Early antecedents by
John Webb, which was painted on a backshutter for the first performance of
The Siege of Rhodes (1656) The antecedents of musical theatre in Europe can be traced back to the
theatre of ancient Greece, where music and dance were included in stage comedies and tragedies during the 5th century BCE. The music from the ancient forms is lost, however, and they had little influence on later development of musical theatre. In the 12th and 13th centuries, religious dramas taught the
liturgy. Groups of actors would use outdoor
Pageant wagons (stages on wheels) to tell each part of the story. Poetic forms sometimes alternated with the prose dialogues, and liturgical chants gave way to new melodies. The European
Renaissance saw older forms evolve into two antecedents of musical theatre:
commedia dell'arte, where raucous clowns improvised familiar stories, and later,
opera buffa. In England, Elizabethan and Jacobean plays frequently included music, and short musical plays began to be included in an evenings' dramatic entertainments. Court
masques developed during the
Tudor period that involved music, dancing, singing and acting, often with expensive costumes and a complex
stage design. These developed into sung plays that are recognizable as English operas, the first usually being thought of as
The Siege of Rhodes (1656). In France, meanwhile,
Molière turned several of his farcical comedies into musical entertainments with songs (music provided by
Jean-Baptiste Lully) and dance in the late 17th century. These influenced a brief period of
English opera by composers such as
John Blow and
Henry Purcell. but the record soon reached 150 in the late 1820s. Other musical theatre forms developed in England by the 19th century, such as
music hall,
melodrama and
burletta, which were popularized partly because most London theatres were licensed only as music halls and not allowed to present plays without music. Colonial America did not have a significant theatre presence until 1752, when London entrepreneur William Hallam sent a company of actors to the colonies managed by his brother
Lewis. In New York in the summer of 1753, they performed ballad-operas, such as ''The Beggar's Opera'', and ballad-farces. Other early musical theatre in America consisted of British forms, such as burletta and pantomime, Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown from around 1850 and did not arrive in the Times Square area until the 1920s and 1930s. New York runs lagged far behind those in London, but
Laura Keene's "musical burletta"
Seven Sisters (1860) shattered previous New York musical theatre record, with a run of 253 performances.
1850s to 1880s Around 1850, the French composer
Hervé was experimenting with a form of comic musical theatre he called
opérette. The best known composers of
operetta were
Jacques Offenbach from the 1850s to the 1870s and
Johann Strauss II in the 1870s and 1880s. In America, mid-19th century musical theatre entertainments included crude
variety revue, which eventually developed into
vaudeville,
minstrel shows, which soon crossed the Atlantic to Britain, and Victorian burlesque, first popularized in the US by British troupes. though he also points to even earlier works. A hugely successful musical entertainment that premiered in New York in 1866,
The Black Crook, combined dance and some original music that helped to tell the story. The spectacular production, famous for its skimpy costumes, ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year,
The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy". In 1874,
Evangeline or The Belle of Arcadia, by
Edward E. Rice and
J. Cheever Goodwin, based loosely on
Longfellow’s Evangeline, with an original American story and music, opened successfully in New York and was revived in Boston, New York, and in repeated tours. Comedians
Edward Harrigan and
Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 (
The Mulligan Guard Picnic) and 1885. These musical comedies featured characters and situations taken from the everyday life of New York's lower classes. They starred high quality singers (
Lillian Russell,
Vivienne Segal and
Fay Templeton) instead of the ladies of questionable repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. In 1879,
The Brook by
Nate Salsbury was another national success with contemporary American dance styles and an American story about "members of an acting company taking a trip down a river ... with lots of obstacles and mishaps along the way". English
comic opera adopted many of the successful ideas of European operetta, none more successfully than the series of more than a dozen long-running
Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, including
H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and
The Mikado (1885). These shows were designed for family audiences, a marked contrast from the risqué burlesques, bawdy music hall shows and French operettas that sometimes drew a crowd seeking less wholesome entertainment. Their works were
admired and copied by early authors and composers of musicals in Britain and America.
