best tony winner for Best Musical, 2000-2019

Have only seen these:

The Producers
Hairspray
The Book of Mormon
Hamilton
Dear Evan Hansen

I'm sure a bunch of these are terrible but I sure am glad American Idiot didn't make the cut

I saw Spamalot and thought it was an utterly gratuitous retread. Would've liked to see Fun Home.

Could've seen The Producers in previews, comped by my employer, but passed, because clearly it was bound to fail.

iirc In the Heights >>> Hamilton

Would say that Hairspray is likely the best out of what I've seen, but it's not a high bar.

I've only ever seen one song from Fun Home but it made me weep uncontrollably for hours. Can I still vote for it? I've only heard one of the shows complete and never seen it (Avenue Q, which is funny and catchy but I can't imagine it's better than everything else on the list).

Contact - stupid. it's not even really a musical, they play canned music during the show.
The Producers - mostly hilarious, saw it in 2005.
Thoroughly Modern Millie - I like a lot of the music, the book makes it sound like something I'd hate.
Hairspray - fun, entertaining, good music, saw it in 2006 in NY.
Avenue Q - never seen it, sick to death of the songs and the concept. don't wanna see it
Spamalot - runs out of steam, but largely a good time for HOly Grail fans who also like cheesy musical theater jokes
Jersey Boys - never saw it
Spring Awakening - phenomenal. definitely felt like a transition in what was popular on Broadway.
In the Heights - thin on story, but love the music and choreo and set, as well as the cast, saw it in NY in 2008, one of my favorite Cast Recordings in recent years, met Lin-Manuel after show, he had on a Pac-Man shirt.
Billy Elliot the Musical - never saw, enjoy the music though
Memphis - don't know this one
The Book of Mormon - pretty much a great time start to finish. saw it in 2012 in NY.
Once - I got into it more after I saw it (original cast, 2012, f Cristin Milioti). enjoy the music, show takes some getting into but I warmed up to it a lot.
Kinky Boots - haven't heard or seen
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder - never heard of
Fun Home - probably my pick of this list. saw a local professional production and it had me in tears by teh end.
Hamilton - lol what can I say that hasn't been said already
Waitress - haven't seen or heard
Dear Evan Hansen - haven't seen or heard.
The Band's Visit - extremely underrated, featuring Tony Shaloub. fantastic music, charming story of an Egyptian band who wind up in the wrong city by mistake and spend the day with the locals of the city they wound up in. adaptation of the movie. saw this in NY in 2018.
Hadestown - idk it, heard a lot about it

In the Heights is legitimately a trip back to one of the best years of my life, too, which is why I adore it.

Tom, I allow your Fun Home vote. if the one song made you sob, the whole thing will. it's fairly devastating yet uplifting. deals with some weighty topics. need strong actors though or it could go south fast.

Waitress didn't win, I think it's there by mistake, songs I've heard are good tho.

Jukebox musicals should be excluded on principle

i think the only juke musical I'd willingly see is "Forever Plaid", mostly because the "jukebox" is lesser performed songs from the 50s, the arrangements are creative, harmonies are tight (as a music nerd, that's my shit) - story is charming. was in that particular one when I was 20.

otherwise, I fucking hate the lot of them. I bought my folks anniversary tickets to Mamma Mia, and instead of going with them, went to Book of Mormon instead. I made the right choice.

I want to listen to Fun Home now but I can't really bear what it'll do to me emotionally, so.....another night.

I don't necessarily hate them, I like Mamma Mia, but Best Musical should be original-ish material imo

Hairspray is probably my fave of the ones I know well enough of this list

hadestown!!!!

i haven’t heard almost any of these but they aren’t hadestown anyway

I agree, which is why Contact should have been excluded as well.

Light in the Piazza probably my favorite score of the 21st century (and it won Best Score), but lost Best Musical

Yeah Hairspray is just fun. I went not expecting to like it and it became a fave.

I think there were few shows left on TKTS due to our late arrival and that's why we chose it

Of what I have seen: Hadestown > Hamilton > Hairspray > The Book of Mormon > Kinky Boots

I forgot when I saw Hairspray in NYC, it had both 90's R&B star Tevin Campbell playing Seaweed, and Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame legend Darlene Love playing Motormouth. she got an ovation during "I Know Where I've Been".

I said this on the Tay thread but I still prefer the Hadestown studio album to the cast album

Waitress didn't win, I think it's there by mistake, songs I've heard are good tho.

yes a c+p mistake! but uh vote for it if you want

deciding between hadestown and the producers, a weird decision I admit

hadestown suffered from a weak sauce lead performance from orpheus imo, otherwise it’s pretty singularly glorious

Kinky Boots was massively, utterly disappointing. The dance numbers were fun but how are you going to have a musical with zero (0) memorable musical numbers? If you offered me a million dollars to sing any of the songs from it, I couldn’t.

Avenue Q and Hairspray are fantastic. I saw the film version of The Producers and my baseline reaction was “someone must squash Matthew Broderick like a bug”. Spamalot was fun but the production I saw was interrupted when one of the dancers slammed into a set piece and had to be carried sobbing off the stage. I’ve only seen about 10 minutes of Spring Awakening but I viscerally loathed all ten of those minutes with a fury unlike any beheld on planet Earth except for when I saw Rent. I really like the songs I know from Book of Mormon and Once but I haven’t seen either show.

Hamilton is literally another level of art from any other Broadway musical I’ve seen, which are words I didn’t expect to say before I saw it. I would have been a lock for Avenue Q but Hamilton on Broadway is straight-up the best musical performance I have ever been to, period.

even from a technical standpoint, it's a landmark, but it's definitely a league of its own in terms of what it is.

have you seen Blindspotting? Daveed Diggs is fantastic in that, and does a lot of rapping

DJP definitely seek out Hadestown if only one of the recordings (I guess that's the only option for the foreseeable anyway)

I had a friend who was supposed to see Hadestown this year, he was crushed of course.

i guess I should get around to listening to it.

sorry about your friend getting crushed

imo try the original studio album first if you care more about the songs than the sheen

lmao

sorry about your friend getting crushed

LOL

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

the only two i've seen are the producers and kinky boots and frankly i can't remember any songs from either

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

well this was a mistake

Can we talk about how entirely unhinged Dear Evan Hansen is?

The premise, I mean; I haven't seen it and maybe they turn a patently sociopathic idea into something interesting but... it seems like a deeply unpleasant pile of garbage

Every time I flash back on Pauline Kael's slam of West Side Story and specifically how hard it allegedly tried to make its dancers athletic efforts the actual aesthetic goal, I muse that she didn't know how good she had it.

Like, are you in the front rows? Bring a sheet of Gallagher plastic with you.

when my girl friend bites my dick off pic.twitter.com/RuIEcY0Ddo

— alison rumfitt (@hangsawoman) September 24, 2021

I won't link because who cares, but Arm0nd's pan carries a nugget that I kind of agree with? (Taking what I presume he actually means by "universal (in fact, unified) moral sensibility" out of the discussion.)

Transferring a Broadway show to Hollywood was traditionally the convention of a cohesive society — when a showfolk subculture spoke through a universal (in fact, unified) moral sensibility and a film adaptation would bring that artistic expression to a larger popular audience.