Tags
"Fun Home", "Hamilton", 2015 Tony Awards, Alexander Hamilton, Alison Bechidel, Best Musical, Broadway, Circle in the Square Theatre, Emily Skeggs, Founding Fathers, Jeanine Tesori, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lisa Kron, Michael Cerveris, musicals, Ron Chernow, Sydney Lucas
I’m not really a Broadway musical kind of guy. In a ‘former life’ I certainly enjoyed South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, and, in ‘more recent times‘, I’ve also enjoyed such shows as Hair, Les Miserables and even Book of Mormon. Generally, however, I find I prefer dramas to musicals when we are looking for plays to see.
Last week made me question that preference a bit. We saw two musicals on Broadway that were outstanding.
Mind you they were nothing like the traditional musicals.
One was about a dysfunctional family and a suicide (Fun Home), and the other was about the least well known of our Founding Fathers who was killed in a duel (Hamilton), neither of them traditional material for musicals.
Fun Home has won five 2015 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and Hamilton, which has just opened on Broadway, will no doubt and deservedly win every award for which it is eligible.
Here, in the order in which we saw these two remarkable productions, are mini-reviews of the best plays I’ve seen on Broadway in many years.
