Gay Musicals
Jul. 20th, 2020 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cinaed Recently I have fallen down a research rabbit hole of gay musical history, mostly due to this website. It's both heartening and disheartening to listen to songs from the 1970s and 1980s and see how far we've come and yet how far we have to go. But it's also made me desperately want to watch quite a few of them. Most of the summaries come directly from the aforementioned website.
My favorites, in somewhat chronological order:
Boy Meets Boy: A New Musical Comedy of the 1930s (1978)
By Bill Solly and David Ward
A revue of songs by Weinberg for his church, with songs about gay society, political struggle, and love. Amazon has a few of the songs available to listen to, and I really loved:
By Janet Hood and Bill Russell
A song cycle about AIDS. The monologues are from the perspective of people who died from AIDS, the songs from the perspective of grieving family members and friends. If you've heard any song from this one, it's probably "My Brother Lived in San Francisco."
Ballad of Mikey (1994)
By Mark Savage
A musical about an activist lawyer and his struggles to feel useful and like he's actually accomplishing anything in his years as a gay rights activist, who's worried about burnout and the long struggle, and also just not feeling like he fits in with gay culture in a lot of ways.
The Harvey Milk Show (1996)
By Dan Pruitt and Patrick Hutchison
A musical about the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, who was assassinated at the age of forty-eight. It just sounds very interesting!
The Wild Party (2000)
By Alix Korey
Set during the Roaring Twenties, the entire musical happens in one wild evening in a Manhattan apartment. Please, please, give "An Old-Fashioned Love Story," a raunchy lesbian song, a listen. It's amazing.
I need a good-natured, old-fashioned / Lesbian love story / The kind of tale my mama used to tell. / Where the girls were so sweet / And the music would swell / And in the end the queen would send the men off to hell.
War Bonds (2002)
By Barbara Kahn and Jay Kerr
This musical was inspired by the long-neglected stories of women in the military during World War II, especially women pilots and army recruits, and the problems faced by lesbians among them. It is a love story that shows how two women, scarred by their wartime experiences, find a new life with each other after the war.
Pyrates (2003)
By Barbara Kahn and Jay Kerr
The true story of the pirates of the Caribbean, in the tradition of Three-Penny Opera and Oliver! set in 1720 Jamaica. Featuring real-life lesbian pirates Anne Bonney and Mary Read, pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham and gay hairdresser Pierre Devlin. Joining the pirates on their last voyage are an escaped slave, a Sephardic Jewish refugee from the Inquisition in Europe, and assorted brigands and rogues.
Ain't We Got Fun (2005)
By Mike McFadden
This offbeat original musical extravaganza takes place in a Chicago Prohibition Era Speakeasy, and focus on the timeless theme of two boys in love. They dance, sing and kiss - while fighting all the obstacles that keep them apart and that includes a stock market crash, a gaggle of gangsters, bootleg alcohol and the closet.
Upstairs (2013)
By Wayne Self
A musical tragedy about the 1973 arson fire at the Up Stairs Lounge in New Orleans, Louisiana that killed 32 people, nearly all of them gay men. I recently read a book on the tragedy and how it's been mostly forgotten though it was the most deadly crime against LGBTQ people until the Pulse shooting in 2016.
Fun Home (2015)
By Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron
Okay, I will admit that I've seen this twice on Broadway and once when it came to my city, but it's one of my favorite musicals of all time. Adapted by a graphic novel memoir by Alison Bechdel about her childhood and growing up gay in a dysfunctional household, it has some beautiful songs.
Prom (2018)
By Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin
The musical follows four long-ago famous Broadway actors as they travel to the fictional conservative town of Edgewater, Indiana, after reading about a lesbian student who was not allowed to bring her girlfriend to high school prom. They want to help, but mostly they want to soak up the good press and be relevant again.
A Strange Loop (2019)
By Michael L. Jackson
Usher is a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical.
My favorites, in somewhat chronological order:
Boy Meets Boy: A New Musical Comedy of the 1930s (1978)
By Bill Solly and David Ward
The year is 1936, the place is prim-and-proper London, yet in the society wedding of the year - breathlessly covered by all the newspapers - the happy couple consists of two men. The fact that no one finds this in any way unusual leaves the musical free to deal, not with angst and depression, but with fast-moving intrigue, high spirits and the universal problems that might beset any two people who fall in love.
