As a Theatre major, I often am asked with my favorite musicals and plays are. I was just thinking that maybe some of us would like to discuss some of our favorites and try to form lists, especially since this particular can be slow, even close to the Tony award show.

MUSICALS:
#1-The Fantasticks
#2-Little Shop of Horrors
#3-Company
#4-Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
#5-A Chorus Line
#6-The Sound of Music
#7-The Producers
#8-A Little Night Music
#9-Parade
#10-South Pacific
#11-Fiddler on the Roof
#12-Gypsy
#13-How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
#14-Next to Normal
#15-Cabaret
#16-Chicago
#17-Evita
#18-Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party
#19-Ragtime
#20-Sunday in the Park with George
#21-The Baker's Wife
#22-Camelot
#23-Aspects of Love
#24-La Cage Aux Folles
#25-Anything Goes

PLAYS:
#1-Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
#2-Noises Off
#3-Angels in America (both parts together)
#4-Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
#5-Brighton Beach Memoirs
#6-Long Day's Journey Into Night
#7-The Glass Menagerie
#8-A Doll's House
#9-A Streetcar Named Desire
#10-A Zoo Story

I am never completely satisfied with my lists (especially my musical one), but these are mine as of now.

What are yours?

First does not always mean best, but in terms of musicals it does. SHOW BOAT (1927), the first book musical, is still decisively the best, in my opinion. Other great ones with a big impact: Cabaret, Company, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Gypsy, Carousel, Kiss Me Kate, Les Miserables.

Plays are much more difficult. I think the best play ever written is KING LEAR (maybe the best thing every written, period) but most would probably pick Hamlet. Long Day's Journey Into Night is the best American play ever written, Death of a Salesman and Streetcar Named Desire running close seconds. Everything written by Chekov plus A Doll's House, Waiting for Godot, and Virginia Woolf are undeniable greats as well.