General Flashcards
When asked if it was safe to assume Pozzo was the title character all along, what author of the 1953 self-proclaimed tragicomedy in question responded absurdly: “No. It is just implied in the text, but it’s not true?”
Samuel Beckett (Waiting For Godot)
A reconditioned 1985 Broadway revival of what 1965 Neil Simon play featured Sally Struthers and Rita Moreno in the play’s title roles?
The Odd Couple
What show won the 1997 Tony for Best Musical, the same year a movie of the same title went on to win many awards as well?
Titanic
In “La Donna Del Lago,” King James V of this country is in love with “The Lady of the Lake.”
Scotland
The two longest running musicals in the history of the West End are both principally set in what city?
The two musicals are Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera, both of which are (mostly) set in Paris.
The only Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera to premiere officially in New York (or any city other than London) did so in 1879 and, in 1981, became the first with an extended, open-ended commercial Broadway run, with Kevin Kline, Rex Smith, and Linda Ronstadt in starring roles. Name that show.
Pirates of Penzance
He’s the playwright who wrote, “I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!”
Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman)
This character says “I want to be a lady in a flower shop stead of sellin at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.”
Eliza Doolittle (Pygmalion / My Fair Lady)
Playwright Greg Kotis conceived the idea for what successful Broadway musical during a 1995 visit to Paris, when he found himself unable to afford the price of admission to a public toilet?
Urinetown: The Musical
Who replaced Vincent Canby in 1996 as chief theater critic of The New York Times, a role he retains to this day (now as co-chief with Jesse Green)?
Ben Brantley
This avant-garde theatrical revue, created by Kenneth Tynan, sparked controversy upon its debut in 1969 due to extended scenes of nudity. Its title is a play on the English translation on the French phrase “What an ass you have!”
Oh! Calcutta!
International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First! are the three one-act plays in a bill that goes by what name? The first major success for playwright Harvey Fierstein, the Tony Award-winning collection opened on Broadway in 1982.
Torch Song Trilogy
The 2008 Broadway production of A Tale of Two Cities closed after 60 performances, keeping what other musical as, by far, the most successful musical theatre adaptation of a work by Charles Dickens?
Oliver!
The musicals Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Chess, The Lion King, and Aida are among the works of what lyricist?
Tim Rice
Lola helps save a failing shoe factory in this high-heeled 2013 Tony winner for Best Musical.
Kinky Boots
What comedic play, though of no particular enduring artistic merit, is by far the most famous work of playwright Tom Taylor, due to a singular suspended performance seven years after its debut?
Our American Cousin (during which Abraham Lincoln was shot)
Name the Broadway lyricist who teamed up with composer John Kander on Flora the Red Menace, Cabaret, Zorba, and Chicago, among others.
Fred Ebb
The performance of what actress did Walter Kerr, writing for the New York Herald Tribune in a 1959 Broadway review, describe as a “brassy, brazen witch on a mortgaged broomstick, a steamroller with cleats, the very mastodon of all stage mothers”?
Ethel Merman
This actress who created the role of Anita in Broadway’s “West Side Story” was born Dolores Conchita Figuero del Rivero.
Rita Moreno
“The King and I” is set in the 1860s in this country.
Thailand (Siam)
Orson Welles & John Houseman formed this New York City theatre in 1937.
Mercury Theatre
This Czech author’s satirical plays like “Protest” used absurdist themes to denounce Communist rule.
Vaclav Havel
The real-life on-stage and off-stage arguments of married actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, particularly during a 1935 performance of Taming of the Shrew, inspired what Cole Porter musical, which won the first Tony Award for Best Musical in 1949?
Kiss Me, Kate
Runyonland is the opening number to this show based on the stories of Damon Runyon.
Guys and Dolls
The Follies of 1907 was the first in a long-lived series of flamboyant revues by what American producer, who added his name to the series in 1911 and presented it annually through 1927 (and intermittently thereafter)?
Florenz Ziegfield Jr.
What is the common title of the person in a theatrical production who is responsible for the overall execution of the production, organizing schedules, running production meetings, keeping track of blocking, and calling sound and lighting cues during the performance (among many other duties)?
(Production) Stage Manager
As the song says, “they’ll pass you by” and this musical about former high school pals opened and closed May 6, 2008.
Glory Days
The German play “Frühlings Erwachen” became this alt-rock musical in 2006.
Spring Awakening
“Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News,” “Believe in Yourself,” “Everybody Rejoice” (“A Brand New Day”), and “Slide Some Oil to Me” are songs from what musical that debuted on Broadway in January 1975?
The Wiz
Five people including Marvin Hamlisch, shared the 1976 Drama award for this musical.
A Chorus Line
What character, likely opera’s most famous valet, was on the staff of philandering 18th-century Spanish Count Almaviva, as was his beloved wife Susanna (as the Countess’s maid)?
Figaro
A critical and popular hit play from 1988 by Wendy Wasserstein, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, chronicles the life of the title character and the world around her. What is that character’s first name?
