I was surprised at a musical version of Carrie. I was expecting something campy like Evil Dead. Nope, not campy at all. Legit terrifying and haunting music. I enjoyed it.
I don't know if this really was going to exist because the concept is just rumoured but they were making a musical for EVER AFTER HIGH! I think there is a "Playbill" but nothing from someone who can be easily proven as a true source. For musicals that we know actually exist, Great British Bake Off. If Channel 4 wanted to make a musical for one of their shows, why not Taskmaster? They had a "make a song for a Taskmaster musical" task and many songs that can be used.
Already posted about this a few days ago, but…
Subways Are For Sleeping started as an article about homelessness in New York, then was expanded into a nonfiction book in which the writer told about his experiences meeting and interviewing the homeless! Including the tricks they used to find places to sleep without getting arrested.
Obviously, Comden and Green and Jule Styne turned this into a hilarious romantic comedy.
I once saw a musical based on the life of Albert Einstein. It was so bad we were having to stifle our laughs so as not to annoy the actors. Tap dancing FBI agents, a peppy song about the Manhattan Project, and an entire song about why he doesn’t wear socks. I do wish I had bought the soundtrack just to have it to show people.
This sounds like it would be awesome if intentionally played as a comedy or as geek kitsch, but if they were trying to be too serious or educational with it then it sounds like an absolute drag haha
Pacific Overtures. A musical about the forced opening up of Japan from the Japanese perspective, made by a bunch of white guys, actually featuring a mostly Asian cast in the ‘70s, and it’s really good?!
Honestly, Assassins. Let's make Schoolhouse Rock songs about the people who killed presidents!! It shouldn't work as a thought provoking piece of art as well as it does. Peak Sondheim magic.
Tom of Finland the musical. It was an original Finnish musical that was a part of Finland's official 100 years of independence celebrations in 2017, and it was pretty good, actually.
(Disclaimer: if you don't know who Tom of Finland is, do not google him at work.)
And Rocky the musical was originally in German lol.
Mine is probs Urinetown, ik it’s got deeper themes about capitalism or something but I’m not getting into a musical about piss.
The best way to describe Urinetown is "what if the first ten seasons of The Simpsons were a musical?" The tone is spot-on, from the sense of humor to the rhythms of the dialogue.. even a few of the characters feel like rather direct cut-and-paste from The Simpsons with only the names changed.
I was trying to think of obscure historical events I could write a musical about and I thought of writing one on D.B. Cooper, a man who hijacked an airplane for money in the 70s (I wrote a report on him in high school). Turned out the musical already exists!
So then I thought that I should write one about Mary Toft, the woman who convinced the medical community that she was giving birth to rabbits. Turns out she’s already got a musical about her too
In a way, Come From Away. If someone told me that there was a musical about 9/11 I would immediately write it off as crass and in poor taste to even consider writing.
But a story about the town who helped take in planes blocked from US airspace following the tragedy, who still needed somewhere to land and who were welcomed with open arms? It’s a beautiful musical.
Ummmm… I saw MARILYN: AN AMERICAN FABLE on Broadway (1983?) it was a big budget Marilyn Monroe musical. Lasted about a week.
SHOGUN?! Yup, saw that too,
CAPEMAN?! Yup, saw that too (ouch)
Barely related; I get that reaction every time I think about the 40 minute AMV of the entire Assassins soundtrack starring My Little Pony characters. But in like, a positive way
I don't watch MLP, but I'm just so delighted by the skill and creativity of fans
Heartbreakingly it seems it's been taken down :'(
All that is left of it is a world Premiere Album on spotify but let me tell you about MacGyver the Musical.
The World Premiere of MacGyver, The Musical opened in February 2022 at Stages in Houston, TX
The first thing they do is cast a MacGyver out of the audience every night who then has to MacGyver their way through the show. They even had a contest for concept album where RJ Christian won.
I NEED to know if the rights are available because this would kill in a black box.
Definitely the GBBO Musical! It had a really short run and I hardly heard anything about it, but apparently Grace Mouat was part of last year's West end cast!
