Cocktail Party Fact: The book was originally by the famous comic writers P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, involving a shipwreck. But when the show was in rehearsals, there was a real shipwreck that claimed many lives. So since Wodehouse and Bolton were out of the country, the producers asked the show’s [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Considering how perfect the score is, it’s hard to believe that Irving Berlin was not the original composer chosen. He only got the job after Jerome Kern died. Berlin was so unsure that he insisted on writing two audition songs before accepting the assignment. The show was also responsible [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: In the original production of Annie, the girl cast in the title role, Kristin Viegard, was fired after only one week of the pre-Broadway run at the Goodspeed Opera House, and Andrea McArdle, one of the other orphans, took over the lead. McArdle opened the show in Washington, D.C. [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Sondheim set out to write an entire score in triple time (not an entire score of waltzes, which is how many people describe it – there’s a difference), and the result was A Little Night Music. Every song is written in some multiple of three, in 3/4, 3/8, 12/8. [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Famously, Forum was a flop out of town. The opening number, a bouncy charming tune called “Love Is In The Air,” didn’t set up the frantic and low comedy of the evening to follow. Although Jack Cole is credited as choreographer, Jerome Robbins came to Washington to help doctor [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: A Chorus Line broke all the rules. It had no plot, no intermission, no set, and no overture, and yet it ran from April 1975 until April 1990, breaking every record and winning every major award, including the Pulitzer Prize and nine Tony Awards.
Here’s The Plot: A Chorus Line [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This is one of the few musicals with a full cast of 26 men and only two women! Although Nine has only one man and a full cast of women, he is the star the others revolve around. A different principle is at work in 1776. Here the women [...]

Career Highlights: The Threepenny Opera, Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, Street Scene, Love Life, Lost in the Stars
Career Totals: 9 Broadway musicals, plus many productions in Germany with Bertolt Brecht.
Personal Data: Born in Dessau, Germany on March 2, 1900. He worked with director and playwright Bertolt Brecht in Germany [...]

Active Years: 1939 –
Position: Dancer, choreographer, director, actor, singer.
Career Highlights: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Grand Hotel, The Will Rogers Follies, My One and Only, Nine, A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine.
Career Totals: 12 major musicals, plus 1 non-musical play.
Personal Data: Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, on February 28, 1939, [...]

Active Years: 1930 -
Position: American composer and lyricist from New York City.
Career Highlights: West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Into the Woods (1987).
Career Totals: Over 40 pieces for the theater and dozens of film and [...]