Gil Hates Everything

I originally listened to 260 musicals in 2009/2010. Here are some lists and recommendations:

Twenty shows which I think are just great, although some are unlikely to be performed anytime soon, so you might as well listen to the score and use your imagination:

1776
Amour
Bombay Dreams
Bright Lights, Big City
The Capeman
Curtains
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
In The Heights
Jane Eyre
Kristina
Little Women
Lovemusik
Man Of La Mancha
Moon Landing
The Music Man
Parade
Ragtime
Seussical
Summer Of ’42
Urinetown

Five good but maybe lesser-known shows by famous people / teams:

70, Girls, 70 (Kander & Ebb)
By Jeeves (ALW)
Flora The Red Menace (Kander & Ebb)
The Frogs (Sondheim)
Milk & Honey (Jerry Herman)

Five good revues:

Elegies
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
Is There Life After High School
My Name Will Always Be Alice
Songs From An Unmade Bed

William Finn’s Elegies is possibly the best album ever about loss. In fact, you know what?…

Five musicals by William Finn, the greatest Broadway composer of the last thirty years:

In Trousers
March Of The Falsettos
Falsettoland
A New Brain
Elegies

+ The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, but note, he wrote songs to order for this, so it’s less successful overall, although some of the songs are dangerously lovely.

Sarah and I find it difficult to fully express our admiration for William Finn. When I grow up I hope to write songs like him. His work is a marvel, cripplingly emotional but also funny and totally human and packed with joy and hope. Listening to so many musicals hasn’t proven to me that no-one else is capable of writing anything at all worthwhile, that would be a ridiculous assertion… but Finn has a special place in my heart, and I believe it to be unlikely that he couldn’t occupy that place in other hearts too. If you’ve never heard anything by him, start with A New Brain and Elegies. (And bring tissues.)

Ten clear cases of WTF, in various respects:

Evil Dead – The Musical
The Gospel At Colonus
Misery
Passing Strange
Passion
Repo! – The Genetic Opera
Sherlock Holmes
Shout! The Mod Musical
Starlight Express
Sunday In The Park With George

Ten spectacularly bad shows which we should take a moment out of the day to mock:

The Beautiful Game (ALW)
Dracula (Wildhorn)
La Cava (partially blameable on the guy who did Bat Boy and Legally Blonde)
Madison Avenue
Marguerite (Boublil & Schonberg)
The Pirate Queen (Boublil & Schonberg)
Rage Of The Heart
Tell Me On A Sunday (ALW)
Waiting For The Moon (Wildhorn)

Note that I’m being generous here by not including old shows or revivals thereof. Yes, I’ve kicked the shit out of a few such shows on the basis that they seemed pretty contemptible even for their time, but generally speaking, prolonging a show’s life is our choice. Art, like food, usually has a consume-by date, and you can’t blame milk for going off. But you can blame today’s milkman for bringing you sour milk. And you can always blame Frank Wildhorn for something.

Twenty-two excellent songs from musicals:

Rum And Molasses (1776)
The I Love You Song (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee)
Rick’s Song (Adrift In Macao)
Monsieur Passepartout (Amour)
Museum Song (Barnum)
Three Bedroom House (Bat Boy)
The Company Way (How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying)
Atencion (In The Heights)
There! Right There! (Legally Blonde)
The Weekly Volcano Press (Little Women)
Lost In The Stars (Lost In The Stars)
Aldonza (Man Of La Mancha)
Trouble (The Music Man)
Spin Of The Wheel (Off The Wall)
Come Up To My Place (On The Town)
Pray (Once On This Island)
Real Big News (Parade)
If I Ruled The World (Pickwick)
He Wanted To Say (Ragtime)
The Creation Of Man (Scarlet Pimpernel)
Solla Sollew (Seussical)
A New World (Songs From A New World)

But this is not to suggest that “In The Heights” and “Parade” are not excellent throughout.