Happy New Year! This will be the last edition Best Musical ranking until the 2019 Tony Awards where I will do the Best Musicals of the 2010s and the Best Musical Revivals of the 2010s. Then that will be it.
Anyway, the 1950s was a gold mine for golden age shows, with Rodgers and Hammerstein ruling the Great White Way, Stephen Sondheim made his Broadway debut and the Tony Awards had only just started!
#1 My Fair Lady
Lerner and Loewe's classic musical had enchanted audiences for decades. The original production starred Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, and Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle, a Cooney flower girl. The show has recently been revived by Lincoln Centre Theatre and the show also had a successful film adaptation that won the Academy Award for Best Picture!
#2 The Music Man
The classic tale of Harold Hill who attempts to con the town of River City, Iowa by pretending to being a professor that can turn the boys of the town into a boys band is a timeless classic, with this original production starring Robert Preston in one of Broadway's most iconic performances. The show then had a successful revival directed and choreographed by 5 time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman!
#3 Guys and Dolls
Home to one of the greatest Showtunes ever written: "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat", Frank Loesser's comedy about gamblers, a Christian mission group and a trip to Cuba has had many successful revivals with the most successful being the 1992 Broadway production starring Nathan Lane and Faith Prince!
#4 The King and I
This is a story that will like on for ages, mostly because it keeps getting revived. But who can blame someone for wanting to tell this story. Anna Leowens is a fantastic leading female role and has been portrayed by wonderful actresses including Gertrude Lawrence and Kelli O'Hara!
#5 The Pajama Game
#6 Damn Yankess
#7 South Pacific
A Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece about starting a mixed raced family during the Second World War. Being the only show in Broadway history to win all 4 acting awards and being the origin of such stand out favourites such as "There is Nothing Like a Dame", "Some Enchanted Evening" and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair"!
#8 Kismet
One of actor Alfred Drake's greatest roles, and the first Tony Award winning role, is the story of a poet who gets himself out of trouble multiple times with clever wordplay, all the while his daughter falls in love with the prince of rhe land. The show is quite comical and romantic, which it never lets you forget with funny rhymes, both in poems and songs!
#9 Redhead
Who doesn't love a whodunit mystery? So why not combine it with musical theatre? Well it worked with Redhead! Bob Fosse's debut as a director starred Richared Kiley as a distraught fan of a performer who has recently been murdered and Gwen Verdon as a girl who pretends to know who the murderer is, just to impress Kiley's character.
#10 Wonderful Town
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