Twentieth Century Revolution

16 selections · Stage Door Society Editorial

The twentieth century began with a riot in a Paris theatre and ended with the American musical ascending to high art. Between those poles: Britten's moral operas, Balanchine's plotless perfection, Beckett's existential void, and Williams's Southern gothic fever dreams. Nothing was sacred. Everything was possible.

Ballet

Petrushka

Igor Stravinsky · 1911

In the bustling streets of a Russian fair, a mysterious Charlatan brings three wooden puppets to life: the tragic, lovelorn Petrushka; the vain Ballerina; and the brutish Moor. As the puppets enact a grotesque love triangle, Petrushka's awakening to human emotion—jealousy, longing, despair—transforms him from mere sawdust into a figure of profound pathos. The ballet culminates in violence and revelation, blurring the line between puppet and soul.

Ballet

Serenade

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky · 1934

Balanchine's groundbreaking abstract masterpiece transforms Tchaikovsky's luminous string serenade into pure choreographic poetry. Without narrative or named characters, the ballet unfolds as an elegant meditation on form, movement, and the interplay between soloist and ensemble—a revolutionary assertion that ballet need not tell a story to move the soul.

Ballet

Romeo and Juliet

Sergei Prokofiev · 1938

Prokofiev's sweeping dramatic ballet transforms Shakespeare's timeless tragedy into a visceral dance narrative of star-crossed love. Two young dancers from feuding families discover passion amid the violent rivalries of Verona, their romance flowering in stolen moments before fate's cruel intervention. The ballet captures both the lyrical tenderness of their devotion and the brutal spectacle of Renaissance vendetta, culminating in a devastating final tableau.

Opera

Peter Grimes

Benjamin Britten · 1945

In a claustrophobic Suffolk fishing village, the solitary and violent fisherman Peter Grimes stands accused of brutality toward his apprentices, with one having mysteriously died at sea. Only the compassionate schoolmistress Ellen Orford offers him solace as the community's suspicion hardens into persecution. Britten's masterwork charts Grimes's psychological unraveling as he becomes the scapegoat for the village's moral hypocrisy, culminating in tragedy. A searing portrait of isolation, prejudice, and the destructive power of collective judgment.

Opera

Billy Budd

Benjamin Britten · 1951

A young sailor's innocence becomes a casualty of naval justice when false accusations and a moment of violence seal his tragic fate.

Musical Theatre

West Side Story

Leonard Bernstein · 1957

In the gritty streets of 1950s Manhattan, two rival gangs—the Jets and the Sharks—wage war for territorial dominance. When Tony, a former Jet, and Maria, sister of the Sharks' leader, meet at a dance and fall desperately in love, their passion ignites a tragic chain of events that mirrors Shakespeare's timeless tale of star-crossed lovers. Their romance becomes a fleeting beacon of hope amid the violence and prejudice that ultimately consumes them both.

Musical Theatre

A Chorus Line

Marvin Hamlisch · 1975

Seventeen dancers converge on a bare Broadway stage for a grueling audition, where the demanding director Zach methodically probes their deepest vulnerabilities and personal histories. As each performer reveals their dreams, struggles, and reasons for dancing, a portrait emerges of ambition, resilience, and the bittersweet reality of pursuing stardom in the theatre. The musical transforms the audition process itself into an intimate exploration of identity, sacrifice, and the transformative power of performance.

Musical Theatre

Company

Stephen Sondheim · 1970

A sophisticated concept musical that eschews linear narrative in favor of interconnected vignettes exploring the nature of marriage, friendship, and commitment. Robert, a charming 35-year-old bachelor, navigates his relationships with five married couples who variously celebrate, question, and struggle with their unions while gently pressuring him toward matrimony. Through a series of witty, poignant musical numbers and candid conversations, Sondheim and Furth dissect the paradoxes of human connection—the comfort and confinement of companionship, the simultaneous yearning for and fear of intimacy. The musical culminates in Robert's profound reckoning with solitude and the bittersweet realities of being alive.

