The Broadway musical has been through many changes since the golden era of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. In the 1940s and 1950s book musicals, such as Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music, dominated not just Broadway but the music charts.
Composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick followed, with Fiddler on the Roof becoming a Broadway classic. Stephen Sondheim, arguably Broadway's greatest and most prolific talent, delivered West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Follies and Sweeney Todd.
By the 1970s Broadway wasn't immune to civil unrest, and Joe Masteroff's classic Cabaret proved highly controversial. The decade also saw the first black Broadway shows, with A Raisin in the Sun, The Wiz, an all-black version of The Wizard of Oz, and Ain't Misbehavin', based on the life and songs of Fats Waller. Ain't Misbehavin' was the brainchild of Richard Saltby jnr and counts as the first jukebox musical.
The 1980s brought the era of Brit hitsto Broadway, including The Phantom of the Opera and Cats, while Boublil and Schönberg pioneered the epic musicals of Les Misérables and Miss Saigon.
By the mid-1990s the corporate musicalhad arrived, in tandem with Disney's annexation of Broadway. Corporate musicals such as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast were the new blockbusters. The bombast and hollow core of such musicals inspired satirical shows such as Spamalot and Forbidden Broadway, while Dirty Rotten Scoundrels invited audiences to laugh at the colour-by-numbers musicals that have become standard fare on Broadway.
Bereft of ideas and with the original book musical fast going out of fashion, Broadway found itself increasingly turning to film adaptations and biography or jukebox musicals. The jukebox musicalproliferated, with the lives of musical icons providing an endless supply of material for shows that were little more than thumbnail biographies strung together with greatest hits. A few became successes, most notably Mamma Mia, but most closed after dismal reviews and box-office receipts.
Meanwhile, Broadway producers, who have long sought other ways to recoup their investment in shows, are mining a rich new seam in Las Vegas, where casino owners have started looking for partners in the entertainment industry. Casino executives are happy to fund a generous share of the production costs of a major Broadway hit. The owners of the Venetian Hotel invested $40 million (€29.8 million) in a replica of New York's Paris Theatre to stage The Phantom of the Opera. They even forked out for a $5 million (€3.7 million) chandelier, as well as kicking in for marketing costs. For casino owners, live entertainment is casino bait. For Broadway producers, Vegas provides a second, and frequently more lucrative, bite at the cherry.