Guides for Musicals, Plays, Operas & Operettas
Read expert-written show guides with context, plot, characters and video examples.
Newsies
New York City, 1899. Jack Kelly and his ragtag team of newsboys make a meager living selling newspapers on the city streets. But when the prices of “papes” are hiked and the newsies are hung out to dry, there is nothing left to do but “open the gates and seize the day” Led by charismatic Jack and... 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
The Book of Mormon
The hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, written by “South Park”’s Trey Stone and Matt Smith and Frozen’s Robert Lopez, is a irreverent, hysterical, and surprisingly sweet send-up of religion, culture shock, and classic musical theatre. In The Book of Mormon, two very different young LDS miss... read more
Matilda
Matilda is the story of an extraordinary little girl with extraordinary powers. The daughter of abusive parents, Matilda finds refuge in library books, which she reads quickly and in creating her own stories. Things are no better at school, where Matilda also must face a tyrannical and cruel head... read more
Cabaret
Cabaret takes place from 1929-1930, a time when Berlin, in the midst of a post-World War I economic depression, is transitioning from a center of underground, avant-garde cultural epicenter to the beginnings of Hitler’s totalitarian regime and the rise of the Nazi Party. Into this world enters Cl... 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
Jekyll & Hyde
Based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic thriller, Jekyll & Hyde is the gripping tale of a brilliant mind gone horrifically awry, set to a powerful pop-rock score by Frank Wildhorn with book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. In an attempt to cure his ailing father’s mental illness by separating “g... read more
Peter Pan
Peter Pan tells the classic J.M. Barrie tale of a young boy who refuses to grow up. On a quest to find stories with which to entertain his young cohorts in Neverland -- an island refuge for “Lost Boys” -- Peter returns to the real world and meets Wendy, Michael, and John Darling. The Darling ch... 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
