These ten titles are newly available to watch for free in person at the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT), in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, which since 1970 has recorded some five thousand live theatrical productions, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theater. Most of the new recordings of these shows are listed as officially “restricted to qualified researchers” or “permission required,” but the library’s Alex Teplitzky says: “Each one is available for anyone to watch, and all you need is a library card!”
None are still running on Broadway or Off-Broadway, and not all were acclaimed productions (Most were!) All are worth watching.
Each title, listed alphabetically, is linked to the page in the library’s research catalogue for the show (which explains, among much else, how to get permission to watch them at the library.) I’ve added a description of the production excerpted from my review
(from my review): There are bright shining moments aplenty in the latest Broadway revival of “Camelot,” the 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical about the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These are mostly found in the tuneful score, which is played by a sumptuous 30-piece orchestra (with three trumpets — enough for a fanfare!) and sung by a talented cast led by three appealing young stars, who are the main draw after the score: Andrew Burnap (Tony winner for The Inheritance) as King Arthur; Phillipa Soo (who made a splash in Hamilton and has proven herself one of New York theater’s go-to leading ladies in the decade since) as Guenevere, Arthur’s at first reluctant Queen; and Jordan Donica (who sang the swoon-worthy “On The Street Where You Live” in the last revival of “My Fair Lady”) as Lancelot du Lac, a knight who reveres Arthur but falls in love with Guenevere, singing the swoon-worthy “If Ever I Should Leave You” to her.
Videotaped at the Vivian Beaumont, July 21, 2023.
(from my review) Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara return to Broadway for the first time together since 2002 to portray a couple who fall in love with alcohol as much as with one another in this musical adaptation of a dark story that was first a television drama in the 1950s, then a movie. They last performed together on Broadway in a musical adaptation of another dark movie set in the 1950s, “Sweet Smell of Success.” They were relative newcomers then. It’s thrilling to see them back together for his sixteenth and her thirteenth role on Broadway. The two stars carry “Days of Wine and Roses,” their exquisite voices bringing out the brilliance of Adam Guettel’s jazz-inflected, often operatic score, and investing the characters’ rocky emotional journeys with a credibility that few other performers could match. They justify bringing to Broadway an adaptation of a story that feels dated.
Videotaped at Studio 54 on March 27, 2024
(from my review) Fat Ham” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the play is inspired by “Hamlet,” loosely adopting the plot and even using some verbatim soliloquys from Shakespeare’s tragedy. But I could forget about the expectations that were raised (and dashed) by these prestige signifiers the first time around [Off Broadway], and now on Broadway relish the silly, sexy and surreal moments that director Saheem Ali make pop in James Ijames’s raunchy, freewheeling comedy. Even the serious concerns, peeking out from beneath the playfulness, have more impact.
Videotaped at the American Airlines Theatre, June 27, 2023.
(from my review) Funny Girl is supposed to be a musical about Fanny Brice, the singing comedienne who was a star of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway for some twenty-five years and then starred in a radio series that she created as the beloved brat Baby Snooks. But let’s face it: “Funny Girl” has always really been about Barbra Streisand…
(Note: My review is of the production before Lea Michele took over the starring role — which makes it worth very little, since Michele changed the show around, and is the one presented on the videotape at TOFT)
Videotaped at the August Wilson Theatre, August 25, 2023.
(from my review) Some will see “Here Lies Love” first and foremost as the story of the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines. …Some will treat it primarily as the return to Broadway of 71-year-old eclectic, inventive musical talent David Byrne (Talking Heads frontman and star of “American Utopia”) thirteen years after “Here Lies Love” began as a concept album in collaboration with Fatboy Slim, and a decade after it was turned into a pop opera Off-Broadway….Or one can welcome “Here Lies Love,” as I do, as the closest Broadway will probably ever get to immersive theater, a dozen years after that genre first ignited in New York
Videotaped at the Broadway Theatre November 16, 2023.
(from my review) Stephen Sondheim’s first new musical in two decades, produced two years after his death,..is a world-premiere production at The Shed directed by the much-esteemed Joe Mantello and performed by eleven of New York’s most exciting stage actors, with a book by experienced playwright David Ives inspired by two of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s most acclaimed surrealist films — “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel” — and a score by Sondheim of under a dozen songs marked by his characteristically clever lyrics.
Recorded at The Shed December 14, 2023.
(from my review)
“How To Dance in Ohio” is a musical adaptation of a 2015 documentary film of the same name about a group of autistic young adults at a counseling center in Columbus, Ohio, who, as part of their social skills therapy group, spend months preparing for a formal prom-like dance. The production, which opens tonight at Broadway’s Belasco Theater, has some tuneful melodies, some touching moments and, above all, an exhilarated and exhilarating cast, featuring seven performers who are themselves autistic young adults making their Broadway debuts portraying the autistic characters…
Videotaped at the Belasco Theatre, New York, N.Y., February 8, 2024.
(from my review) New York, New York” the musical is thrilling in ways that go beyond just “New York, New York” the song, which was first sung by Liza Minnelli in the 1977 movie of the same name… This brand new but vintage-feeling musical presents an eclectic and electric score — a dozen of the more than thirty songs are from Kander and Ebb, the songwriting duo that created “Chicago” and “Cabaret,” but most are newly composed by 96-year-old John Kander, who’s outlived his writing partner by two decades. (He has a new lyricist, at least for several numbers in this show: Lin-Manuel Miranda.)…Beowulf Boritt’s spectacular sets, enhanced by a first-rate design team, add up to a three-dimensional travelogue of New York City, from Times Square, Central Park and Grand Central Terminal to the neighborhood stoop and fire escapes full of kibitzers
Videotaped at the St. James Theatre, New York, N.Y., July 29, 2023.
(from my review) The 1998 Broadway musical is inspired by the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish manager of a pencil factory in Atlanta, Georgia who was lynched in 1915. Twenty-five years ago, the musical, which was directed and co-conceived by the legendary Harold Prince, won Tony Awards for both its composer Jason Robert Brown and its librettist Alfred Uhry, but was critically dismissed as “more podium-thumping screed than compelling story,” and ran for just 85 regular performances. Now starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, the revival has been widely heralded as riveting and rapturous.
Videotaped at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, July 26, 2023.
(from my review) “Shucked” is corny. Corn is what the corn-growing townsfolk of Cob County sing about from the opening number of this new country-flavored Broadway musical; it’s the subject of the “farm to fable” plot, involving a con man masquerading as a “corn doctor.” Above all, many of its jokes are corny…What might come as a surprise in “Shucked” is the sheer volume and variety of jokes — corny, sure, but also clever, crass, questionable and surreal: silly one-liners, crafty wordplay, groan-inducing puns, borderline dirty jokes
Videotaped at the Nederlander Theatre, September 1, 2023.
Search the research catalog for other shows on tape or film, using the filters “Title” and “Moving Image.”
