Hang Around the World: Musicals Style 9 : Vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville attracts spectators with different forms: revues, operettas (comic opera), and American musical theater.

The Ziegfeld Follies

(aka Ziggy's Follies, 1907-1931)

A series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934 and 1936. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
- Film: 1946

Follies

- Book: James Goldman
- Music & lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
- Première: 1971 at Broadway
The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies", a musical revue (based on the Ziegfeld Follies), that played in that theatre between the World Wars. It focuses on two couples, Buddy and Sally Durant Plummer and Benjamin and Phyllis Rogers Stone, who are attending the reunion.

Cabaret

Set in 1931 Berlin as the Nazis are rising to power, it focuses on the nightlife at the seedy Kit Kat Klub, and revolves around an American writer and his relationship with an English cabaret performe.
- Basis: I Am a Camera (1951 play) by John Van Druten;
Goodbye to Berlin (1939 novel) by Christopher Isherwood
- Book: Joe Masteroff
- Music: John Kander
- Lyrics: Fred Ebb
- Première: 1966 at Broadway
- Film: 1972, starring Lisa Minnelli (daughter of Judy Garland)

Chicago

- Basis: Chicago, 1926 play by Maurine Dallas Watkins
- Book: Fred Ebb, Bob Fosse
- Music: John Kander
- Lyrics: Fred Ebb
- Première: 1975 at 46th Street Theater (until 1977, 936 performances)
- Film: 2002
Set in Chicago in the jazz age, the American musical is about actual criminals and the crimes on which she reported. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justiceand the concept of the "celebrity criminal".