Musical Theatre Essentials: The Canon

The American Musical as Art Form

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 Through-Line

Oklahoma! established the integrated musical — where song, dance, and book serve a single dramatic purpose. West Side Story pushed the form toward tragedy and contemporary social stakes. Sondheim — Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd — made the musical as intellectually demanding as any art song cycle. Hamilton brought hip-hop syntax to the traditional form, proving the musical could absorb any vernacular tradition and remain itself.

What Distinguishes a Great Musical

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.