Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949)

Anita Loos’ unforgettable 1920s gold digger Lorelei Lee conquered Broadway in this classic but seldom-seen musical comedy hit. Lorelei and her friend Dorothy Shaw liven up a trip to Paris on the Ile de France with Jule Styne/Leo Robin standards like “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” “Bye Bye, Baby,” “A Little Girl from Little Rock,” “Just a Kiss Apart,” and “I Love What I’m Doin’.”

The Cabaret Girl (1922)

The great Princess Theatre team of Jerome Kern and P.G. Wodehouse took London’s West End by storm with this dizzy farce. The story is a typically merry Wodehouse concoction about the antics of a late-night cabaret troupe that must impersonate nobility in an effort to win a society boyfriend for a down-on-her-luck singer.

Can-Can (1953)

CAN-CAN made Broadway history twice-over. It introduced Gwen Verdon to the New York stage and featured a dazzling Cole Porter score that placed no less than six songs in the Top Ten! Porter’s songs highlight a wry comedy about the battle between a serious-minded judge and a free-spirited Montmartre nightclub owner during La Belle Epoque – the era when the scandalous can-can dance turned Paris into “Gay Paree!” The immortal Porter score includes “I Love Paris,” “C’est Magnifique,” “It’s All Right With Me,” “Allez Vous-En,” “Live and Let Live,” “I Am in Love,” and the rousing title song.

Hooray for What! (1937)

An NEA sponsored restoration! A truly “lost” gem, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s HOORAY FOR WHAT! is a wildly comic send-up of fascism, jingoism and war profiteering. The plot follows a mild-mannered scientist who has accidentally invented a terrible weapon capable of conquering the world. When a glitch reverses the effect so it promotes peace and brotherhood instead, the super-powers declare it worthless. The Arlen/Harburg score features traditional love ballads like “I’ve Gone Romantic on You,” as well as the bluesy “Moanin’ in the Mornin’,” the scathingly mocking “Down With Love,” and “God’s Country,” a gentle chiding of American pop culture.

Once Upon a Mattress (1959)

Comedian Lea DeLaria brings her own musical comedy panache to Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer's classic Broadway retelling of the Princess and the Pea. DeLaria plays Carol Burnett’s original role of Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, newly arrived in a distant kingdom to see if she can become the Prince’s bride by passing a test set by the wicked Queen (is there any other kind?). The songs include “Shy,” “Happily Ever After,” “Many Moons Ago,” “In a Little While,” “Normandy,” and “Yesterday I Loved You.”

Tenderloin (1960)

Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick’s hilariously twisted encore to their Pulitzer Prize-winning FIORELLO! follows Rev. Brock’s crusade to clean up turn-of-the-century Manhattan’s notorious Tenderloin district. The good doctor finds that many New Yorkers prefer their bawdy hotspot of sin and vice to his less colorful promise of salvation. The now-classic score includes “Artificial Flowers,” “Dear Friend,” “The Picture of Happiness,” “Good Clean Fun,” and “My Miss Mary.”

The Boys from Syracuse (1938)

The first musical ever adapted from Shakespeare remains the most madcap musical farce ever to animate the stage! Two sets of twins are at the center of a wild tale of mistaken identities, perplexed wives, disgruntled courtesans, and outraged constables. The tangled web is eventually unraveled, and along the way some of Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart’s most ravishing songs are sung: “Falling in Love With Love,” “This Can’t Be Love,” “Sing For Your Supper,” “You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea,” “Dear Old Syracuse,” and others.