Pretty much every Sondheim, William Finn, and Michael R Jackson show is like wtf are they thinking, but they all are great. The opening of japan?? Sweeney Todd revenge and cannabalism?? Surrealistic bunuel films?? Fairy tale mashup?? A painting by Seurat?? … then A gay affair, family break up and mash back together then dying of aids?? An autobiographical musical about having brain surgery?? .. A musical about a black queer writer writing a musical about a black queer writer writing about a musical about a black queer writer?? Teeth in your vagina?? 😆
Starlight Express. They’re on roller skates, playing anthropomorphic train cars?! I love that this exists, and I can’t get over how lucky I am to have seen it!
My mother took me to a musical called Forbidden Paradise when I was 12 - it was a musical about an emperor who couldn't get it up anymore, no woman in his empire could get him excited but when he went to Vienna, he saw a woman who he really liked - she was the Queen of Vienna and married to the King who he was trying to negotiate with.
Part of the winning negotiation was that he got to have sex with the Queen which they did on stage to a big band number - it was very odd and my mum promised to look up every single musical she took me to going forward!
Gutenberg! The Musical!
We know very little about Gutenberg, and what we do know isn’t interesting. But that isn’t going to stop us from making a musical!
We saw it on Broadway, and it was great because of the two actors, Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells.
Not sure how good it would be without actors of this caliber and this chemistry.
This musical certainly seems to be as a response to someone saying, I can’t believe those other musicals really exist…how far can I take this?
It *did* go to Broadway. For 28 previews and 188 performances. There’s even a cast album.
Some of the songs fell flat for me, but overall it was a fantastic show. I got to be brought on stage for the final fight. The fighting scenes alone were worth the price of the ticket. Everything else was just icing on the cake
I imagine you could go around saying you were in a Broadway show, because you were technically?
I do jokingly say that 😅
Ah, like how my elbow fracture a few years back was martial arts-related (I had a bicycle accident on the way to aikido practice).
Slightly different. They had these seats that were called “golden circle” seats that were the first few rows in the center orchestra. For the last 20 mins of the show everyone in those seats were escorted on stage to new bleacher seating upstage, because for the final fight between Rocky and Apollo the stage came out over those seats and a Jumbotron came down from the ceiling to create the feel of being in a boxing arena. We were there all the way to curtain call.
Have you listened to the cast album? I might have to check it out myself because I’m very curious if it’s any good
The musical was so good, and probably one of my favorite memories of seeing a show on Broadway.
You really should watch some of the press about it and watch stuff about the boxing ring they built for the stage
Death note the musical. And it's even more surprising that it's so good.
I’m a huge fan of the anime so I put off listening to the musical soundtrack for so long because I didn’t want it to ruin it for me and wow it’s good I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve also been meaning to check out the Japanese with English subtitles slime tutorial on YouTube because I’m obsessed with the art design of that
Hot take: if you want to turn a popular book/show to a movie, make a musical instead.
Oh yeah have you seen the Netflix Death Note movie? It is ATROCIOUS
I did and have been denying its existence since.
True, musical adaptations are almost always good starting with any medium, book? The Percy Jackson musical and star kids various Potter parody’s are incredible. Movie? Mean girls, heathers, LEGALLY BLONDE!!?!? Anime? Death note. Greek myth? Hades Town, my beloved! I could go on
Dune should've been a musical ...actually I'd watch that ngl
I remember telling people about *Death Note: The Musical* to certain people on the sub for the first time and I always say "It has no right to be as good as it is. But it's really good."
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (composed by Dove Attia)
There was just a [Phantom Blood musical](https://jojowiki.com/Phantom_Blood_(Musical)) in Japan and it looked unbelievably AMAZING. There were tickets for recordings and a Blu-ray is preorderable. The leads are double cast, so there are two VODS. The VODs were just Japanese, no official English subtitles. I hope the Blu-ray will. I need to watch them. Araki also had a play based off a non Jojo one shot years ago.
