TheatreBoard’s Favourite Musical

[Deleted]

1. Les Miserables
2. Come From Away
3. Rent
4. Wicked
5. Hamilton
6. A Chorus Line
7. Singin in the Rain
8. Cabaret
9. Memphis
10. Once


Only the top 2 are really in order, all the others are interchangeable and could be replaced by half a dozen others depending on the production!

[ThereWillBeSun]

Oh, go on then...

1. Kiss Me Kate
2. Sunday in the Park with George
3. Parade
4. Romantics Anonymous
5. Come From Away
6. Urinetown: The Musical
7. Fun Home
8. Hadestown
9. South Pacific
10.The Light in the Piazza

[tommy123]

Great idea! Mine are:

1. Come From Away
2. Wicked
3. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
4. Waitress
5. Les Miserables
6. Hamilton
7. Kinky Boots
8. Little Shop of Horrors
9. Jesus Christ Superstar
10. Six

[Deal J]

1. The Rocky Horror Show
2. Sweeney Todd
3. Gypsy
4. Little Shop of Horrors
5. Follies
6. Into the Woods
7. A Little Night Music
8. Company
9. Merrily We Roll Along
10. Les Miserables

So difficult to choose! Great idea though, thanks for organising it!

[newyorkcityboy]

So difficult to choose. My favourite ever theatrical experience was seeing Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz - though that is not the best written musical or even one of my favourites. But I loved that production and his performance in particular, the best I’ve ever witnessed in a musical. (Second is Judi Dench in Little Night Music.) Plus the very fact of seeing a gay romance play out on a Broadway stage.

Stage Musicals
Sunset Boulevard
Follies
Phantom
Aspects
Sunday In The Park With George
Les Mis
Miss Saigon
Chess
Company
Ragtime

Films
Moulin Rouge
EVITA
Little Shop Of Horrors
Rocky Horror
Cabaret
Hairspray
Hedwig
Chicago
Hello Dolly
Dreamgirls

[anita]

Impossible.

[theatremiss]

Oh dear Lord. This will change tomorrow I’m sure. In no particular order.
Top 10 musicals:
Sunset Boulevard
Miss Saigon
Les Mis
Memphis
Book of Mormon
Guys n Dolls
Dear World
Jesus Christ Superstar
Camelot
South Pacific

[westendrebecca]

Changes on the daily, but:
Dear Evan Hansen
Les Mis
Frozen
Heathers
Waitress
Wicked
Come From Away
Kinky Boots
Matilda
Billy Elliot

[LaLuPone]

Bit of a delay with finishing tallying up all the votes because I caught Covid last weekend and had a nasty few days of symptoms but I’ll get this sorted in the next few days!

[justfran]

Hope I’m not too late to add in!

Top 10 musicals:

1- Once
2- Starlight Express
3- Priscilla Queen of the Desert
4- Never Forget
5- Jesus Christ Superstar
6- Jersey Boys
7- Buddy
8- Les Miserables
9- Saturday Night Fever
10- Singin’ in the Rain

[cavocado]

1. Sweeney Todd
2. Hamilton
3. Follies
4. Into the Woods
5. West Side Story
6. Les Miserables
7. Oliver
8. Gypsy
9. Hadestown
10. Sound of Music

[Mark]

1) Blood Brothers
2) Legally Blonde
3) Come From Away
4) The Drowsy Chaperone
5) Billy Elliot
6) Phantom of the Opera
7) The Book of Mormon
8) Spring Awakening
9) The Girls
10) Little Shop of Horrors

In all honesty, ask me another day you'd probably get some different answers.

[LaLuPone]

Finally got around to counting the last few votes, I do apologise for the delay!

