My Favorite Musicals

Not necessarily in any order; this is just the order that I saw them.

• Zanna, Don’t! (4-6 years old)
• Wicked (first seen for my 9th birthday, I met Eden Espinosa and Megan Hilty afterwards in their dressing rooms)
• Les Misérables (Spring Break during 8th Grade, and 3 more times since then)
  • the one I linked to is my favorite, but the Original Broadway Album (or the Original London Album, if you want to hear the real starting cast of this production) cast is also fantastic, as is the 10th anniversary album featuring Lea Salonga. I pretend the movie musical never happened because as well as Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway can sing (as evidenced at the Tony Awards, they were NOT good in these parts. Valjean is too high for Jackman and Tom Hooper directed Hathaway to cry too much even though we know she can sing the songs awesomely).
• Hamilton (seen at The Public, on Broadway, and on Broadway with a backstage tour)
  • I am in the lucky minority of having seen this show multiple times. And not just twice, but three times! The last time was just last night. It happened because I had won a raffle giveaway for 2 tickets and a backstage tour. And then it was made even more magical by my friend (who was the original Zanna in Zanna, Don’t! in the workshops, and is an understudy for both Aaron Burr and George Washington) playing Aaron Burr!
• Matilda (Spring Break during 8th Grade, and later on Broadway)
• Finding Neverland (Summer Vacation 2014 at ART, then Summer Vacation 2015 on Broadway—the first I only liked, the latter I loved)
  • I probably love this musical because it takes a movie I love, sticks in 2 people I love from Broadway (Matthew Morrison and Laura Michelle Kelly—who I first saw as Mary Poppins on Broadway), and gives me tear-inducing (every time) music. There’s also an artist version of the main songs, and I love that as much as (if not more than) the cast album.
• Hadestown (first Broadway preview, 2 extra times on Broadway with friends)
  • Takes a Greek myth (I love Greek mythology) and stages it beautifully with awesome music—and it stars Reeve Carney (who I love from Penny Dreadful)