One Musical a Week

Passing Strange starts with a young musician leaving Los Angeles in search of “the real.” The musical turns that journey into a collision between autobiography, rock performance, and theatre: the more…

Ragtime brings three fictional American lives into the same country at the dawn of the twentieth century: a wealthy white family in New Rochelle, a Black pianist and his beloved Sarah, and a Jewish im…

Pacific Overtures looks at Japan’s forced opening to Western trade from the Japanese side of the story. Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman built the musical as a sequence of stylized scenes rather than…

The Secret Garden turns a locked door, a grieving family, and a child’s stubborn curiosity into a lush stage musical. Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, the 1991 Broadway adaptation brought tog…

The Band’s Visit is a musical about a wrong turn that becomes a night of attention. An Egyptian police band arrives in Israel expecting to perform at a cultural centre, but a mix-up sends the musician…

A Chorus Line turned the audition room into the main event. This episode follows the show from Michael Bennett’s interview sessions with Broadway dancers to the Public Theater and Broadway, then looks…