Heidi
It’s the word and the musical set at Rydell High in the 1950s.
Grease
Completes the title of the dance musical “Bring in ‘da Noise.”
Bring In Da Funk
The songs “Luck Be a Lady” and “A Bushel and a Peck” are featured in this musical.
Guys And Dolls
Based on a book and film, its opening song is “The Candy Man.”
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Characters in this Sondheim musical include a witch, a baker and Little Red Riding Hood.
Into The Woods
Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane won Tony Awards in 2018 for their performances in what play, in roles originated on Broadway in 1993 by Stephen Spinella and Ron Leibman?
Angels In America
The musical Cats centers around a tribe of felines called what?
Jellicles
This DC-born and MacArthur Fellow winning playright’s works include An Octoroon, Gloria and Everybody.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
In modern Broadway history, a few musicals have had titles that include a slash (/): 1980’s A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine, 1988’s Romance/Romance, 2014’s If/Then, and what fourth, a 1995 musical based on a 1982 film of the same name (and with the same director and lead actress)?
Victor/Victoria
Winner of six Tonys in 2017, it’s the first Broadway musical to focus on the subject of teens and social media.
Dear Evan Hansen
In 2013, at 88 years old, this actress won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, in a revival of Horton Foote’s A Trip to Bountiful. Since then, she has earned a 2015 Kennedy Center Honor, 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in November 2018, she will be the first African-American woman to receive an Honorary Academy Award.
Cicely Tyson
Despite its sixteen nominations in 2016, Hamilton was unable to break the Tony Award record of what showbiz musical, which won twelve Tonys in 2001?
The Producers
Premiering in 2005, its story is divided into spring, summer, fall and winter, each narrated by one of the four male leads.
Jersey Boys
What Broadway show tied a Tony Awards record in 2018 by losing all 12 categories in which it was nominated?
Mean Girls
The title of this musical that opened in 1956 came from the last line of a nursery rhyme about a structure that spanned the Thames.
My Fair Lady
What Broadway hit has raised $325,000 by auctioning off its cast–that is, the cast worn every night by its title character on his left arm?
Evan Hansen, of Dear Evan Hansen fame, heads the cast and wears the cast.
Before his death in 2018 at age 91, he received 4 Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for 4 Oscars.
Neil Simon
What 2002 Broadway musical is based on a film from 1988 and centers around a fictional local teenage dance show in Baltimore from 1962?
Hairspray
“Cum On Feel the Noize”, “Nothin’ But a Good Time”, and “The Final Countdown” are songs from what jukebox musical, a tribute to hair metal of the 1980s that is itself named after a 1983 song by Def Leppard?
Rock of Ages
The latitude & longitude given by the narrator of this 1938 play would set it in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
Our Town
The plays Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues played on Broadway, in 1983 and 1985 respectively, in a theatre named after whom (appropriately)?
Neil Simon
In June 2015, a one-night-only concert of what musical, based on the life of Marilyn Monroe (and unrelated to Fox News) and taken from the show-within-a-show on the canceled TV series Smash, was performed in the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway?
Bombshell
Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom, whose title character is a barker who participates in a robbery gone wrong, forms the basis for what 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical?
Carousel
What musical, which debuted at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in October 2008 with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, is the only Broadway musical with a cast composed entirely of teenagers—a cast that included Ariana Grande, who at the time was actually age fifteen?
13
The title of Jean Anouilh’s 1953 play L’Alouette (“The Lark”) refers to what historical person, who is also the subject of a 1924 George Bernard Shaw play inspired by the subject’s recent (and long overdue) canonization?
Joan of Arc
Of the ten longest-running musicals in Broadway history, two have titles that reference a city. One is the revival of Chicago that opened in 1996. What is the other city, in the name of a revival that ran from 1976 to 1989?
Calcutta
Opening in February 2000, a revival of what Sam Shepard play saw brothers Austin and Lee portrayed by actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly, where they would switch parts every so often during the play’s run?
True West
In theater, what four-letter word—an abbreviated form of a longer word—is used for the period, prior to dress rehearsals and the opening, when a show is rehearsed for the first time in the venue with lighting, scenery, sound, etc.?
Tech
Born with the name Jay Greenspan, what actor picked up a Tony win for Best Leading Actor in a Musical in 1989 for the musical “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway”, the same year that he’d begin playing his best-known role on a certain TV sitcom?
Jason Alexander
“A jump to the left”, “a step to the right”, “bring your knees in tight”, and “pelvic thrust” are some of the instructions in what anthemic dance from a 1973 rock musical (note, name the dance)?
The Time Warp
The stage play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison was adapted for the screen to become what film?
Casablanca
In 2000 and again in 2017, the Tony Award for Best Play was won by a play whose title is the name of a national capital city. Name either of these cities, which are just over one hour apart by plane.
Copenhagen, Oslo
