Almost 12 million people saw Broadway shows in the United States in 2005 which doesn’t take into account the touring musicals. Favorite musicals transcend time and some of the first modern day musicals ever made remain favorites today. For an extra special occasion, some people choose to see musicals over other forms of entertainment.
Of course, part of the appeal of seeing a musical on the stage is the exciting night out going to dinner and a show. The same person who wouldn’t stay home to watch a forty year old movie would jump at the chance to see the same story come alive on the stage. When it comes to musicals, many people prefer to see live, real actors on the stage over television broadcasts.
Musicals have been made from films and vice versa. Sometimes the film comes first and the musical follows. Even animated films such as Disney’s The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast have been smash hits on the modern stage. In fact, animal costumes have won many awards for the musical and the costume designers.
We’ve gotten songs from musicals that will endear us forever. Hello Dolly’s title song was the biggest hit of a recording artist’s life, Louis Armstrong and at age 63, his record hit number one on the pop charts. Further, many of the popular tunes from the musical Annie are still the favorite tunes of many children.
Musicals have set and broken records for years. The latest and one of the most exciting records broken in the theatre was in 2006 when Phantom of the Opera outran Cats as the longest running musical. It was Andrew Lloyd Webber beating himself while his number 1 and number 2 musicals changed places on the longest running list.
Worldwide, Phantom of the Opera has had a box office take of well over 3 billion dollars which is another record. Fortunes are made and lost in the theatre, and while one artist’s version of a musical “makes it” while another’s doesn’t is anybody’s guess.
In the meantime, we are entertained, sometimes educated and forever grateful to the art form that is the musical, to see an artist’s vision come alive on the stage and in the end to relive those memories in our living rooms. Musicals combine music and drama, thereby combining two fantastic forms of entertainment into one genre: this could be why musicals remain such a popular form of entertainment today.