Broadway Blockbusters

• Broadway
• Hayman, Richard
• blockbuster

Broadway Blockbusters arranged by Richard HaymanThe Broadway musical has a tradition extending backwards to the New York première of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera at the Nassau Theater, Manhattan Island, in 1751. By 1900 the commercially-inspired blueprint of the musical as we now perceive it had evolved, by way of burlesque, minstrelsy and imports from London and other European centres, into the tuneful, stylish, thoroughly American bourgeois operettas of Kerker, Victor Herbert and others. During the twentieth century more than two thousand productions were staged in Broadway theatres, all of which incorporated in some measure the time-honoured clichés of pantomime, ballet, Viennese operetta and English comic-opera, vaudeville and farce, but only fifty or so of these enjoyed initial runs of over five hundred performances, and far fewer were blockbusters on a par with Show Boat (1927), the first truly modern musical in its marriage of music to a realist storyline, Oklahoma! (1947), South Pacific (1949), My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story and The Music Man (both 1957) or The Sound Of Music (1959).THE MUSIC MAN (1375 Broadway performances from 19th December, 1957) Music and lyrics by Meredith Willson (1902-84). The first stage musical by ex-classical flautist, composer of two symphonies (Naxos 8.559066) and sometime film-music writer and NBC musical director Willson, this show proved a major success which paved the way for two more: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960) and Here’s Love (1963). Among various fine songs, the poignant Till There Was You is nowadays the best remembered. The Oscar-winning film-version (Warner, 1962) starred Robert Preston. ANNIE (2,377 Broadway performances, from 21st April, 1977) Music by Charles Strouse (born 1928 ), lyrics by Martin Charnin. Comic-strip character Little Orphan Annie was a fair bet for American audiences to whose hearts, especially readers of The Chicago Tribune, she was still dear. After a trial run in Connecticut in 1976 Annie, a classic in the children-and-animal genre, moved to Broadway to become the biggest hit of 1977 and third longest-running musical of the 1970s. The show ran for 1,485 performances in London and did good business in South Africa, Australia, Japan and elsewhere. Its songs include Easy Street, Little Girls and Annie’s wistful Tomorrow.OLIVER! (2,618 performances in London, from 30th June, 1960; Broadway, from 1963, 774 performances). Music and lyrics by Lionel Bart (born 1930) During a six-year residence in London (its record run there was second only to The Mousetrap), Oliver!, an amusing and stylish adaptation of Dickens’ famous novel (1837-39), was also given successful airings in Scandinavia, Australia, South Africa, Israel, Los Angeles and Toronto prior to settling on Broadway. The original London production (as well as the 1968 multi-Oscar-winning Columbia British film) memorably featured Ron Moody as the lovable villain Fagin. Ba