The Best Broadway Musicals

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: The Best Broadway Musicals

Date: August 18, 2025
Participants: John Podhoretz (Host), Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Matthew Continetti

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Episode Overview

This episode is a lively, passionate roundtable discussion of favorite Broadway musicals among four Commentary staffers—John Podhoretz, Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, and Matthew Continetti. With a unique angle (“four straight guys talking about Broadway musicals”), the hosts delve into their personal choices for the greatest Broadway musical, relive formative theater experiences, and analyze what makes a musical endure. The tone is witty, affectionate, occasionally self-deprecating, and bracingly knowledgeable.

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Main Theme: Declaring and Defending the Greatest Broadway Musicals

• Each panelist nominates a favorite Broadway musical and explains the choice.
• The group discusses the artistic, emotional, and societal resonance of these works.
• Throughout, the conversation references standout productions, creative innovations, and personal Broadway memories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening: The Podcast’s Premise and Introduction

[00:24-01:22]

• John sets the "Hall of Fame" tone: a break from politics for a discussion on musicals.
• Jokes about being overqualified for the topic:
  “This is a topic that I know perhaps better than any other topic that I know on Earth is the Broadway musical. And so I could just sort of like, never stop talking.” (John, 01:24)

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2. Matthew Continetti’s Pick: The Lion King

[02:19-07:02]

• Matt selects The Lion King after seeing it during a holiday trip with his family.
  • Calls it the “best Broadway experience” of his life.
  • Attributes the show’s power to Julie Taymor’s artistic directorial choices—her use of Balinese theater, masks, and puppetry.
  • Describes the immersive staging, especially the iconic opening with animal puppets processing through the theater, as “electric”—a “once in a lifetime experience.”
• Praises the show for expanding upon the Disney movie’s story and music seamlessly:
  • “They expanded it. They produced new songs. ... And so it's not one of those instances where there's any real weak song.” (Matt, 06:09)

Memorable Moment:
“The opening number Circle of Life involves the animals processing to the stage from the audience ... it truly is just a once in a lifetime experience to see this for the first time.” (Matt, 05:19)

• John chimes in, noting the show's revolutionary approach and record-breaking commercial success:
  • “The Lion King is the single most successful work of entertainment ever produced.” (John, 04:15)
• Both agree the first 25 minutes are jaw-dropping and that “no one had ever seen anything remotely like this ever before.” (John, 07:02)

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3. Abe Greenwald’s Pick: Sondheim’s Company

[09:17-12:54]

• Abe gravitates toward Company as his Sondheim of choice, despite not seeing it originally on Broadway:

  • Cites Sondheim’s “lyrical play,” “angular melodies,” dissonance, and overlapping lines.
  • Explains the show's innovative, nonlinear structure—a montage-style character study of Bobby, a single man amid friends' marriages.
  • Loves the emotional honesty and the “accretion of snapshots” that give the story its impact.
  • Favors songs like “Company,” “Barcelona,” and “Being Alive.”
    “It's more of this accretion of snapshots that creates a character study of this single guy amid his married friends and what it means to ultimately connect.” (Abe, 10:19)

• John recalls seeing the original cast as a child and having the “most vivid set of memories,” highlighting how memorable set and direction shape the musical’s impact.

Notable Quote:
“Company turned the musical into something that was often more about the concept of the show than simply a three act thing where boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl ... and the score is dazzling.” (John, 16:04)

• Discussion expands to Sondheim’s cerebral style and how his shows often lack emotional “satisfaction” but excel in conceptual brilliance.

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4. Seth Mandel’s Pick: The Music Man

[18:22-22:25]

• The Music Man is Seth’s personal formative Broadway show:
  • Recalls seeing it as a kid and recognizing new details with age, like the hidden layers about morality, agency, and ambiguity.
  • Appreciates how the show resists simple answers—Harold Hill’s ambiguity as either “a con man with a heart of gold” or not, depending on the audience's perspective.
  • Points to the musical as raising questions about human agency, inspiration, and “can you really fool anyone, or are the only people who are fooled the people who want to be fooled?”