The bluray is coming out this fall, I think. There will be two, they usually make two when double-casting happens. ([JoJo Myu trailer](https://youtu.be/5VdSew3Of1o?si=38wjuynLxxKWsovL)) Cries, I'm currently obsessed with another thing that's an original produced by Toho and everyone is like.... crying and hoping they make a bluray. (Oh, yeah, this might surprise some people -- [Cross Road](https://youtu.be/lDK1AJztZ6s?si=iJe81-tZj343WCub), a musical about Niccolo Paganini making a contract with a devil. It's.... amazing. If you want cape-swishing Gothic drama with surprising complexity and beautiful music, please take a look!) If you don't know Dove Attia, he's one of the top composers in France. He premiered another thing in Japan last Fall, about Arsene Lupin. But thanks for being aware of Japanese musicals! Check r/JapanStage if you're interested in more. Also r/KoreanMusicals and r/InternationalMusicals.
i feel like Attack On Titan is an even weirder anime musical
This all the way. I was expecting it to be bad just because the idea of an anime musical sounded silly, and now it’s one of my all time favorites
There are plays and musicals for the majority of popular anime out there—Naruto, My Hero Academia, Sailor Moon; they’ve been making them for decades so the list goes on into the hundreds. The Demon Slayer cast was just in New York last weekend.
Making a Broadway adaptation of Groundhog Day, and making it WORK.
And making it actually intensely anxious and existential and...feminist, even! In a way that is far more poignant than the movie!
i love groundhog day so much. i rewatch it every february 2nd
I’m still angry it got so little traction on Broadway. It was absolutely amazing.
I absolutely love it, Andy Karl plays the role so well, if may even be my favourite musical. It just sweeps you up into such a great story.
For me, it will ALWAYS be Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark
1) How the hell does this exist 2) How the hell would this WORK 3) How the hell is theatre LEGEND Julie Taylor responsible for so much of it
4. How the hell did it give so many people major injuries?
5. Why were the songs by Bono??
She has a history of this going back to Lion King. The guy who hired her was my mentor, and he mentioned it once. "She injured a lot of my good people" he said
THAT TOO
I saw it. It didn’t work. It was visually the most stunning piece of theatre but the musical itself was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.
Idk if this is what you meant but the way you phrased this makes it sound like you’re aware of Julie Taymor but somehow unaware of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, hahaha
Oh I’m well aware of both but I think it’s still crazy she’s the genius behind how The Lion King on Broadway was done and…Spiderman Turn Off the Dark. I totally get how it could be read like that though LOL
The Anne Frank musical.
THATS A THING?!?!? WTF
There are multiple actually! I remember a couple years ago in the Netherlands a new Anne Frank musical was being made and one of the Anne Frank foundations loved it and thought it was a beautiful tribute, while the other foundation hated it and was especially hung up on the fact that you buy merch and treats during intermission.
American Psycho, a dark satirical thriller of a serial killer business man… into a musical? And it works! It’s high camp and You are What You Wear is a legendary song
Fellow American psycho musical fan 😎
and it’s matt smith????? cray
I am in love with the music from this show.
As a Bojack Horseman fan I can't believe there's a musical about corn
"Once again my life has been worsened by a brush with musical theater"
Assassins. If you told someone not in the know that there was a black comedy musical about presidential assassins and that the climax is Oswald shooting JFK, they'd probably think you were making a bad joke. Come From Away for being "the 9/11 musical". I went to see it yesterday, and there was a lot of chatter in the lobby before the show from people who were confused about how such a premise could work at all.
The key to Come From Away is that the focus isn't exploiting trauma to make a weep-fest story, instead it's about celebrating human connection and bridging cultural gaps.
It is probably my favorite show ever ... and I still can't listen to the soundtrack straight through. It is so beautiful, and so hard.
I always say Come From Away is the embodiment of Mr Rogers' advice to "look for the helpers".
1) I love Assassins so much I forgot how bat shit the concept is 2) Come From Away absolutely surprised me. I didn’t think a musical about 9/11 could work but it is so much more than that.
2. When it first came out, I read that someone on the production team (I forget who) said “it’s not a musical about 9/11. It’s a musical about 9/12.” I always liked that.
I tell people it’s about Operation Yellow Ribbon, and when people ask what the heck that is, I explain how during 9/11, airplanes needed to be grounded immediately, and it’s the story of one small town that opened their arms to thousands of unexpected guests and the resiliency of the human spirit. It tends to go over pretty well!
Come from Away was too hard for my brain to watch. I had to leave because apparently the whole grief thingwill be forever for that one. Which is a shame because it's so well done but... Nope PTSD brain went "Time to ruin your fun"
When you think about it, Sondheim hardly ever disappoints: - Old people beefing - Murder barber - Fairy tales but wait a minute- - Friends to enemies (but backwards) - Emotional manipulation isn't romance: the musical Between him and Dave a-few-pages-of-war-and-peace and a-musical-inside-a-man's-head Malloy, it's quite embarassing to explain these musicals to non musical fans...