1890s to the new century '
The Geisha A Trip to Chinatown (1891) was Broadway's long-run champion (until
Irene in 1919), running for 657 performances, but New York runs continued to be relatively short, with a few exceptions, compared with London runs, until the 1920s. Meanwhile, musicals took over the London stage in the
Gay Nineties, led by producer
George Edwardes, who perceived that audiences wanted a new alternative to the
Savoy-style comic operas and their intellectual, political, absurdist satire. He experimented with a modern-dress, family-friendly musical theatre style, with breezy, popular songs, snappy, romantic banter, and stylish spectacle at the
Gaiety and his other theatres. These drew on the traditions of comic opera and used elements of burlesque and of the Harrigan and Hart pieces. He replaced the bawdy women of burlesque with his "respectable" corps of
Gaiety Girls to complete the musical and visual fun. The success of the first of these,
In Town (1892) and
A Gaiety Girl (1893) set the style for the next three decades. The plots were generally light, romantic "poor maiden loves aristocrat and wins him against all odds" shows, with music by
Ivan Caryll,
Sidney Jones and
Lionel Monckton. These shows were immediately widely copied in America, and
Edwardian musical comedy swept away the earlier musical forms of comic opera and operetta.
The Geisha (1896) was one of the most successful in the 1890s, running for more than two years and achieving great international success.
The Belle of New York (1898) became the first American musical to run for over a year in London. The British musical comedy
Florodora (1899) was a popular success on both sides of the Atlantic, as was
A Chinese Honeymoon (1901), which ran for a record-setting 1,074 performances in London and 376 in New York.
Early 20th century Virtually eliminated from the English-speaking stage by competition from the ubiquitous Edwardian musical comedies, operettas returned to London and Broadway in 1907 with
The Merry Widow, and adaptations of continental operettas became direct competitors with musicals.
Franz Lehár and
Oscar Straus composed new operettas that were popular in English until World War I. In America,
Victor Herbert produced a string of enduring operettas including
The Fortune Teller (1898),
Babes in Toyland (1903),
Mlle. Modiste (1905),
The Red Mill (1906) and
Naughty Marietta (1910). In the 1910s, the team of
P. G. Wodehouse,
Guy Bolton and
Jerome Kern, following in the footsteps of
Gilbert and Sullivan, created the "
Princess Theatre shows" and paved the way for Kern's later work by showing that a musical could combine light, popular entertainment with continuity between its story and songs. The British theatre public supported far longer runs like that of
The Maid of the Mountains (1,352 performances) and especially
Chu Chin Chow. Its run of 2,238 performances was more than twice as long as any previous musical, setting a record that stood for nearly forty years. Even a revival of ''The Beggar's Opera
held the stage for 1,463 performances. Revues like The Bing Boys Are Here'' in Britain, and those of
Florenz Ziegfeld and his imitators in America, were also extraordinarily popular. A new generation of composers of operettas also emerged in the 1920s, such as
Rudolf Friml and
Sigmund Romberg, to create a series of popular Broadway hits. In London, writer-stars such as
Ivor Novello and
Noël Coward became popular, but the primacy of British musical theatre from the 19th century through 1920 was gradually replaced by American innovation, especially after World War I, as Kern and other
Tin Pan Alley composers began to bring new musical styles such as
ragtime and
jazz to the theatres, and the
Shubert Brothers took control of the Broadway theatres. Musical theatre writer
Andrew Lamb notes, "The operatic and theatrical styles of nineteenth-century social structures were replaced by a musical style more aptly suited to twentieth-century society and its vernacular idiom. It was from America that the more direct style emerged, and in America that it was able to flourish in a developing society less hidebound by nineteenth-century tradition." In France,
comédie musicale was written between in the early decades of the century for such stars as
Yvonne Printemps.