Notable Quote:
“It didn’t get stale for me as I got older because it had all these sort of new, relevant situations and applications and lessons.” (Seth, 22:05)

• John adds historical context, noting Music Man’s uniqueness as a single-creator musical and its innovative spoken “rap”-like song structure—remarkably fresh for its time.

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5. John Podhoretz’s Pick: Guys and Dolls (with Shoutout to Gypsy)

[27:06-30:31]

• John declares Guys and Dolls his all-time favorite, rooted in childhood memories of his sister performing “Sister Sarah.”
  • Celebrates the show’s exuberance, humor, and “sheerly musical comedy” roots.
  • Praises its stylized depiction of New York’s “lowlifes” and its “highly, highly articulate argot” that later influenced works like The Godfather.
  • Acknowledges its flaws in pacing but maintains its place among the top five or ten musicals ever written.
• Also highlights Gypsy as perhaps the most perfectly integrated musical, if not for what he calls a “miscast” contemporary production.

Notable Quote:
“Guys and Dolls ... is the most exuberant, I think, of Broadway shows. It's the most sheerly musical comedy of the musical comedies.” (John, 27:27)

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6. Insights on Broadway Creation, Adaptation, and Performance

[22:25-27:01; 32:38-40:41]

• Discussion of how single-creator works (Music Man, Oliver, Hamilton, Rent) stand apart for their authorial vision.
• The impact of direction and staging:
  "These shows can be saved or ruined by direction. ... You can take something that's nothing and a genuinely great director can spin magic out of it."
• Abe proudly notes his familial connection—his uncle Michael Kidd choreographed Guys and Dolls and was "one of the two or three foremost choreographer directors of the 20th century." (Abe, 38:42)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Emotional Impact & Innovation:
  “First 25 minutes of The Lion King, there’s almost nothing that has ever come close.” (John, 07:02)

• On Sondheim:
  “He was the most brilliant wordsmith in the history of Broadway lyricists.” (John, 16:04)
  “There's a song in Company called Sorry, Grateful, which is the perfect encapsulation ... life is just ambiguity and you never settle on anything.” (John, 17:35)

• On The Music Man’s Life Lessons:
  “What I like about The Music Man is that ... can you really fool anyone?” (Seth, 22:05)

• On Personal Memories:
  “I saw the original cast at my either 9th or 10th birthday party.” (John, 13:05)

• On Direction and Broadway Magic:
  "Michael Bennett ... single best directed show I've ever seen ... a show basically staged with four light poles, no sets ... I've never, never... it saved the show. It made the show.” (John, 38:11)

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Recommended Broadway Book

Question: “Is there a book that people should read about Broadway?” (Matt, 32:31)

Answer:
John recommends Razzle Dazzle by Michael Riedel: “It is both a great social history. It's kind of a political urban history and a story about just these endless crazy... Broadway is a font of crazy stories about lunatic actors and psychotic directors and horrible choreographers and just producers.” (John, 32:42)

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Contemporary Recommendation

• If seeing a show in New York right now:
  “Maybe Happy Ending ... a beautiful and unusual show ... about two robots in 2065, Seoul, South Korea ... a gorgeous musical about love and longing and what it means to be human.” (John, 41:08)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:19] Matt nominates The Lion King
• [09:17] Abe nominates Company
• [18:22] Seth nominates The Music Man
• [27:06] John nominates Guys and Dolls (also discusses Gypsy)
• [32:38] Book recommendations and anecdotes
• [38:42] Abe’s uncle, Michael Kidd, and choreography in Guys and Dolls
• [41:08] John’s recommendation for a current Broadway show

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Closing Thoughts

The episode not only surveys the best Broadway musicals from individual and historical perspectives, but offers listeners deep appreciation for the evolving art of musical theater—from daring directorial choices and the power of performance, to the emotional complexity (or intentional lack thereof) woven through the greatest shows. The participants’ rich anecdotes, insights, and broad knowledge provide a fast-moving yet nuanced tribute to Broadway’s lasting legacy.

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Transcript

[A]

Hope for the best, Expect the worst.

