Musical Theatre Mondays

Broadway and Christmas make an excellent team. This week, I set out to gather Christmas songs from Broadway shows and was pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of my favorite Christmas songs originated in a musical - "We Need a Little Christmas," "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas." So I made a little playlist to get you in the spirit. I like to think of Christmas music as a gateway drug into musical theatre - it's a great time to share songs with those non-musical loving people in your life. But, if you do nothing else with this list - at least do this for me: You must listen to Judy Garland sing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." It's beautiful and those low notes with her voice? That'll get you in the Christmas spirit any day of the year.

White Christmas is the show that first had me hooked on musicals. It has been a holiday tradition with my family since I was tiny and something I can always count on my whole family sitting down and enjoying together on Christmas Day. That's not to say that I don't indulge on the music the rest of the year because I totally do. That's one of the things I like best about this show is that because it's a conglomeration of Irving Berlin songs, it's not just all about Christmas. There's a little sisterly love, some dancing, some silly songs about choreography, Mr. Bones and even songs to drive your sister named Amanda crazy! Not only are the songs and dances some of my favorites, but some of my favorite costumes ever are from this show. Aside from the white gloves that give Betty a serious case of the man hands, the whole look from "Love You Didn't Do Right By Me" is truly perfect and timeless. Natalie's Five Favorites! Favorite Charact...

When I think of Christmas musicals - I don't often think of musicals that actually happen during Christmas. What I do think of is  The Sound of Music.  I think that's because like most Americans, after Christmas presents have been opened and faces have been stuffed with food - I watch TV with my family and there is usually some station playing a 24 hour rotation of The Sound of Music . And because I love a soft focus and truly believe that Julie's voice is sent straight from heaven - I can't help but watch. It's one of the first musicals I can remember watching with both of my grandmothers - they both instilled a great love of Julie Andrews in me. I learned a lot of things in preparation for this week's post so let's listicle this a la Buzzfeed. 10 things that Natalie has learned about or finds really interesting about The Sound of Music: 1. It was the last of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals. (source: Mental Floss ) It opened on Broadway in 1...

The first time I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas (TNBC) was when I was 5 years old. It gave me awful nightmares and I never watched it again. Until last week. I didn't remember a single thing about it. It was like watching a movie for the first time except it was actually the second time and I was 24 years older (and less prone to nightmares). I'm happy to report that I finally understand most* of the hype. It makes my musical theatre nerd heart soar.  Before we watched it last week, my husband said something about thinking it was much more "musical-ly" than other Disney movies and I instantly felt myself getting protective of my childhood favorites like  Beauty and the Beast and  The Little Mermaid.  But when you look just at the movies, since TNBC doesn't have a stage version, it has more sung songs (versus just orchestration) than any other Disney movie musical (I think?). And not only are all of the songs incredibly catchy - they continue th...