Happy May! As always, we’re celebrating the month by looking at some of the musicals that opened in New York this month on this week’s Dress Circle (5/4 7:00 p.m.). The list of May openings is not extensive because of Tony nominations and voting. The cut-off for nominations this year was April 27th, so a show opening after that would be eligible for the following year’s award if the nominating committee and voters remembered it. We still have eleven shows represented, spanning 119 years of musical history.
Our earliest musical this year is a revival “Mlle. Modiste” by Victor Herbert and Henry Blossom. It originally opened in 1905, but we’re celebrating the first of two revivals that took place in 1907. Our latest opening occurred nine years ago in 2016 and was the Cirque du Soliel musical titled “Paramour.” We’ve also got a selection from the second latest May musical opening, “Glory Days” which ran for one performance in 2008.
We’ve done some digging to include shows that we haven’t had songs from in the past like “Rhapsody in Black” featuring a young Ethel Waters in 1931, “Billy Rose’s Crazy Quilt,” and “New Faces of 1936.”
Of course, we’ve got some old favorites like Frank Loesser’s “The Most Happy Fella,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Me and Juliet” and a revival of “The King & I,” and “The Roar of the Greasepaint…” to name a few.
Join us for another happy hour that’ll be a pleasant mix of familiar and unfamiliar songs. Enjoy!