[B]

Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect.

[C]

The worst Hope for the best.

[A]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. I am not going to speak a date for this podcast because we are recording it in advance. I'm not quite sure when it is going to run, but we are doing some substitute shows here at the end of the summer so that we can all take a break, and some of us have to take our kids to college and others of us have to go shopping for school supplies. And some people just need to take a rest. So we will be doing some special shows. This is the first one that we are taping. And what we're going to talk about today is the Broadway musical. And it's interesting because we have four straight guys here to talk to you about the Broadway musical. Among me. Did I introduce myself?

[D]

I'm not sure.

[A]

Okay. I don't think I did. So I'm John Pothorst, Commentary. And with me as always, executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[C]

Hi, John.

[A]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[E]

Hi, John.

[A]

And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt. Hi, John. Now, I'm going to stand back here because this is a topic that I know perhaps better than any other topic that I know on Earth is the Broadway musical. And so I could just sort of like, never stop talking. So we decided we wanted to do some shows about fun things that you all and people enjoy and do a kind of hall of fame and that we haven't discussed before and that we haven't exactly. We've talked about our favorite books, our.

[D]

Favorite movies, favorite Sci Fi. Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so here we have favorite Broadway musicals. Okay, so Matt Carnetti, as the progenitor of this show, this was your idea. I would like. I would like to ask you to open the proceedings.

[D]

Okay, well, you're putting me on the spot here, but the truth is, I did come up with this idea mainly because I wanted to hear your answer.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

And I think the listeners will, too. But I have given it some thought, and I was trying to say, you know, what is the show that I've enjoyed the most that I have seen in my life? And I kind of came up with an unexpected answer. And that is a couple of years ago, I took my family on a trip to New York City during the holidays, and I saw the Broadway Lion King for the first time. And while there, I can talk about other musicals that. That I really like from, you know, Les Miserables to Hamilton to even Miss Saigon or the King and I. I really came to the conclusion that the Lion King is probably the best Broadway experience that I've had in my 44 years on earth.

[A]

So it's an interesting choice because the Lion King, of course, an adaptation of the Disney movie. Right. And also interesting because the movie, I think, is 72 minutes long and the show is two and a half hours long. So one of the weird things about Disney going to Broadway is that they actually expand these things into Broadway shows. And so they couldn't be 72 minutes long, though that would be an interesting experience. It's a revolutionary show. The Lion King is the single most successful work of entertainment ever produced. That is, if you tally the movie, the theatrical show, which has been running since 1997. So it's almost 30 years.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

All over the world in various different productions, the DVDs, the VHS, the albums, the albums, all of that. I believe the last number I saw was that the Lion King as an individual product has grossed around $11 billion. So it is without question the most successful individual piece of entertainment.

[D]

And so maybe I should just elaborate why I've liked the show and why, if you haven't seen it, you really ought to. And that's because, of course, as you say, John, it started as a Disney animated feature, really kind of the capstone of an incredible run of Disney animated features, beginning with the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. And then I think in 94 is when the Lion King came out. And. But Disney did something very interesting, which was they hired a experimental theatrical director, Julie Taymor, to adapt the show for Broadway. And Julie Taymor is, you know, she is an artiste.

[C]

She is.

[D]

She's kind of like the classic cutout of someone who has deeply artistic sensibilities. And she had studied mask work and puppetry. She had done trips to Indonesia, where she studied kind of Balinese theater as a student. And she brought all these influences into her adaptation of a cartoon. And the effect is electric because as I'm not making any spoilers here, as many people know, the opening number Circle of Life involves the animals processing to the stage from the audience. And the. The animals are all puppets. They're actors in these puppet, like costumes or masks. And it truly is just a once in a lifetime experience to see this for the first time. So that's one level. The other way in which I really enjoy the show is because they expanded it. They produced new songs. Tim Rice and Elton John, who did the original songs and some of these new songs are very well done. And so it's not one of those instances where there's any real weak song, as far as I can tell. Going over the other shows, I was thinking of, there's always, like, moments of, you know, where I could do without that number, but I didn't have that experience in the Lion King. So I gotta tell you, I'm gonna go with the crowd here and say that the mass instincts are correct.

