BIG, Richard Maltby Jr, John Weidman, and David Shire's musical adaptation of the film by the same name, is a hilarious, unorthodox look at the perils of taking childhood for granted.  Unlike Jason Robert Brown's 13, in which the main character ...

Composer/librettist Andrew Lippa is probably best known for his adaptation of THE WILD PARTY and for writing the score of THE ADDAMS FAMILY, which recently opened on Broadway and stars Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane.  But before either show, Lippa ...

This weekend, New York audiences are in for a treat.  Encores!, a concert series of rarely performed American musicals, is currently staging the experimental Stephen Sondheim/Arthur Laurents musical, ANYONE CAN WHISTLE.  The show, which has ...

The path to becoming a Broadway composer, lyricist, or bookwriter isn't well-defined or easy; it takes a tremendous amount of talent, hard work, and luck.  For RENT author Jonathan Larson, who wrote all three components of his musicals himself, ...

Before RENT became a cultural phenomenon when it opened on Broadway in 1996, Jonathan Larson was hard at work on another musical: SUPERBIA.  A rock adaptation of 1984, George Orwell's dystopian vision of the future (even though Larson was denied the ...

THE WILD PARTY, with book, lyrics, and music by Andrew Lippa (JOHN & JEN, THE ADDAMS FAMILY), is based on a poem of the same name by Joseph Moncure March.  Published in 1928, the poem was scandalous for the time and often banned due to its ...

Few shows straddle the opera-musical line like Frank Loesser's THE MOST HAPPY FELLA.  Some musicals, such as LES MISERABLES and RENT, follow the common operatic characteristic of being sung-through.  Others, like SWEENEY TODD and Michael John ...

"Sit Down, You're Rockin' The Boat" from Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows' GUYS & DOLLS is the kind of show-stopping number that audiences eagerly await.  Often occuring towards the end of the second act, these numbers are commonly referred to as "11 ...