My personal favorite is: man cheating on his 18-year-old wife (he’s 50 by the way)
I was in a production of Assassins in college and it became one of my favorite musicals
It's not surprising to me that there's a SpongeBob musical, but it's surprising to me that there's a SpongeBob musical with songs by artists like Brian Eno and They Might Be Giants. Amazing.
The SpongeBob musical had no right to be as good as it is. Honestly one of my comfort musicals now, it just makes me happy
Teeth. I didn't even know that the movie itself existed until I saw the announcement for a musical on the main broadway sub
THERE'S A TEETH MUSICAL?!
It just closed Off-Broadway! Definitely one of my favorite shows Ive seen this season!
Probably going to transfer to another theatre.
It was fantastic! Probably the best show I’ve seen this year
Teeth? What like- that movie where she has teeth in her vagina??
yep
Teeth was great!!!!
Sometimes I feel like whenever producers want to put on new musical they just throw a dart at a a dart board of random films and go with whatever film the dart hit.
in this case, the writers (Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs) approached the rights holders (which in this case I believe was just Mitchell Lichtenstein, who wrote and directed the film).
Junie B. Jones? My elementary school hero? She has a musical?! (I really need to listen to it)
There's also a Knuffle Bunny musical, a Flat Stanley musical, and a Dog Man musical. I would unironically enjoy being in all of those.
They got the dog man musical at my local theater last year and this year they have his sidekick cat kid... how did they both get their own show...
Operation Mincemeat is probably up there. “So that one time that James Bond’s creator tricked the Nazis by yeeting a dead guy out of a submarine with fake documents? Let’s make a campy West End show about it with a gender-bent cast of 5 and lots of quick-changes.
If you say it like that. 😆 Loved every second of it.
Hi fellow Mincemeat fan xxx
Apparently there's a human centipede musical.
Human Centipede, Human Centipeeede...
I think that I'm gonna get murdered tonight...
I think that's a red flag.
I don't want to get stabbed
I can never find it, so I guess they must have taken it down, but I stg back in the day there was an Onion headline “Everything Ever to be Adapted Into a Broadway Musical”
No but for real, Broadway is going the same IP-centric direction Hollywood is 😞
Diana.
It’s a train wreck that’s oddly kinda fun
I don't think it was a train that wrecked
It was like Thrilla in Manila but with Diana and Camilla
🎵 Thrilla in Manila with Camilla 🎵
Honestly, should we be surprised after *Evita*?
That’s what I thought it would have been going for—and while it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, it was a fun time.
The six wives of Henry the 8th coming together to trauma dump in the form of a concert
It's so so good though!
Lolita (a couple of versions).
This one doesn't surprise me. Lolita is the kind of book/movie where I just kinda assumed there was probably a musical based on it.
My friends and I literally have an in-joke about how Lolita would be the worst idea for a musical adaptation ever, but it was always just a funny hypothetical because of how inherently terrible of a concept it is. I hadn't heard that MULTIPLE VERSIONS ALREADY EXIST?!
Two different musical versions and several straight plays and maybe one opera.
Whenever there's a conversation about biggest irrational fears or worst ways to die, I'll often bring up Floyd Collins (and John Jones). People always agree with me that getting trapped in a narrow passageway of a cave and slowly dying over the course of several days while help is so near yet so far is a horrific way to go. People also always think I'm kidding when I follow up with "yeah and they made a musical about Floyd Collins too!"
Chess: The Musical.
The music for it is fabulous!
One night in Bangkok was Lin Manuel’s inspiration for a rap musical. That is a hill I’m willing to die upon. /s
…honestly, now that you’ve said it, I kind of want it to be true 😂
Me and my dad found out about this one from one of those "guess the musical" videos and we were absolutely dumbfounded
The London version or the New York version? 😉
Titanic
A Beetlejuice musical. The only thing more unbelievable than that is the fact that it actually works…
Beetlejuice works so well because they used the original idea of it being PG13/R rated and leaned into how messed up it (and Beetlejuice especially) is, it also works because it has enough of a feel of the movie but also is its own story that it’s a perfect combo
They took elements of the film, the cartoon and the legendary unproduced screenplay to create the musical. Things like the girl scout and Beetlejuice being a demon instead of a poltergeist are taken directly from that earlier screenplay draft.