[A]

See, my experience of the Lion King is that the first 25 minutes of the Lion King, there's almost nothing that has ever come close. And I. I saw, like, the week it opened. So, you know, I've seen it once since with one of my kids or something, but not. No one had ever seen anything remotely like this ever before. And the audience spends 20 minutes gasping because these are puppets there. It's a weird amalgam of. You see the people, right? They're not. Her great innovation was to make sure that the faces of the actors are seen inside and around the puppets and that the elephants who are marching and all that. The elephants are four people, each one leg. You can inside, you know, like, in a kind of, like, canopy, suggesting an elephant as. And they're walking, just walking down the aisle. And this transformative experience is beyond anything. And I'm not sure the show recovers from it, because you can't. You couldn't. Like, it's so jaw dropping that I found there was a bit of an overhang until there's a moment, and there's a fantastic moment in the. A couple of moments where she does the same kind of magic with a stampede and then with a storm and stuff like that, where it's just. The invention is beyond belief. But, yeah, you're going with the crowd. And I don't see any reason not to say that, you know, the most popular theatrical presentation in history shouldn't get a nomination. Make it on the list. Right. Okay. So, Abe, you are. You're a. You're a theater. You're a theater maven. You're a musical maven.

[C]

Well, sort of retrospectively, I don't. I sort of never go now, but, you know.

[A]

Yeah. When.

[C]

When the idea of the show. This show came up, my first thought was, okay, well, which Sondheim am I going to pick? Because I do love Sondheim. And then I realized that I actually haven't seen many Sondheim shows on Broadway. Actually, I did see Follies on Broadway. Love Follies, but I didn't want to pick Follies. So I'm going to. So I'm doing a sort of cheat. I have seen Company, but not on Broadway. And. And I'm not entirely sure where I saw it. I want to say Lincoln Center. Is that possible?

[A]

I don't think so.

[C]

But then there's Brooklyn. I don't know where I saw. Yeah, okay. But anyway, I've seen. And I've seen the. I've seen recorded performances of it and I've seen the documentary of the recording of the album of it. And I'm deeply familiar with Company. And I love Company, which is first came out in, I think, 1970 or 71. 70.

[A]

70.

[C]

And it's a very unusual Sondheim music. I love. I love Sondheim because I love, obviously the lyrical play, but also his very odd approach toward musical motifs and angular melodies and dissonance and overlapping melodic lines and. And. And all that stuff. But Company is very unusual. It's about Bobby on his who is a single guy living in the city on his 35th birthday and his. All his married friends throw him a surprise party. And it's completely nonlinear. It's like a bunch of snapshots and it sort of keeps returning to the party. And so it's more of this accretion of snapshots that creates a character study of this single guy amid his married friends and what it means to ultimately connect. And I appreciate the uniqueness of it. And chock full of terrific songs including Company, Barcelona and Being Alive, of course, and I don't know, 9 billion others. So I go with company. I love it. I listen to the album constantly. Constantly a lot. Listen to Follies a lot, too. Listen to a little night music a lot, too. Hey everyone, this is Abe. Are you a Yo yo dieter? You diet, lose weight, but gain it all back, plus a few extra pounds. Then later you lose it and regain it again and again. It's dangerous. Studies show that can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and other health problems. Breaking free of your yo yo diet pattern is a main reason doctors created Lean. Lean is a supplement, not an injection. And you don't need a prescription. The science behind Lean is impressive. Its studied natural ingredients target weight loss in three powerful ways. Lean helps maintain healthy blood sugar. It helps control appetite and cravings. And it helps burn fat by converting fat into energy. Listen, if you're tired of losing weight and gaining it back, if you want to lose meaningful weight at a healthy pace, Lean was created for you. Let me get you started with 20% off. When you enter [e-mail] that's code COMMENTARY20.

[A]

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[C]

I love Sweeney Todd.

