LogFAQs > #937839501

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm not hugely into showtunes, per se (unlike my gay cousin), but I love Phantom, Les Mis, and Fiddler on the Roof. And I'm kind of okay with Aspects of Love.

Phantom got me into showtunes twice, but Hamilton is responsible for my most recent and longest kick. After first hearing "The Schuyler Sisters" on NPR, I spent several hours trying to track down what musical it belonged to and -- in the process -- kept passing by Hamilton as an option because I assumed it couldn't have been that (probably because I had heard LMM's early rap at the White House and thought him incapable of anything this good)

And it's worth noting that my first two showtune kicks ended because few things are anywhere near as good as Phantom (including the other Broadway plays I saw roughly within that time-frame). And while few things are as good as Phantom and Hamilton, this time around I could appreciate some of the other stuff I started listening to afterward, like Wicked, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Producers (which I hadn't liked the first time I saw the film -- although part of that is my dislike for Matthew Broderick who feels out of place in everything -- but enjoyed the cast recording). etc, which prolonged my interest.

Phantom had something of a natural appeal given its macabre nature. Prior to seeing it on Broadway (twice), I first saw a local production which was the first time I enjoyed a play. Then of course Hamilton had something of a natural appeal for telling a story solely through the soundtrack and ostentatiously being historical in nature (even if LMM took tremendous liberties with the facts and painted the scoundrel Hamilton almost as a saint)

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.