The difficulty for a modern star in Gypsy today is the competition with a ghost-Ethel Merman's, to be exact. It's no longer a case of making the role Mama Rose credible in all her volcano-force anomalies-of making her seem crazy yet funny, pitiful, and savage, sinner, and sinned against. She is downright interesting in her own right and in Arthur Laurent's writing, only a sub-par actress would fail to capitalize on that interest.

In his book Harold Prince and the American Musical Theater, Foster Hirsch recalls a woman who left the opening-night performance of Cabaret in Wilmington, Delaware, exclaiming: It is more than a musical The exclamation suggests that the Broadway show had gone beyond European ethnicity and history on its way to success. And there is truth behind the suggestion. Even on the mere surface, Cabaret is not just a musical. The Berlin of the Third Reich, diluted for Broadway audiences, provides a symbolic edge that tips the show into a realm of fascinating metaphor.

West Side Story was a landmark musical. When it premiered on Broadway in 1957, it showed how dancing, singing, acting, and design could merge into a single means of expression, a seamless unity. Whether it was completely new vision as a concept musical, or the pinnacle of an already established tradition, it marked the most impressive body of choreography in a single show and was acclaimed as Leonard Bernstein's strongest work for the Broadway stage.