[A]

It is the greatest work of American theater, in my opinion. But so it kind of transcends musical because it's also sort of an opera. But. But it is a. It was the show that changed musical theater forever. In the same way that Oklahoma. Famously changed musical theater in the 40s. Company turned the musical into something that was often more about the concept of the show than simply a three act thing where boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl in a. In a setting. And the score is dazzling not only because of the dissonance and all of that, but also because he's a master of pastiche. So there are all these songs in it that are evocations of earlier types of songs. There's a song called you'd Could Drive a Person Crazy, which is the Andrews sisters in 1970. And so, you know, he was a great mimic and he was, of course, the most brilliant wordsmith in the history of Broadway lyricists. So I just want to say that.

[C]

The pastiche stuff really comes out in Follies, where he does all that.

[A]

And Follies is a history of the Broadway musical. Some of these shows are very emotionally unsatisfying. Follies is a very emotionally unsatisfying. He had difficulty producing things that would get you in your heart because he was so cerebral. And he was also.

[D]

He wasn't a very emotionally satisfied person.

[A]

From what I understand.

[D]

And that's reflected in the work.

[A]

Yeah, that the whole thing about him is that everything is. There's a song in In Company called Sorry, Grateful, which is the perfect encapsulation of the theme. The spirit of Stephen Sondheim, which is, you're always sorry, you're always grateful, you always think what might have been. Then she comes in, meaning, like, you're never satisfied. There's, you know, life is just ambiguity and you never settle on anything. And it's a very sad and tragic view of life in the setting that is supposed to be kind of upbeat and sell you on things.

[D]

But I'm the.

[C]

It's worse than that guy. Of course. This is what I want to see.

[A]

Like, Seth, where do you go?

[E]

I. So I settled on one of the first musicals that I saw as a kid, and so therefore had this sort of outsized effect on me. But also when you see things as a. As a young kid and then you see them again as you grow up, at each stage of life sort of gives you a different view into it. So I just. So mine is the Music man, because I saw that when I was very young and. And I, you know, then you get older and you see the things that you missed. Right? I mean, you know, the. The idea that she keeps. She keeps dirty books, Chaucer, right. In the library and stuff like that. Like, there's things that a kid just has no frame of reference for.

[A]

Rabelais. All right, those are the dirty books that Mary. Those are the dirty library.

[E]

Yeah, but so as. As a kid, you don't. As a kid, you know who to root for, because you just. You just root for Harold Hill. You just like. You like the guy, like Winthrop likes the guy. You want to believe him, you know, whatever. As a young kid, you're you. And then as you get older, you realize that Harold Hill has become the, you know, the sort of stand in for a grifter to such an extent that, you know, Keith Olbermann will be calling Donald Trump, you know, Harold Hill and stuff like that, like this, you know, it winds its way into politics and all that other stuff. And you see it. You just end up seeing it through a bunch of different lenses. But it also, I. What I like about the Music man is that asks the question of how can you. Can you be sure even at the end, can you classify him as a con man? Because he sort of comes through, but he doesn't really come through because the kids come in with the uniforms and instruments, but he never taught them how to play because he had this. What he called the thinking.

[A]

The Think System.

[E]

The Think System, yeah. And it was like. And so you actually end up not really being able to say, oh, he really was a con man with a heart of gold who came through in the end, or he really was just the con man who ruined everything because he. There's enough ambiguity even at the end. And the reason there's ambiguity and is because the kids are inspired by what they. What they want to be after they meet him. And you have to sort of factor that into a kid trying to teach himself to play the drums or the trombone. Or, you know, something like that is a sort of wonderful thing. And Winthrop himself is, you know, he's kind of a, you know, he's kind of a sad kid. He's. He doesn't really know his place and, and he gets into music and you see it sort of light him up and you really wonder while watching and then afterwards, and then seeing it again at different stages of life, what is, you know, what the ethics of each situation are. Is there actually a hero? Is there actually a villain? It's a much more complex thing because of, because of human agency. Because the kids take what they see and try to make something of it. And then you have to contend with, you know, the idea of, of. Of inspiring kids. And you know, and also it asks the question of, you know, are. Do people. Can you really fool anyone? Right, the age old question or are the only people who are fooled are people who want to be fooled?

