Welcome to the Musicals Thread, the Avocado’s space for anything and everything related to musical theatre! Every month I’ll post a discussion prompt, but please feel free to comment on other topics, from new discoveries to old favorites. If you have ideas for future prompts or would like to write a feature for the thread, let me know!
As TV Tropes will tell you, most writers are writers, meaning that storytellers will draw from their own experiences to create stories about storytellers, including in musical theatre. Look no further than Broadway’s longest-running production, The Phantom of the Opera – its world is a stage, and its men and women merely players, composers, producers, and everyone else it takes to put on a show. Other media – movies, TV shows, even comics – get in on the act(ing and singing and dancing) too, dropping their characters into the audience, the cast/crew, or both (like when the rest of the Friends reluctantly support lead actor Joey. Quoth Phoebe: “The exclamation point in the title scares me, you know? It’s not just Freud, it’s Freud!”). I find it especially fun when, instead of putting on (and having to pay for the rights to) an existing show, a new one is created for the characters to perform in-universe and we get to hear a sample of it, such as Phantom’s Hannibal, Il Muto, and Don Juan Triumphant. Making the show’s plot a reflection of the characters’ personal lives in some way is optional.
What are some memorable examples of fictional characters attending or participating in musical theatre, on either a professional or amateur level? Which fictional musical do you wish you could see for real? I’d personally love to learn the context of the tragic ballad “They Threw It Away” from Trashman: The Musical after hearing it so expertly performed on Whose Line Is It Anyway?