Musical Theater Month (Year 5!)

It’s that time again! And it’s a leap year, which means I get to take on 29 musicals rather than 28.

If you’re new: five years ago I started a challenge for myself where I listen to or watch one musical per day for the whole month of February. I like musicals a lot, and it seemed like a good way to push myself to get into new ones. Originally, my rule was that I wouldn’t repeat any that I’d ever seen before. Now that I’m on my fifth year, I’m starting to run out of things I haven’t seen or heard before, so I’ve relaxed the rules a little bit. Now, I’m willing to repeat as long as it’s a different version–if I’ve listened to the cast recording or seen a stage performance, I’ll watch the movie version or look for a different stage version, and vice versa.

And… this is where I admit I failed last year. In my defense, I was in the middle of moving apartments and I also took off a week to visit family, which is not a conductive environment for disappearing for three hours a day. I got through 10/28 musicals. So technically this is year 4.35, and I’m reusing about half of last year’s list (including the one requisite opera, which I didn’t get to last year).

Here’s what we have on the agenda for 2020:

1. Hadestown (Broadway Cast Album)
2. The Spongebob Musical
3. Gypsy
4. Anything Goes
5. Evita (Broadway)
6. Mary Poppins Returns
7. Man of La Mancha
8. Starlight Express
9. Falsettos
10. Pippin
11. Candide
12. Mama Mia (OR Mama Mia 2, haven’t decided yet)
13. Kiss Me Kate
14. Spring Awakening
15. Allegiance
16. Company
17. Matilda
18. Young Frankenstein
19. Jersey Boys
20. Jesus Christ Superstar (Live)
21. Ragtime
22. Lala Land
23. Frozen Broadway (OR Frozen 2)
24. The Producers
25. Merrily We Roll Along
26. Passion
27. The Three Musketeers
28. La Boheme
29. Hello Dolly

As always, these may move around or be switched with other shows depending on what I’m able to find.

What have I been listening to since last year? Always Great Comet, always the Hadestown concept album, and some Waitress and Come From Away. In October I got really into Evita. Like, weirdly obsessed with it. I found the OBCR on two CDs in a Goodwill and for months it was all I listened to in the car, even though I didn’t have a lot of strong feelings about the movie when I watched it last year. I think it’s the combination of the history, very dramatic music that’s fun to sing, and the existence of Che, who I am very into conceptually. I love narrator characters. So Evita is on the list two years in a row, which may be bending the rules too much, but I don’t care because I love it. (You got me, Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I’ll never forgive you for Cats.)