Musical Theatre

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler · 1979

A wrongfully exiled barber returns to Victorian London as the demon Sweeney Todd, consumed by vengeance against the corrupt judge who destroyed his family. Establishing a sinister shop above Mrs. Lovett's struggling pie establishment, Todd transforms his razor into an instrument of retribution while his accomplice devises a macabre solution to her business woes. As his daughter Johanna and a young sailor named Anthony become entangled in Todd's web of murder and madness, the barber's quest for justice spirals into a tragedy of operatic proportions.

Theatre

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett · 1953

Two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait on a desolate country road for the mysterious Godot, who never arrives, passing time through repetitive conversations, physical comedy, and existential despair. Over two structurally identical yet subtly altered acts, they encounter the tyrannical Pozzo and his enslaved servant Lucky, while a boy messenger repeatedly assures them that Godot will surely come tomorrow. Beckett's minimalist masterpiece transforms waiting itself into a profound meditation on meaning, mortality, and the human condition, where nothing happens, nobody comes, and yet the characters remain.

Theatre

Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller · 1949

Willy Loman, a aging traveling salesman, confronts the devastating gap between his lifelong pursuit of the American Dream and the harsh reality of his failure. As his career collapses and his sons struggle to forge their own paths, Willy retreats into idealized memories and delusions, unable to accept that his relentless optimism and misguided values have left him spiritually bankrupt. A searing indictment of ambition, capitalism, and the mythology of success, the play culminates in tragedy as Willy's desperation reaches its breaking point.

Theatre

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams · 1947

Blanche DuBois, a fragile former Southern belle, arrives unannounced at her younger sister Stella's cramped New Orleans apartment, where Stella lives with her brutish, working-class husband Stanley Kowalski. As Blanche's refined pretenses collide violently with Stanley's raw masculinity, her carefully constructed illusions begin to crumble, revealing a past of scandal, loss, and desperation. In a devastating final act, Stanley's ruthless exposure of Blanche's secrets destroys her last hope for redemption and stability.

Theatre

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Eugene O'Neill · 1956

Eugene O'Neill's masterwork unfolds across a single, harrowing day in August 1912 at a Connecticut summer cottage, where the Tyrone family—a once-proud theatrical dynasty—spirals into emotional devastation. As the morphine-addicted matriarch retreats into denial and nostalgia, her husband's miserliness, her sons' alcoholism and resentment, and the youngest's tuberculosis diagnosis converge to expose decades of accumulated guilt, blame, and shattered dreams. By midnight, the family stands utterly unraveled, each member trapped in their own despair and unable to escape the inescapable grip of their personal demons. A searing portrait of American family tragedy and the illusions we construct to survive.

Theatre

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Edward Albee · 1962

A searing portrait of marital dysfunction unfolds over one devastating night as George and Martha, a middle-aged academic couple, invite younger colleagues into their home for drinks—only to subject them to escalating psychological games, brutal revelations, and the systematic dismantling of carefully constructed illusions. What begins as post-party socializing devolves into a ritualistic exorcism of the couple's deepest wounds, culminating in the symbolic destruction of the imaginary son around which their entire marriage has been built. Albee's masterwork exposes the American Dream's hollow core through coruscating dialogue, savage wit, and the terrifying intimacy of two people who know exactly how to wound each other.

Opera

Wozzeck

Alban Berg · 1925

Wozzeck, a destitute soldier tormented by visions and exploited by his superiors, descends into madness as his common-law wife Marie betrays him with the arrogant Drum Major. Driven by jealousy and psychological torment, Wozzeck commits a desperate act of violence, culminating in tragedy. Berg's expressionist masterpiece strips away operatic convention to expose the raw suffering of the dispossessed.

Opera

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Dmitri Shostakovich · 1934

A merchant's wife pursues a forbidden affair with a young laborer, leading to murder and moral ruin in Shostakovich's searing operatic tragedy.

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