Show Boat and the Great Depression Progressing far beyond the comparatively frivolous musicals and sentimental operettas of the decade, Broadway's
Show Boat (1927) represented an even more complete integration of book and score than the Princess Theatre musicals, with dramatic themes told through the music, dialogue, setting and movement. This was accomplished by combining the lyricism of Kern's music with the skillful libretto of
Oscar Hammerstein II. One historian wrote, "Here we come to a completely new genre – the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. Now ... everything else was subservient to that play. Now ... came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity." As the
Great Depression set in during the post-Broadway national tour of
Show Boat, the public turned back to mostly light, escapist song-and-dance entertainment.
As Thousands Cheer (1933), a revue by
Irving Berlin and
Moss Hart in which each song or sketch was based on a newspaper headline, marked the first Broadway show in which an African-American,
Ethel Waters, starred alongside white actors. Waters' numbers included "
Supper Time", a woman's lament for her husband who has been lynched. The Gershwins'
Porgy and Bess (1935) featured an all African-American cast and blended operatic, folk and jazz idioms.
The Cradle Will Rock (1937), directed by
Orson Welles, was a highly political pro-
union piece that, despite the controversy surrounding it, ran for 108 performances. Despite the economic woes of the 1930s and the competition from film, the musical survived. In fact, it continued to evolve thematically beyond the gags and showgirls musicals of the
Gay Nineties and
Roaring Twenties and the sentimental romance of operetta, adding technical expertise and the fast-paced staging and naturalistic dialogue style led by director
George Abbott.
Brooks Atkinson wrote in
The New York Times that the show's opening number changed the history of musical theatre: "After a verse like that, sung to a buoyant melody, the banalities of the old musical stage became intolerable." It was the first "blockbuster" Broadway show, running a total of 2,212 performances, and was made into a hit film. It remains one of the most frequently produced of the team's projects. William A. Everett and
Paul R. Laird wrote that this was a "show, that, like
Show Boat, became a milestone, so that later historians writing about important moments in twentieth-century theatre would begin to identify eras according to their relationship to
Oklahoma!". starred in several Broadway hits of this era "After
Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein were the most important contributors to the musical-play form... The examples they set in creating vital plays, often rich with social thought, provided the necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own".
1950s with
Richard Burton in
Camelot (1960) The 1950s were crucial to the development of the American musical.
Damon Runyon's eclectic characters were at the core of
Frank Loesser's and
Abe Burrows'
Guys and Dolls, (1950, 1,200 performances); and the
Gold Rush was the setting for
Alan Jay Lerner and
Frederick Loewe's
Paint Your Wagon (1951). The relatively brief seven-month run of that show did not discourage
Lerner and Loewe from collaborating again, this time on
My Fair Lady (1956), an adaptation of
George Bernard Shaw's
Pygmalion starring
Rex Harrison and
Julie Andrews, which at 2,717 performances held the long-run record for many years. Popular Hollywood films were made of all of these musicals. Two hits by British creators in this decade were
The Boy Friend (1954), which ran for 2,078 performances in London and marked Andrews' American debut, and
Salad Days (1954), which broke the British long-run record with a run of 2,283 performances. , 1971
West Side Story (1957) transported
Romeo and Juliet to modern day New York City and converted the feuding Montague and Capulet families into opposing ethnic gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. The book was adapted by
Arthur Laurents, with music by
Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by newcomer
Stephen Sondheim. It was praised by critics for its innovations in music and choreography but was less commercially successful than the same year's
The Music Man, written and composed by
Meredith Willson, which won the
Tony Award for Best Musical that year.
West Side Story would get a
film adaptation in 1961, which proved successful both critically and commercially. Laurents and Sondheim teamed up again for
Gypsy (1959), with
Jule Styne providing the music for a story about
Rose Thompson Hovick, the mother of the titular stripper
Gypsy Rose Lee. Although directors and choreographers have had a major influence on musical theatre style since at least the 19th century, George Abbott and his collaborators and successors took a central role in integrating movement and dance fully into musical theatre productions in the Golden Age. Abbott introduced ballet as a story-telling device in
On Your Toes in 1936, which was followed by
Agnes de Mille's ballet and choreography in
Oklahoma!. After Abbott collaborated with Jerome Robbins in
On the Town and other shows, Robbins combined the roles of director and choreographer, emphasizing the story-telling power of dance in
West Side Story,
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) and
Fiddler on the Roof (1964).