[A]

Right.

[E]

And there's all this, these questions about human agency and stuff like that. So the Music man, to me, I really liked, I loved the show. And then I really liked the idea that it didn't get stale for me as I got older because it had all these sort of new, you know, relevant situations and applications and lessons and stuff like that.

[A]

You know, the Music man is part of a very small but remarkable tradition on Broadway because unlike, you know, these are group efforts, right? Company is the music and lyrics of Sondheim. But there's a book by George Firth, there's the choreography by Michael Bennett, there's the direction of Harold Prince, there's the set of Boris Aarons and all of that. Music man is one of these rare works. It Oliver Hamilton, Rent. These are all works that were written entirely by one person. Book, music and lyrics. And Music man is maybe the first, is the first classic musical that has this form. And it's based on the memories of Meredith Wilson, who was a man, not a woman, and was a kind of famous person in America in the 1940s and 50s. He was a band leader. He was on I can't remember whose radio show. Bob Hope's radio show maybe. And then he wrote a couple of memoirs of growing up in Iowa that are the kind of source material for this memory of 1915 Iowa and the town that he grew up in. And I read a really remarkable book about the making of this musical and about Wilson and a story of how these things happen, which is that his initial idea was he was going to write a show about a non verbal kid, a kid who could not speak and who is saved by this grifter who comes to town in weird and unusual ways. That kid then morphs into, over the course of writing it for five years, into Winthrop, the character you mentioned, who is the younger brother of Marion the Librarian, the love interest, who has a terrible speech defect that means that he won't speak because he has this horrible speech defect. And Wilson wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And Frank Lesser, the composer, lyricist, producer, encouraged him and pushed him and got him to. And they revised it, revised it, revised it, revised it, revised it. And then this thing comes out that doesn't sound like anything else ever before. It opens with this spoken number with four salesmen on a train doing what we would now think of as a rap in the beat of the train. So they are sounding like a train coming into a station with whistles, and it's all in their voices. And again, no one had ever heard anything like this before. And they're putting this con man character in the middle of the show who, in the climax of the show is going to be lynched. Like, this is not like the townspeople are coming after him because they've discovered that he's conned them and their intention is to string him up and hang him from a tree. That is. And that's another weird element of some of these. Some musicals like Oklahoma. And others that people forget because they have such an exuberant experience of it. Oklahoma has a death in the middle of the second act where Curly, our protagonist, stabs and kills Jud, who is nominally the kind of villain, but is actually kind of like a sad, lonely guy. They have a fight at a wedding and Judd is killed and Curly has to stand trial. That's. The show doesn't end with everybody singing Oklahoma. It actually ends with Curly having to defend himself and not ending up at the end of a hangman's noose. It's very interesting, like these Dart and Oliver, which was another show written entirely by one person. And Hamilton is, I think, the ultimate sort of apotheosis of the show written by one person, because it is this, you know, completely original way of dealing with everything. And it's. It's the biggest Broadway show of the 21st century, and it's changed everything. And. But there is this one little sort of side element of the musical where somebody creates the entire show. And it's very rare to have that kind of novelistic, authorial vision because that's not really what the musical is about.

[D]

So if you had a recommend one John. Here we go. Drum Roll, please.

[A]