And such a bold departure from the original source material!
Beetlejuice is really just a demon theater kid, I'm glad they gave him a musical.
It's a movie I think is very okay but my favorite musical of all time. Eddie did a great job on the music and the redo of the story with an absolutely great set made it work so well.
I like how they spent more time in the land of the dead. It was kind of underutilized in the film.
This is surprising? Really? Seems a natural fit for a musical.
i genuinely believe that the musical is better than the movie! the writing is so much more developed and i feel like beetle juice is more rounded out character than in the movie (no offense to Michael Keaton, i love him). I also like the ending of the musical a lot better!
Let's have a bunch of people crawl around on stage in unitards and leg warmers. Singing a bunch of only semi related poems set to music. But we will be pushing the technology to the limit and give each of them an individual radio mic stuffed in a condom. As much as I love it, I can't believe that Cats got made.
And they're all competing over who gets to go to heaven
I had to scroll way too far to see this. Like, we’ve just lived with it for decades and now we’ve just accepted it as a theatrical icon without it considering how fucking weird it is.
How is Cats not higher up on the list here? 🤣
hal, it’s about cats
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It's done by Takarazuka Revue, using the names from the English translation. They've done 3 in the series, I think. I think they recently announced one based on the 19th-century set games?
Animal Farm. I believe there are a few versions of this. I didn’t know it was a musical until I did it for a community musical. Honestly, best show I’ve ever done. The songs are proper bangers (even if they were a nightmare to sing as an alto!). Heck, Napoleon has a jazz number at one point.
I need to check this out- Animal Farm is one of my favorite books (I originally read it at twelve, when I was obviously too young to really grasp the symbolism but old enough to grasp the basic idea) and this sounds amazing.
I had never read Animal Farm until I did this. And, yeah, it’s a pretty great book! I was fortunate to play Boxer and he’s such a sweet character to play! Annoyingly though, there is so little online! The only recording I could find for the version I did is by a school done over a decade ago. You can also listen to the [backing tracks on Soundcloud](https://m.soundcloud.com/ljemmett/sets/animal-farm-backing-tracks)
You know that one time Weekly World News made one joke article about a half man half bat? Yeah, let's do that, but let's set it in the most hick town to ever hick with an evil murderous doctor, an obsession with cows, bat on human sex, accidental incest, the batboy somehow becoming british, and oh right, THE LITERAL GOD PAN LEADING AN ANIMAL ORGY. And by god, is it one of the most fun musicals I've ever seen, it's wonderful and I love it.
I love Bat Boy. Unfortunately I live in a pretty conservative area and I'll never see one of my local community theaters do it.
My daughter's college did it. She was working box office so she saw it multiple times. It was the first thing she said when I mentioned this subject.
I fell in love with it when my undergrad theatre department did it.
Oh my god I was coming here to say bat boy. I haven’t seen it yet but I’ve read the synopsis and my friends and I are planning on having a bat boy watch party
I came here to suggest this exact play. If there was ever a concept that should never have become a musical, it's Bat Boy from Weekly World News. Yet, it's fantastic.
I really REALLY like the fact that Jekyll and Hyde became a musical, ITS SO GOOD!!!!!
Why did I think of the Arthur episode before I thought of the actual musical?
I live inside you foreverrrr! Nooooo!
We accept it as a given now, but a mainstream musical, on a major Broadway stage (and not Off-Broadway), in 1959, centering on the life of a stripper and the mother who toxically dominates her and those others around her, starring an established, mainstream Hollywood/Broadway actress.
The TikTok Ratatouille musical was a weird one, I thought it was like a cute concept and there’s a lot of creativity on TikTok. I thought if they were actually gonna do the show, it will have a small budget but take a lot of the concepts Tiktokers thought up and bring them to life (like puppets and whatnot). Then they drop a digital musical that felt rushed and I was like oh…this exists.
Evil dead, the Musical, although the other comments are eye opening, haha.
I'd argue it makes sense. I mean the series is so silly that a musical was inevitable imo
Saw Evil Dead a few times off B’way. It was fun!
