Broadway is more than just the world’s most famous section of land dedicated to live theater. It’s an American cultural institution with more than 100 years of history and a major contributor to New York City’s economy, bringing in more than $1 billion in combined gate revenue every year since 2009-10, with the exception of the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. Dozens of new plays and musicals open each year, while some musicals, including Wicked and The Lion King, have been playing regularly for more than 20 years.
While there have been a number of culturally significant plays that have enjoyed lengthy tenures on Broadway, musicals tend to have greater staying power—17 of the 20 longest-running shows in Broadway history are musicals. Many of these musicals are not only entertaining and engaging, but tackle important themes reflected in society. Others, in the early years of Broadway, stood out for being among the first major productions to have mixed race casts or to have achieved other innovations in theater.
Here’s a look at five musicals that changed the landscape of Broadway musicals.
Show Boat
Oscar Hammerstein is a name that is synonymous with Broadway musicals, predominantly through his partnership with Richard Rodgers, a composer with whom he created several iconic productions, including South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Before these and other works, Hammerstein partnered with composer Jerome Kern on several projects, including Sweet Adeline and Very Warm for May. Their most successful collaboration was Show Boat, a 1927 musical that is lauded as a masterpiece of early American theater.
The musical, based on the book of the same name by Edna Ferber, details the lives of workers and performers on a Mississippi River show boat over a 40-year period from 1887 to 1927 and tackles themes that weren’t regularly covered in Broadway at the time, including racial prejudice and miscegenation. Beyond that, it was one of the first Broadway musicals in which the music was based on and evolved out of the natural progression of the story and the actions of its characters.
“What Oscar clearly did was to take operetta principles and wed them to American musical comedy, say, song and dialogue intermixed that would tell a story and tell a story of some emotional truth and reality,” explained legendary composer Stephen Sondheim in an interview with NPR.
Of Thee I Sing
Four years after Show Boat, George and Ira Gershwin took the art form to another level with Of Thee I Sing. The musical, which satirized American politics and the electoral process, was the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Nine musicals, including South Pacific, Rent, and Hamilton, have since won the prestigious award.
Finian’s Rainbow
Although sensitive themes like racism and mixed relationships had been discussed on Broadway in years prior, it wasn’t until 1947 when a production had a racially integrated ensemble. Finian’s Rainbow, with a score by Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg, was Broadway’s first musical in which Black and White people sang and danced side by side. It also covered controversial topics, including socialism, bigotry, and political corruption.
The plot of Finian’s Rainbow involves a fantastical story that serves as a metaphor for the deception and largely unattainable American dream. The main character, Finian, is an Irishman who runs off to the US with his daughter after stealing gold from a leprechaun. The musical ran for 725 performances at 46th Street Theatre.
Hair
As rock and roll became more popular in the 1960s, it started creeping into Broadway musicals, with early evidence of this in the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie. However, it wasn’t until Hair in 1968 when the complete rock musical was realized. The counterculture production, dubbed “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” follows a group of long-haired New York City hippies in the 1960s who are protesting against and resisting the draft for the Vietnam War. It perfectly captures the changing nature of American society and culture in the era, with comments on issues like the sexual revolution, racial stereotypes, and the generation gap.
Not surprisingly, Hair was a highly controversial musical at the time. It featured profanity, drug use, and even had a nude scene. Yet, it was incredibly popular, showing that audiences were maturing and had an appetite for bold musicals. It ran for 1,750 performances before moving to London’s West End and was revived on Broadway in 1977 and 2009. It also paved the way for popular rock musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
La Cage aux Folles
Written by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman, La Cage aux Folles was a 1983 musical comedy about a gay couple. This was particularly ambitious at the time, as the AIDS crisis was becoming a greater concern in the gay community and no prior musical had embraced the gay experience in such an authentic way. Yet, it was popular with audiences, running for more than 1,760 performances over four years and winning six Tony Awards.