We love to celebrate the classic Broadway scores! We revel in a joyously wonderful flop score! There is, however, one area of the Broadway musical that we seldom address: the musicals that were neither calamitous flops, but neither were they runaway hits. They were around for maybe a season and change (250-500 performances), maybe made some money or came close to breaking even (in a day where that was possible). I refer to these as the “also rans” of Broadway. Today’s blog is a celebration of the scores from these middling musicals that have much to recommend in the way of great music.
All tagged The Life
The Top Ten Cy Coleman Songs Written for Broadway Musicals
Never has a composer been more eclectic in style and worked with such a variety of lyricists than the late-great Cy Coleman. Coleman had a long career in musical theatre, spanning decades, with a wide range of successes, almost hits, and flops: Wildcat (1960), Little Me (1962), Sweet Charity (1966), Seesaw (1973), I Love My Wife (1977), On the Twentieth Century (1978), Barnum (1980), City of Angels (1989), The Will Rogers Follies (1991), and The Life (1997).