When handsome foreign correspondent Casey O'Brien misses out on the story of the decade - the Abdication - he focuses instead on the nuptials of Boston millionaire Clarence Cutler, whose intended is a British aristocrat, the Honourable Guy Rose. Casey's rival newsmen fool him into thinking the mousy Guy is a famous beauty. Then when the latter fails to turn up at the church, Casey turns the jilting into a sensational headline, and has to come up with a photograph to back up his story.
Ten Percent Revue (1987)
By Tom Wilson Weinberg
Ten Percent Revue (1987)
By Tom Wilson Weinberg
A revue of songs by Weinberg for his church, with songs about gay society, political struggle, and love. Amazon has a few of the songs available to listen to, and I really loved:
- "Marriage Song," about while they might not be allowed to get legally married, they're still married in their hearts
- "And the Supremes," a song about Bowers v. Hardwick, a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy
- "Walk to Washington," a song about protesting in DC for LGBTQA rights. We're gonna paint the White House lavender, make the Oval Office quake, we're gonna walk to Washington.
- "Flaunting It," a protest song about being told not to flaunt it and make it obvious that you're gay through your personality, political activism, clothing, etc.
By Janet Hood and Bill Russell
A song cycle about AIDS. The monologues are from the perspective of people who died from AIDS, the songs from the perspective of grieving family members and friends. If you've heard any song from this one, it's probably "My Brother Lived in San Francisco."
Ballad of Mikey (1994)
By Mark Savage
A musical about an activist lawyer and his struggles to feel useful and like he's actually accomplishing anything in his years as a gay rights activist, who's worried about burnout and the long struggle, and also just not feeling like he fits in with gay culture in a lot of ways.
The Harvey Milk Show (1996)
By Dan Pruitt and Patrick Hutchison
A musical about the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, who was assassinated at the age of forty-eight. It just sounds very interesting!
The Wild Party (2000)
By Alix Korey
Set during the Roaring Twenties, the entire musical happens in one wild evening in a Manhattan apartment. Please, please, give "An Old-Fashioned Love Story," a raunchy lesbian song, a listen. It's amazing.
I need a good-natured, old-fashioned / Lesbian love story / The kind of tale my mama used to tell. / Where the girls were so sweet / And the music would swell / And in the end the queen would send the men off to hell.
War Bonds (2002)
By Barbara Kahn and Jay Kerr
This musical was inspired by the long-neglected stories of women in the military during World War II, especially women pilots and army recruits, and the problems faced by lesbians among them. It is a love story that shows how two women, scarred by their wartime experiences, find a new life with each other after the war.
Pyrates (2003)
By Barbara Kahn and Jay Kerr
The true story of the pirates of the Caribbean, in the tradition of Three-Penny Opera and Oliver! set in 1720 Jamaica. Featuring real-life lesbian pirates Anne Bonney and Mary Read, pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham and gay hairdresser Pierre Devlin. Joining the pirates on their last voyage are an escaped slave, a Sephardic Jewish refugee from the Inquisition in Europe, and assorted brigands and rogues.
Ain't We Got Fun (2005)
By Mike McFadden
This offbeat original musical extravaganza takes place in a Chicago Prohibition Era Speakeasy, and focus on the timeless theme of two boys in love. They dance, sing and kiss - while fighting all the obstacles that keep them apart and that includes a stock market crash, a gaggle of gangsters, bootleg alcohol and the closet.
Upstairs (2013)
By Wayne Self
A musical tragedy about the 1973 arson fire at the Up Stairs Lounge in New Orleans, Louisiana that killed 32 people, nearly all of them gay men. I recently read a book on the tragedy and how it's been mostly forgotten though it was the most deadly crime against LGBTQ people until the Pulse shooting in 2016.
Fun Home (2015)
By Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron
Okay, I will admit that I've seen this twice on Broadway and once when it came to my city, but it's one of my favorite musicals of all time. Adapted by a graphic novel memoir by Alison Bechdel about her childhood and growing up gay in a dysfunctional household, it has some beautiful songs.
Prom (2018)
By Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin
The musical follows four long-ago famous Broadway actors as they travel to the fictional conservative town of Edgewater, Indiana, after reading about a lesbian student who was not allowed to bring her girlfriend to high school prom. They want to help, but mostly they want to soak up the good press and be relevant again.
A Strange Loop (2019)
By Michael L. Jackson
Usher is a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical.
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