Top 10 Broadway Shows That Changed Theater FOREVER

While based on the Puccini opera “La Bohème,” “Rent” is pitched to a modern day audience and full of modern-day tragedy. Jonathan Larson’s aim in bringing this megahit to the stage was to introduce musical theater to audiences who had grown up on MTV. “Rent’s” rock music score and themes of disaffected youth carving out communities in opposition to corporate greed and sellout artists stuck the landing with its intended audience. “Rent-heads” were arguably the first modern-day musical fandom. Fans would camp out overnight to get tickets, and as a result, the show may have single-handedly created the lottery system shows still use today.

“The Lion King” would blow the roof off of the New Amsterdam Theater in 1997, but three years before, Disney Theatrical Productions would have its first success with this show. Adapted from the 1991 animated feature, “Beauty and the Beast” proved that the Disney brand had legs on Broadway. They kept the creative team mostly in-house, so the company could maintain creative control over the production. Broadway critics gave it a mixed reaction, but the audiences came out in droves. It played for 13 years, closing only to make way for Disney’s 2007 production of “The Little Mermaid” musical in the same theater.

Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim constantly pushed the boundaries of the musical theatre. “Company” wasn’t even supposed to be a musical. Book writer George Furth had originally envisioned it as 11 loosely connected plays about marriage and relationships. Once Sondheim got involved, they were suddenly exploring a new frontier in the form. While “Company” isn’t the first concept musical, its focus on contemporary relationships and its use of songs more to develop its themes than further its plot was novel. Its innovative structure and representational staging has also made it ripe for reinterpretation throughout the years, with each new adaptation highlighting a different facet of its message.

Premiering at the storied Ziegfeld Theatre in 1927, composer Jerome Kern and lyricist-librettist Oscar Hammerstein II brought “Show Boat” into the world. Based on Edna Ferber’s popular novel, “Show Boat” was a revelation. Before “Show Boat,” Broadway was a place for sumptuous but light spectacle. Musical comedies and vaudeville acts weren’t as interested in telling narrative stories with real human emotion or social relevance. Despite its innovations to the form, the show has been a lightning rod for controversy due to the treatment of its African American characters. Nonetheless, it paved the way for the theatergoing audience’s desire for musicals that had a heftier story to tell.

Developed from writer Christopher Isherwood’s autobiographical novel, the story of a writer and a second-rate cabaret singer living in Weimer era Berlin was unlike anything on Broadway before it. “Cabaret” is a buffet of styles. Blending commentary numbers with plot-advancing songs, the musical often volleys between two different settings, forcing audiences to acclimate to its structure. Its experimental style and themes of hedonism and fascism have also left it open for reinterpretation, which often leads to fans arguing over whose version is best. You want to start an argument between musical theater fans? Ask if Sally Bowles is supposed to be a good singer.

Star-crossed lovers and warring gangs already provide material for drama. Add in all that beautiful dancing and a sensational score and you have a lasting piece of Broadway history. Director-choreographer Jerome Robbins’ background in ballet heavily informed his approach to this “Romeo and Juliet” adaptation. While many musical comedies before it utilized dancing, “West Side Story” integrated beautiful movement into its story in ways that felt classical and new all at once. Unlike many other shows, where an anonymous chorus of dancers would do a lot of the heavy lifting, the show’s entire cast had to be able to pull off the high-level choreography.

In the late 1960s, the brewing counterculture didn’t exactly lend itself to the Broadway stage. Anti-Vietnam War protests and civil rights struggles didn’t exactly make people want to forget their troubles and get happy so much as scream and shout. “Hair” laid bare the basic hippie ethos and presented it on stage in all its liberal, vulgar, and sexual excesses. Its songs entered the culture via acts like the 5th Dimension, but the show became dogged by accusations of profanity and so-called anti-American sentiment. Its communal spirit deeply affected audiences, with some productions welcoming the audience onstage to dance with the cast. The national tour faced legal injunctions and threats of violence. Rarely has a Broadway show been such a volatile cultural flashpoint.

Lin-Manuel Miranda had already wowed Broadway with 2008’s “In the Heights,” one of the first successful hip-hop musicals. His follow-up took nearly seven years to arrive, but it was well worth the wait. This hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton features rapping founding fathers and modern political sentiments. Far-reaching press attention and fan engagement made it one of modern Broadway’s biggest successes, and its diverse cast made us ask deeper questions about traditional casting practices. Its effect on politics and pop culture was a brief return to a time when Broadway songs could penetrate mainstream culture. “Hamilton’s” impact will be studied for years to come.

The Beatles started the first British Invasion. Andrew Lloyd Webber may have started the second. Though he had some success on Broadway with “Jesus Christ Superstar,” his 1979 musical “Evita” was a barnburner. The Patti LuPone-led production jumped from London to New York with relatively few changes and became the first British musical to win Best Musical at the Tonys. It also set the precedent for spectacle-driven British mega-musicals that would dominate Broadway for the rest of the decade. Without the success of “Evita,” there might have been no “Cats,” “Phantom,” or “Les Misérables.” And given how long those musicals stayed on Broadway, the British musical explosion also made producers reevaluate just how long an original Broadway run could last.

This classic show was a trailblazer that launched one of the most enduring and influential partnerships in Broadway history. This first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II was a complete reinvention of the artform. Building on Hammerstein’s previous contributions with “Show Boat,” the pair wrote what is essentially seen as the first musical to completely integrate its music with a show’s plot. While this seems like a no-brainer now, that isn’t necessarily what people expected from musicals before 1943. Essentially, we have “Oklahoma!” to thank for decades of great stories on Broadway.

What show do you think changed Broadway forever? Let us know in the comments.