Bob Fosse choreographed for Abbott in
The Pajama Game (1956) and
Damn Yankees (1957), injecting playful sexuality into those hits. He was later the director-choreographer for
Sweet Charity (1968),
Pippin (1972) and
Chicago (1975). Other notable director-choreographers have included
Gower Champion,
Tommy Tune,
Michael Bennett,
Gillian Lynne and
Susan Stroman. Prominent directors have included
Hal Prince, who also got his start with Abbott, During the Golden Age, automotive companies and other large corporations began to hire Broadway talent to write
corporate musicals, private shows only seen by their employees or customers. The 1950s ended with
Rodgers and Hammerstein's last hit,
The Sound of Music, which also became another hit for Mary Martin. It ran for 1,443 performances and shared the Tony Award for Best Musical. Together with its extremely successful
1965 film version, it has become one of the most popular musicals in history.
1960s In 1960,
The Fantasticks was first produced off-Broadway. This intimate allegorical show would quietly run for over 40 years at the Sullivan Street Theatre in
Greenwich Village, becoming by far the longest-running musical in history. Its authors produced other innovative works in the 1960s, such as
Celebration and
I Do! I Do!, the first two-character Broadway musical. The 1960s would see a number of blockbusters, like
Fiddler on the Roof (1964; 3,242 performances),
Hello, Dolly! (1964; 2,844 performances),
Funny Girl (1964; 1,348 performances) and
Man of La Mancha (1965; 2,328 performances), and some more risqué pieces like
Cabaret, before ending with the emergence of the
rock musical. In Britain,
Oliver! (1960) ran for 2,618 performances, but the long-run champion of the decade was
The Black and White Minstrel Show (1962), which played for 4,344 performances.
Social themes After
Show Boat and
Porgy and Bess, and as the struggle in America and elsewhere for minorities'
civil rights progressed, Hammerstein,
Harold Arlen,
Yip Harburg and others were emboldened to write more musicals and operas that aimed to normalize societal toleration of minorities and urged racial harmony. Early Golden Age works that focused on racial tolerance included ''
Finian's Rainbow and South Pacific. Towards the end of the Golden Age, several shows tackled Jewish subjects and issues, such as Fiddler on the Roof, Milk and Honey, Blitz! and later Rags. The original concept that became West Side Story'' was set on the
Lower East Side during Easter-Passover celebrations; the rival gangs were to be Jewish and
Italian Catholic. The creative team later decided that the Polish (white) vs.
Puerto Rican conflict was fresher. Tolerance as an important theme in musicals has continued in recent decades. The final expression of
West Side Story left a message of racial tolerance. By the end of the 1960s, musicals became racially integrated, with black and white cast members even covering each other's roles, as they did in
Hair. Homosexuality has also been explored in musicals, starting with
Hair, and even more overtly in
La Cage aux Folles,
Falsettos,
Rent,
Hedwig and the Angry Inch and other shows in recent decades.
Parade is a sensitive exploration of both
antisemitism and historical American racism, and
Ragtime similarly explores the experience of immigrants and minorities in America.
1970s to present 1970s After the success of
Hair,
rock musicals flourished in the 1970s, with
Jesus Christ Superstar,
Godspell,
The Rocky Horror Show,
Evita and
Two Gentlemen of Verona. Some of those began as "
concept albums" which were then adapted to the stage, most notably
Jesus Christ Superstar and
Evita. Others had no dialogue or were otherwise reminiscent of opera, with dramatic, emotional themes; these sometimes started as concept albums and were referred to as
rock operas. Shows like
Raisin,
Dreamgirls,
Purlie and
The Wiz brought a significant African-American influence to Broadway. More varied musical genres and styles were incorporated into musicals both on and especially off-Broadway. At the same time, Stephen Sondheim found success with some of his musicals, as mentioned above. '' was one of 55 productions that
Joseph Papp's
Public Theatre has brought to Broadway In 1975, the dance musical
A Chorus Line emerged from recorded group therapy-style sessions
Michael Bennett conducted with "gypsies" – those who sing and dance in support of the leading players – from the Broadway community. From hundreds of hours of tapes,
James Kirkwood Jr. and
Nick Dante fashioned a book about an audition for a musical, incorporating many real-life stories from the sessions; some who attended the sessions eventually played variations of themselves or each other in the show. With music by
Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by
Edward Kleban,
A Chorus Line first opened at
Joseph Papp's
Public Theater in lower Manhattan. What initially had been planned as a limited engagement eventually moved to the
Shubert Theatre on Broadway for a run of 6,137 performances, becoming the longest-running production in Broadway history up to that time. The show swept the Tony Awards and won the
Pulitzer Prize, and its hit song, "
What I Did for Love", became a standard. Broadway audiences welcomed musicals that varied from the golden age style and substance.