So my. Excuse me. My favorite show of all time is Guys and Dolls. And why is that? I think in the end, because it's the first one I ever knew. And why did I know it? Because my sister Naomi was in it at the Dalton School and played sister Sarah. And so when I was very little, 3, 4, 5, we sang the songs in the car going to visit my grandmother. So it was the first show that I knew and, and it is, I think, understood as one of the greatest five or ten greatest Broadway shows. It has its failings, it has some longeurs in its storytelling. It is the most exuberant, I think, of Broadway shows. It's the most sheerly musical comedy of the musical comedies. And this adaptation of the very singular comic vision of lowlifes of Times Square. You know, second rate gangsters, thugs, con men, gamblers, horse players, all living on the margins of society in their own weird ways, but having this whole culture of respect in this preposterous formal way of speaking that we, we. Now, that was then turned into something serious. In the Godfather. We know how everybody talks about the sort of formal conversations, the way that Don Corleone speaks and the Godfather and all that, that actually kind of derives from Guys and Dolls and that they're all, they all speak to each other in this highly, highly articulate argot that makes no sense for the people that they're speaking in. And maybe the single greatest score, song by song by song on Broadway, but I don't know if it's the greatest. The single best, probably in terms of its integration of Everything Is Gypsy, which is also a. Is a show that Sondheim wrote the lyrics for, but not the music. Julie Stein wrote the music for it. Book by Arthur Lawrence, who also wrote the book for west side Story, directed by Jerome Robbins and a famous directorial thing. That's a show I've also seen seven or eight times and is almost perfect in every way. Though it can be kind of ruined because the current production, which is now closing with Audra McDonald, wildly miscast in the single greatest role in the American musical theater, which is Mama Rose in Gypsy, totally wrong for it. And, you know, an effort to sort of expand her horizons and cast the show, you know, with African Americans in the lead, as opposed to, as opposed to. It's a true story about, about real people who were white, by the way, you know, like the, the, the Hovik family and Gypsy Rosely, who became a, who became a pretentious stripper novelist character and her sister June, who became a successful actress and also a playwright and their crazy mother. That's probably the best musical.

[E]

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[B]

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[D]

And my follow up is if there is a book that people should read about Broadway.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

Do you have a favorite?

[A]

I have so many, but I would say that the book to read about Broadway, that's also a history of New York, A history of Broadway. History of Everything is Razzle Dazzle by my friend Michael Riedel, who worked for me at the New York Post. He was our theater columnist. And Razzle Dazzle is the story of Broadway's decline and recovery from the early 60s through the, through the end of the sort of the early 80s or late 80s or something like that. And it is both a great Social history. It's kind of a political urban history and a story about just these endless crazy. Broadway. Broadway is a font of crazy stories about lunatic actors and psychotic directors and horrible choreographers and just producers. Yeah. And of course, the Producers. Also a great show. But, you know, one of the stories that is. That is so, like, elemental in thinking about the changes in American society in the course of our lives is that is a Guys and Doll story, which is that Frank Lesser, who was his second show, and. And he had been a successful songwriter, and he was a short guy and prone to fits of temper, though supposedly very nice mostly, but. But prone to fits of temper. And Isabel Bagley had been cast as the part that my sister Naomi played sister Sarah. And she was not getting a number right. She was singing if I had a bell, and she was missing a beat or she was stressing the wrong syllable or something like that. And Lesser, they were in rehearsals and Lesser was in the audience, and he kept coming up to the stage and saying, I'll try it this way, try it that way. And she was just not getting it. So after about an hour, he walked up to her and he punched her in the face. He either slapped her in the face or. Yeah, in the face. And nothing happened. Wow. She. Everything went on, you know, I don't even know if he apologized. Certainly, that's Frank, you know, now he would go to jail. His life would be ruined. The show would close, you know, he would be brought up on charges. He would not be able to work ever again. But it was 1950, you know, look, you have to slap her out a little bit to get the number right, you know. Come on. What's. What. What.

[D]

You know, Guys and Dolls has a movie adaptation, doesn't it?

[A]

Terrible. Terrible.

[D]

All right.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Is Frank Sinatra in that?

[A]

Frank Sinatra is in it part. Another little funny story. That's so ridiculous. Frank Sinatra gets the part of the comic lead who is Nathan Detroit, and the actor who played Nathan Detroit on Broadway, Sam Levine, could not sing. He was completely tone deaf. And as a result, he's only in one song. Sue me. And if you listen to the original cast album, you can hear why they cut all his songs out, because he. He can't even speak it.

[D]

So they cast Frank Sinatra for a.

[A]

Role with one number. So they had to write. No, they put him in oh, Guys and Dolls, which is the. Which is the. You know, the theme number. And they. And. And they wrote two songs, I see, which aren't good. Adelaide, which is really not a good song. And then Marlon Brando, who couldn't sing. It's the job of the romantic lead singing like this. My Time of Day. The darkest, terrible, terrible movie.