Nice. I only have the cast album but it looks like a lot of fun!
King Kong the musical, I find the puppet really interesting though
I saw it. Technically it was amazing. The scenes at sea, the puppetry etc. But other than that it was completely forgettable.
Brokeback Mountain. Huge fan of the movie, haven't given the musical a try though.
THERES A MUSICAL??
There’s a play with music
And separately an opera.
The first time I read a plot synopsis of Be More Chill on Wikipedia I thought the page had been messed with. What a strange show.
A boy in New Jersey with poor mental health and poor social skills gets a supercomputer in his brain that looks like Keanu Reeves and tells him how to be more chill, all so he can get a girlfriend. I could have a lot more to this synopsis, but that would take like 5 years.
He literally takes a chill pill hahaha
I was surprised at a musical version of Carrie. I was expecting something campy like Evil Dead. Nope, not campy at all. Legit terrifying and haunting music. I enjoyed it.
my school just did carrie the musical! it was a blast i was sue snell!
Hamilton. Imagine what people were thinking when lin pitched a rap musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton?
They threw him money after that White House appearance
Reefer Madness the musical! Yes indeed!
i thought the kuroshitisuji musical was a fever dream i had when i was like 12 but aparently it not only exists but is actually kind of good??
I don't know if this really was going to exist because the concept is just rumoured but they were making a musical for EVER AFTER HIGH! I think there is a "Playbill" but nothing from someone who can be easily proven as a true source. For musicals that we know actually exist, Great British Bake Off. If Channel 4 wanted to make a musical for one of their shows, why not Taskmaster? They had a "make a song for a Taskmaster musical" task and many songs that can be used.
Ever After High was my one of my favorite shows growing up, I need to look into this
teeth the musical. who is this for??
Me. It was for me.
It was fantastic- what a comment on America… loved it!!!
One I just found out about a while ago is they made a stage version of Grease 2 but they renamed it to Cool Rider.
There are musical versions of “Young Frankenstein”, “The Wedding Singer”, and “Ever After”. I wish they were more well-known, tbh…
I really enjoyed The Wedding Singer. A fun 80s tribute.
I haven't seen the others, but I thoroughly enjoyed Young Frankenstein. It did run for over a year, and talk about a powerhouse cast!
I’ve listened to the soundtrack a few times - I’d love to see it performed live at some point!
Already posted about this a few days ago, but… Subways Are For Sleeping started as an article about homelessness in New York, then was expanded into a nonfiction book in which the writer told about his experiences meeting and interviewing the homeless! Including the tricks they used to find places to sleep without getting arrested. Obviously, Comden and Green and Jule Styne turned this into a hilarious romantic comedy.
I once saw a musical based on the life of Albert Einstein. It was so bad we were having to stifle our laughs so as not to annoy the actors. Tap dancing FBI agents, a peppy song about the Manhattan Project, and an entire song about why he doesn’t wear socks. I do wish I had bought the soundtrack just to have it to show people.
This sounds like it would be awesome if intentionally played as a comedy or as geek kitsch, but if they were trying to be too serious or educational with it then it sounds like an absolute drag haha
Pacific Overtures. A musical about the forced opening up of Japan from the Japanese perspective, made by a bunch of white guys, actually featuring a mostly Asian cast in the ‘70s, and it’s really good?!
Rocky Horror (the musical) is awesome.
You know that also has a bat shit crazy premise if you think about it lol
Honestly, Assassins. Let's make Schoolhouse Rock songs about the people who killed presidents!! It shouldn't work as a thought provoking piece of art as well as it does. Peak Sondheim magic.
American Psycho or (severely underrated) The Last Breakfast Club
Book of Mormon. Urinetown.
Tom of Finland the musical. It was an original Finnish musical that was a part of Finland's official 100 years of independence celebrations in 2017, and it was pretty good, actually. (Disclaimer: if you don't know who Tom of Finland is, do not google him at work.)
And Rocky the musical was originally in German lol. Mine is probs Urinetown, ik it’s got deeper themes about capitalism or something but I’m not getting into a musical about piss.
That's a shame, because it is a FANTASTIC musical.