John Kander and
Fred Ebb explored the rise of
Nazism in Germany in
Cabaret, and murder and the media in
Prohibition-era
Chicago, which relied on old
vaudeville techniques.
Pippin, by
Stephen Schwartz, was set in the days of
Charlemagne.
Federico Fellini's autobiographical film
8½ became
Maury Yeston's
Nine. At the end of the decade,
Evita and
Sweeney Todd were precursors of the darker, big budget musicals of the 1980s that depended on dramatic stories, sweeping scores and spectacular effects. At the same time, old-fashioned values were still embraced in such hits as
Annie,
42nd Street,
My One and Only, and popular revivals of
No, No, Nanette and
Irene. Although many film versions of musicals were made in the 1970s, few were critical or box office successes, with the notable exceptions of
Fiddler on the Roof,
Cabaret and
Grease.
1980s The 1980s saw the influence of European "
megamusicals" on Broadway, in the West End and elsewhere. These typically feature a pop-influenced score, large casts and spectacular sets and special effects – a falling
chandelier (in
The Phantom of the Opera); a helicopter landing on stage (in
Miss Saigon) – and big budgets. Some were based on novels or other works of literature. The British team of composer
Andrew Lloyd Webber and producer
Cameron Mackintosh started the megamusical phenomenon with their 1981 musical
Cats, based on the poems of
T. S. Eliot, which overtook
A Chorus Line to become the longest-running Broadway show. Lloyd Webber followed up with
Starlight Express (1984), performed on roller skates;
The Phantom of the Opera (1986; also with Mackintosh), derived from the
novel of the same name; and
Sunset Boulevard (1993), from the 1950
film of the same name.
Phantom would surpass
Cats to become the longest-running show in Broadway history, a record it still holds. The French team of
Claude-Michel Schönberg and
Alain Boublil wrote
Les Misérables, based on the
novel of the same name, whose 1985 London production was produced by Mackintosh and became, and still is, the
longest-running musical in West End and Broadway history. The team produced another hit with
Miss Saigon (1989), which was inspired by the Puccini opera
Madama Butterfly. The 1990s also saw the influence of large corporations on the production of musicals. The most important has been
Disney Theatrical Productions, which began adapting some of
Disney's animated film musicals for the stage, starting with
Beauty and the Beast (1994),
The Lion King (1997) and
Aida (2000), the latter two with music by
Elton John.
The Lion King is the
highest-grossing musical in Broadway history. ''
The Who's Tommy (1993), a theatrical adaptation of the rock opera Tommy'', achieved a healthy run of 899 performances but was criticized for sanitizing the story and "musical theatre-izing" the rock music. Despite the growing number of large-scale musicals in the 1980s and 1990s, a number of lower-budget, smaller-scale musicals managed to find critical and financial success, such as
Falsettoland,
Little Shop of Horrors,
Bat Boy: The Musical and
Blood Brothers, which ran for 10,013 performances. The topics of these pieces vary widely, and the music ranges from rock to pop, but they often are produced off-Broadway, or for smaller London theatres, and some of these stagings have been regarded as imaginative and innovative.