[D]

But another Godfather connection.

[A]

There you go. Another Godfather.

[E]

You sound like. I remember when, years ago, my sister came home from seeing Fiddler on the Roof. But it was the Harvey Fierstein and Rosie o' Donnell led performance that was.

[A]

A terrible production for many reasons. Not the least of what they were substitute. They were the substitute suits after. After the terrible miscasting of Alfred Molina as Tevye in that production. That. Boy, that was bad. Anyway, Fiddler on the Roof is a pretty amazing show, by the way. I wrote a long essay about it in Commentary five or six years ago when it was staged in Yiddish here in New York. And it was kind of dazzling. And I will say about Guys and Dolls that I went to see a production of it in London last year. Very inventive production done by the director Nicholas Heitner at this theater. And this is another thing about these shows, which is that they can be saved or ruined by. By direction. So a badly conceived show like Gypsy, you can see everything that's great about it, but the production. But it will still be not a great experience. And then you can take something that's nothing and a genuinely great director can spin magic out of it through ceaseless kind of invention. So that. Like Dreamgirls, which is not. Not a very. This is not a very good show. This show sort of about Motown and the supreme and the Diana Ross and the Supremes, then made into a movie, has one great song in it, but it's otherwise really not very good. But Michael Bennett, the director of A Chorus Line and stuff, single best directed show I've ever seen. It's a show that basically is staged with four light poles, no sets, and the light poles move in 500 different ways to create rooms, cities, news conferences on stage, backstage side stage, and nothing else. And I've never, never. It's the. You know, it's like the. It saved the show. It made the show, it created the show. And so that's a. That's a fun aspect of it.

[C]

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my uncle choreographed Guys and Dolls.

[A]

I was not gonna go there because I know you.

[C]

I'm so proud. Well, yeah. I'm private on my own behalf.

[A]

Yes. Yes. So, yes, Abe's uncle, Michael Kidd, was one of the two or three foremost choreographer directors of the 20th century, of the modern musical of the 20th century, because he not only did Guys and Dolls. He did the numbers. He did all movies. He did very, a lot of movie. He directed dozens of shows.

[C]

There's a billion of them.

[A]

And he was in, he was also in It's Always Fair Weather, a movie which, which he co starred with Gene, Gene Kelly. Very odd depressing musical about disappointed men in their 30s coming together after having served in World War II together. But he's wonderful in it and he's wonderful in another movie. And then I'll end with this, a movie called Smile, which is about a, which is about a beauty pageant, California state beauty pageant in the 1970s that he plays the choreographer of the pageant. And Bruce Dern's in that. And Barbara Felden from Get Smart is in was written by this great satiric comedy writer named Jerry Belson. And it is one of the great movie unheralded movies of the 1970s with an amazing Michael Kidd performance. But Michael Kidd's opening number for Guys and Dolls, which is, which is called the Broadway Ballet and then Few for Tin Horns, remains one of the greatest. I mean, you can see it, it was recreated for the movie, so you can sort of see it there. One of the great moments of American theater. So you were a mess and I was, I was, I was respecting your privacy.

[C]

I appreciate it.

[A]

Okay, so we have the Lion King Company, the Music man, and, and Guys and Dolls as your. As, as the as as are. There are so many others. Is, you know, it is my, it is the, it is the artistic form that is closest to my heart. So I could go on.

[D]

To be continued.

[A]

To BE continued Be continued. And I will say if you're coming to New York and you want to see a musical right now, the show to see, which is a beautiful and unusual show, is called maybe Happy Ending, which if Christine were on, would have been her choice and she would have talked about it today. But she is not on with us. So in her stead, I will mention maybe Happy Ending, which is sounds terrible because it's about two robots in 2065, Seoul, South Korea. So you may find find that an odd topic for a gorgeous musical about love and longing and what it means to be human and all of that, but it is all that. So thanks and we will be back with more podcasting later. So for Matt, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pod Hortz. Keep the candle.