
The ten shows every serious theatregoer should know
5 selections · Stage Door Society Editorial
The Broadway musical spent decades earning the legitimacy it now commands. Today's canonical shows achieved it through a demanding combination: musical sophistication, dramatic coherence, and the ability to make the popular and the profound inhabit the same stage.
These ten works represent the form at its most artistically serious.
The test: remove any song from the show and see whether the drama loses something irreplaceable. In the best work, no song is removable. Each number advances character or plot or both simultaneously.

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