The best way to describe Urinetown is "what if the first ten seasons of The Simpsons were a musical?" The tone is spot-on, from the sense of humor to the rhythms of the dialogue.. even a few of the characters feel like rather direct cut-and-paste from The Simpsons with only the names changed.
Urinetown is sooooo good. It’s super Brechtian
I was trying to think of obscure historical events I could write a musical about and I thought of writing one on D.B. Cooper, a man who hijacked an airplane for money in the 70s (I wrote a report on him in high school). Turned out the musical already exists! So then I thought that I should write one about Mary Toft, the woman who convinced the medical community that she was giving birth to rabbits. Turns out she’s already got a musical about her too
In a way, Come From Away. If someone told me that there was a musical about 9/11 I would immediately write it off as crass and in poor taste to even consider writing. But a story about the town who helped take in planes blocked from US airspace following the tragedy, who still needed somewhere to land and who were welcomed with open arms? It’s a beautiful musical.
Ummmm… I saw MARILYN: AN AMERICAN FABLE on Broadway (1983?) it was a big budget Marilyn Monroe musical. Lasted about a week. SHOGUN?! Yup, saw that too, CAPEMAN?! Yup, saw that too (ouch)
Assassins honestly. And even motr shocked at how incredible it is.
Repo! The Genetic Opera! This and death note the musical
Debbie Does Dallas.
the human centipede the musical, surprisingly tasteful and funny, and lots of great 4th wall breaks
That entire sentence is a wild ride
Thankskilling. And it's about as campy as you can imagine.
Barely related; I get that reaction every time I think about the 40 minute AMV of the entire Assassins soundtrack starring My Little Pony characters. But in like, a positive way I don't watch MLP, but I'm just so delighted by the skill and creativity of fans Heartbreakingly it seems it's been taken down :'(
Damn I would have killed to see that. I was a casual MLP fan when I was a kid
All that is left of it is a world Premiere Album on spotify but let me tell you about MacGyver the Musical. The World Premiere of MacGyver, The Musical opened in February 2022 at Stages in Houston, TX The first thing they do is cast a MacGyver out of the audience every night who then has to MacGyver their way through the show. They even had a contest for concept album where RJ Christian won. I NEED to know if the rights are available because this would kill in a black box.
that one spiderman musical with a super high budget, pretty sure it is/was the most expensive musical to produce
Definitely the GBBO Musical! It had a really short run and I hardly heard anything about it, but apparently Grace Mouat was part of last year's West end cast!
We actually loved Rocky the Musical. We went because we couldn’t imagine it… and it worked!
Rocky Horror Picture Show and Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
The Happiness of the Katakuris. Japanese horror comedy musical
Pinkalicious the musical
Portal 2: the unauthorised musical Although now that I think about it, the songs are one of the things the Portal games are known for
Honestly, when I listen to Book of Mormon, I'm sometimes dumbfounded that the language was acceptable to US audiences.
Pretty much every Sondheim, William Finn, and Michael R Jackson show is like wtf are they thinking, but they all are great. The opening of japan?? Sweeney Todd revenge and cannabalism?? Surrealistic bunuel films?? Fairy tale mashup?? A painting by Seurat?? … then A gay affair, family break up and mash back together then dying of aids?? An autobiographical musical about having brain surgery?? .. A musical about a black queer writer writing a musical about a black queer writer writing about a musical about a black queer writer?? Teeth in your vagina?? 😆
Starlight Express. They’re on roller skates, playing anthropomorphic train cars?! I love that this exists, and I can’t get over how lucky I am to have seen it!
My mother took me to a musical called Forbidden Paradise when I was 12 - it was a musical about an emperor who couldn't get it up anymore, no woman in his empire could get him excited but when he went to Vienna, he saw a woman who he really liked - she was the Queen of Vienna and married to the King who he was trying to negotiate with. Part of the winning negotiation was that he got to have sex with the Queen which they did on stage to a big band number - it was very odd and my mum promised to look up every single musical she took me to going forward!
Gutenberg! The Musical! We know very little about Gutenberg, and what we do know isn’t interesting. But that isn’t going to stop us from making a musical! We saw it on Broadway, and it was great because of the two actors, Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells. Not sure how good it would be without actors of this caliber and this chemistry. This musical certainly seems to be as a response to someone saying, I can’t believe those other musicals really exist…how far can I take this?