Guides for Musicals, Plays, Operas & Operettas
Read expert-written show guides with context, plot, characters and video examples.
Wicked
Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz takes place before L.Frank Baum’s classic Wizard of Oz story ever began. Before Dorothy was even alive, two young girls met in the Land of Oz, became rivals, and then friends. One was born with emerald green skin, with a brillian... read more
Rent
Based on Puccini’s beloved opera La Bohème, Rent follows the ups and downs of a year in the life of a group of impoverished, artistic friends living in Manhattan’s East Village. Mark, an aspiring filmmaker, struggles to find his place in the world; his roommate Roger, an HIV-positive musician, w... read more
Hairspray
It’s 1962 in Baltimore, Maryland, and quirky, plus-sized, teenage Tracy Turnblad has one dream: to dance on The Corny Collins Show. When she gets put in detention with the African-American students in the school, they teach her some of their dance moves, and her new found groove wins her a spot o... read more
Little Shop of Horrors
Little Shop of Horrors is a delectable sci-fi horror musical with an electrifying 1960s pop/rock score by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.Seymour Krelborn is a meek and dejected assistant at a floral shop who happens upon a strange plant, which he affectionately names “Audrey II” after his crush a... read more
Sweeney Todd
One of the darkest musicals ever written, Sweeney Todd: A Musical Thriller is the unsettling tale of a Victorian-era barber who returns home to London after fifteen years of exile to take revenge on the corrupt judge who ruined his life. When revenge eludes him, Sweeney swears vengeance on the e... read more
Aladdin
Disney's Aladdin brings the famous movie to life, on stage. In Agrabah, City of Enchantment, every beggar has a story and every camel has a tail Aladdin, a kind but wily, street urchin, falls in love with beautiful Princess Jasmine, who he knows is waaaaay out of his league. It just so happens, h... read more
The Addams Family
In the kooky, upside-down world of the Addams Family, to be sad is to be happy, to feel pain is to feel joy, and death and suffering are the stuff of their dreams. Nonetheless, this quirky family still has to deal with many of the same challenges faced by any other family, and the spookiest nigh... read more
Cinderella
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s enchanting adaptation of the timeless fairytale, Cinderella, was their only musical originally composed for television. When the television program, starring Julie Andrews as Cinderella, first aired in 1957, it was the most widely viewed program in the history of the me... read more
The Rocky Horror Show
One fateful night, Brad Majors and his fiancée, Janet Weiss — a wholesome, well-behaved, utterly normal young couple in love — innocently set out to visit an old professor. Unfortunately for them, this night out is destined to be one they will never forget. A thunderstorm and a flat-tire force th... read more
Mamma Mia!
On a small Greek island, Sophie dreams of a perfect wedding — one which includes her father giving her away. The problem? Sophie doesn’t know who he is Her mother Donna, the former lead singer of the 1970s pop group Donna and the Dynamos, refuses to talk about the past, so Sophie decides to take... read more