2000s–present Trends In the new century, familiarity has been embraced by producers and investors anxious to guarantee that they recoup their considerable investments. Some took (usually modest-budget) chances on new and creative material, such as
Urinetown (2001),
Avenue Q (2003),
The Light in the Piazza (2005),
Spring Awakening (2006),
In the Heights (2008),
Next to Normal (2009),
American Idiot (2010) and
The Book of Mormon (2011).
Hamilton (2015), transformed "under-dramatized American history" into an unusual hip-hop inflected hit. In 2011, Sondheim argued that of all forms of "contemporary pop music",
rap was "the closest to traditional musical theatre" and was "one pathway to the future." However, most major-market 21st-century productions have taken a safe route, with revivals of familiar fare, such as
Fiddler on the Roof,
A Chorus Line,
South Pacific,
Gypsy,
Hair,
West Side Story and
Grease, or with adaptations of other proven material, such as literature (
The Scarlet Pimpernel,
Wicked and
Fun Home), hoping that the shows would have a built-in audience as a result. This trend is especially persistent with film adaptations, including
The Producers,
Spamalot,
Hairspray,
Legally Blonde,
The Color Purple,
Xanadu,
Billy Elliot,
Shrek,
Waitress and
Groundhog Day. Some critics have argued that the reuse of film plots, especially those from Disney (such as
Mary Poppins and
The Little Mermaid), equate the Broadway and West End musical to a tourist attraction, rather than a creative outlet. Typically, off-Broadway and regional theatres tend to produce smaller and therefore less expensive musicals, and development of new musicals has increasingly taken place outside of New York and London or in smaller venues. For example,
Spring Awakening,
Fun Home and
Hamilton were developed off-Broadway before being launched on Broadway. Several musicals returned to the spectacle format that was so successful in the 1980s, recalling
extravaganzas that have been presented at times, throughout theatre history, since the ancient Romans staged mock sea battles. Examples include the musical adaptations of
Lord of the Rings (2007),
Gone with the Wind (2008) and
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011). These musicals involved songwriters with little theatrical experience, and the expensive productions generally lost money. Conversely,
The Drowsy Chaperone,
Avenue Q,
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,
Xanadu and
Fun Home, among others, have been presented in smaller-scale productions, mostly uninterrupted by an intermission, with short running times, and enjoyed financial success. In 2013,
Time magazine reported that a trend off-Broadway has been "immersive" theatre, citing shows such as
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (2012) and
Here Lies Love (2013) in which the staging takes place around and within the audience. The shows set a joint record, each receiving 11 nominations for
Lucille Lortel Awards, and feature contemporary scores. In 2013,
Cyndi Lauper was the "first female composer to win the [Tony for] Best Score without a male collaborator" for writing the music and lyrics for
Kinky Boots. In 2015, for the first time, an
all-female writing team,
Lisa Kron and
Jeanine Tesori, won the
Tony Award for Best Original Score (and
Best Book for Kron) for
Fun Home, although work by male songwriters continues to be produced more often.
Jukebox musicals Another trend has been to create a minimal plot to fit a collection of songs that have already been hits. Following the earlier success of
Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, these have included ''
Movin' Out (2002, based on the tunes of Billy Joel), Jersey Boys (2006, The Four Seasons), Rock of Ages (2009, featuring classic rock of the 1980s), Thriller – Live (2009, Michael Jackson), and many others. This style is often referred to as the "jukebox musical". Similar but more plot-driven musicals have been built around the canon of a particular pop group including Mamma Mia! (1999, based on the songs of ABBA), Our House (2002, based on the songs of Madness) and We Will Rock You'' (2002, based on the songs of
Queen).
Film and TV musicals and
Zendaya starred with
Hugh Jackman in
The Greatest Showman Live-action film musicals were nearly dead in the 1980s and early 1990s, with exceptions of
Victor/Victoria,
Little Shop of Horrors and
the 1996 film of Evita. In the new century,
Baz Luhrmann began a revival of the film musical with
Moulin Rouge! (2001). This was followed by
Chicago (2002);
Phantom of the Opera (2004);
Rent (2005);
Dreamgirls (2006);
Hairspray,
Enchanted and
Sweeney Todd (all in 2007);
Mamma Mia! (2008);
Nine (2009);
Les Misérables and
Pitch Perfect (both in 2012),
Into The Woods,
The Last Five Years (2014),
La La Land (2016),
The Greatest Showman (2017),
A Star Is Born and
Mary Poppins Returns (both 2018),
Rocketman (2019) and
In the Heights and
Steven Spielberg's version of
West Side Story (both in 2021), among others.
