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!
“1960
It’s 1960
And gosh, what a swell year it’s been…”
– Charley Kringas, Beth Spencer, and Franklin Shepard (Merrily We Roll Along, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim)
In 1960 Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe followed up their record-breaking My Fair Lady with the Arthurian adaptation Camelot. Four years later, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock’s Fiddler on the Roof (a favorite of mine, as frequenters of this thread might be able to guess) broke Lady’s record, the first Broadway musical to run for over three thousand performances. Both shows are about the tension between tradition and innovation – the same could be said about musical theatre (and arguably, the world) in general in the 1960’s.
Alongside more conventional scores, shows like Bye Bye Birdie (1960) and especially Hair (1967) took advantage of the takeover of rock and roll as the dominant style of popular music. Hair, along with Cabaret (1966), pushed boundaries concerning the political and sexual themes presented onstage. And Cabaret’s Sally Bowles, like Sweet Charity’s (1966) Charity Hope Valentine or Mame’s (1966) Mame Dennis, is a force of personality driving her show and overshadowing her male love interest, just in time for second-wave feminism to start picking up steam (as observed by Stacy Wolf in Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical).
What are your favorite/the most memorable examples of musical theatre from the 1960’s? If you’re not very familiar with this period, are you interested in changing that? Why or why not?
Here’s where I admit I have not seen (all of) Hair. I’ve caught the ending of the movie adaptation on TV multiple times (and it’s still very affecting), but I need to order it from the library so I can fully check it off my list. In the meantime, at my house we’ll still start singing “Manchester, England, England…” at the slightest provocation.
Best Musical Tony winners:
1960 – Bye Bye Birdie
1961 – How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
1962 – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
1964 – Hello, Dolly!
1964 – Fiddler on the Roof
1965 – Man of La Mancha
1966 – Cabaret
1967 – Hallelujah, Baby!
1969 – 1776