This first point system is simply based on giving 1 point every time a musical was mentioned and that has given us a top 10 (well 11) of:

1st: Les Misérables (no surprise there) (26 votes)
2nd: Come From Away (14 votes)
3rd: Jesus Christ Superstar, Wicked (12 votes)
5th: Evita, Miss Saigon, Waitress (10 votes)
8th: Sunset Boulevard (9 votes)
9th: Company, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd (8 votes)

So that’s 3 Sondheims and 3 Lloyd-Webbers and 2 Boubil & Schönbergs.
Surprised to not see Phantom here to be honest, and surprised that Waitress is here, didn’t realise there were that many board members who enjoy it so much. There were a lot of shows with 7 points that just missed out, we unsurprisingly have a large variety of favourite shows, with 138 mentioned altogether.

I’m going to post the top 10 with a different points system later today (more points given depending how high up a show is on people’s lists) to see what changes, plus a few more little stats from working this all out as well!

[olliebean]

I reckon with Waitress and Come From Away there's an element of recency bias, tbh; give them 19 years (the age of the next most recent show in the list) and I doubt either of them would still be there.

[BurlyBeaR]

No Hamilton I see. I noticed the absence of it in the votes. All that hype when it opened about it being the best musical in history too…

[Deal J]

Thanks for doing this LaLuPone, hope you've recovered from your COVID infection.

[distantcousin]

1. Sunset Boulevard
2. Phantom
3. Evita
4. Cabaret
5. Chicago
6. Miss Saigon
7. Sweeney Todd
8. Follies
9. Les Miserables
10.A Chorus Line

My top 10 was fairly fixed for many years, but Follies and A Chorus Line, which discoveries of the past 10 years, have pushed Chess and (one other I can't even remember) out of the 10!

[distantcousin]

Mar 7, 2022 8:58:08 GMT olliebean said:

I reckon with Waitress and Come From Away there's an element of recency bias, tbh; give them 19 years (the age of the next most recent show in the list) and I doubt either of them would still be there.

Definitely. See "recency" bias all the time in polling, and for anyone who's "lived" a bit longer, like me, it comes across as quite laughable!

[Fleance]

110 in the Shade
Carousel
Fiddler on the Roof
Guys and Dolls
Gypsy
Li'l Abner
Little Me
Mame
Privates on Parade
Sweeney Todd

[tom]

In no particular order...
Phantom
Billy Elliot
Matilda
Jesus Christ Superstar
Cats (Unpopular I know!)
Wicked
Rent
Sweeney Todd
Les Mis (It is a great musical but gone off it due to poor casting the most recent times I've seen it)
Little Shop of Horrors

I do love Evita and West Side story to listen to but not seen a good enough production to add to my list.

[iamamazing]

Im the same I've seen loads but number 1 musical to me will always be
1. WICKED
2. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (FIRST MUSICAL I EVER SAW SO MEANS A LOT TO ME)
3. LES MISERABLES
4. HAMILTON
5. FROZEN

[greeny11]

1. Hairspray
2. Come From Away
3. Kinky Boots
4. & Juliet
5. Six
6. Les Miserables
7. Mary Poppins
8. Waitress
9. Phantom of the Opera
10. Beautiful

To be fair, apart from Hairspray and Come From Away, most of the others are interchangable. There are other musicals I love that haven't made that list too.

[LaLuPone]

Deal J thank you! It definitely knocked it out of me for about 2 weeks but all better now.

I agree Waitress and Come From Away are as high as they are because they’re recent but it still shows us that they’re some of our favourites from the past 10 years. As Burly said it’s interesting that they scored higher than Hamilton since that’s not too much older and had been raved about “non-stop”. I’ve never fully bought into the hype of it to be honest, give me Waitress and Come From Away instead any day.

[ladidah]

I love Hamilton and Waitress so I am surely basic.

[danb]

Not at all. But there is ‘in the moment’ love…clap clap clap, ooh that was brilliant. And there is stood doing the ironing and a passage of music starts working its way through your brain. It might just be a bit of connective recitative from ‘Les Mis’ and you’re wondering where that is from, why is it stuck in my head, why is it genius in musical form etc. That’s even before you start on the big songs.

It has been around so long that it has featured in so many made memories, that even if it isn’t the show itself, it is just attached to pieces of our lives. It will have been many peoples musical fix through lockdown, when no other production could risk it or had to capital to exist in concert form, it gave us light. That is why I think it is number one.