Dr. Seuss's
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (2000) and
The Cat in the Hat (2003), turned children's books into live-action film musicals. After the immense success of Disney and other houses with animated film musicals beginning with
The Little Mermaid in 1989 and running throughout the 1990s (including some more adult-themed films, like
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)), fewer animated film musicals were released in the first decade of the 21st century. Although the production received mixed reviews, it was a ratings success. Further broadcasts have included
Peter Pan Live! (NBC 2014),
The Wiz Live! (NBC 2015), a UK broadcast,
The Sound of Music Live (
ITV 2015)
Grease: Live (
Fox 2016),
Hairspray Live! (NBC, 2016),
A Christmas Story Live! (Fox, 2017), and
Rent: Live (Fox 2019). Some television shows have set episodes as a musical. Examples include episodes of
Ally McBeal,
Xena: Warrior Princess ("The Bitter Suite" and "Lyre, Lyre, Heart's On Fire"),
Psych ("
Psych: The Musical"),
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("
Once More, with Feeling"), ''
That's So Raven, Daria, Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, The Flash, Once Upon a Time, Oz, Scrubs (one episode was written by the creators of Avenue Q
), Batman: The Brave and the Bold and That '70s Show'' (the 100th episode, "
That '70s Musical"). Others have included scenes where characters suddenly begin singing and dancing in a musical-theatre style during an episode, such as in several episodes of
The Simpsons,
30 Rock,
Hannah Montana,
South Park, ''
Bob's Burgers and Family Guy. Television series that have extensively used the musical format have included Cop Rock, Flight of the Conchords, Glee, Smash and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend''. There have also been musicals made for the internet, including ''
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog,'' about a low-rent super-villain played by
Neil Patrick Harris. It was written during the
WGA writer's strike. Since 2006, reality TV shows have been used to help market musical revivals by holding a talent competition to cast (usually female) leads. Examples of these are
How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?, ''
Grease: You're the One That I Want!,
Any Dream Will Do,
Legally Blonde: The Musical – The Search for Elle Woods,
I'd Do Anything and Over the Rainbow.
In 2021, Schmigadoon!'' was a parody of, and homage to, Golden Age musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.
2020–2021 theatre shutdown in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the
COVID-19 pandemic The
COVID-19 pandemic caused the
closure of theatres and theatre festivals around the world in early 2020, including all Broadway and West End theatres. Many performing arts institutions attempted to adapt, or reduce their losses, by offering new (or expanded) digital services. In particular this resulted in the
online streaming of previously recorded performances of many companies, as well as bespoke crowdsourcing projects. For example, The
Sydney Theatre Company commissioned actors to film themselves at home discussing, then performing, a monologue from one of the characters they had previously played on stage. The casts of musicals, such as
Hamilton and
Mamma Mia! united on Zoom calls to entertain individuals and the public. Some performances were streamed live, or presented outdoors or in other "socially distanced" ways, sometimes allowing audience members to interact with the cast. Radio theatre festivals were broadcast. Virtual, and even crowd-sourced musicals were created, such as
Ratatouille the Musical. Filmed versions of major musicals, like
Hamilton, were released on streaming platforms. Andrew Lloyd Webber released recordings of his musicals on YouTube. Due to the closures and loss of ticket sales, many theatre companies were placed in financial peril. Some governments offered emergency aid to the arts. Some musical theatre markets began to reopen in fits and starts by early 2021, with West End theatres postponing their reopening from June to July, and Broadway starting in September. Throughout 2021, however, spikes in the pandemic caused some closures even after markets reopened. == International musicals ==