Help, I’m stuck in 1928! The Front Page, which I blogged about last week, premiered in 1928. Grand Hotel opened on Broadway in 1989, but takes place in 1928. I wonder whether anything significant will happen in 1929.

Tommy Tune won the Tony Award for best choreographer (and best director) of a musical for Grand Hotel, and it was easy to see why when the show’s big dance number rousingly filled the stage with all but one of the 20 cast members, and brought the biggest applause of the night.

The cast was good, across the board (and the boards), with a special shout out to Leryn Turlington as Flaemmchen and Jonathan Schwart as Kringelein, who nailed their juicy roles. It is a testament to either their acting, or my lack of cognitive abilities, that I’ve seen at least four of the show’s actors (including both of the above) in other plays in the last year and a half, and didn’t recognize any of them.

Grand Hotel’s original logo added the words “The Musical.” This got me to wondering when plays first started adding some such designation to their names, presumably so that no one in the audience would be confused when one of the characters started singing. (I have a friend who won’t go to see musicals because he finds it unbelievable that someone would just break into song for no reason. This same friend is an ardent follower of The Avengers. Nothing unbelievable there.)

The oldest Tony-nominated musical I could find with “The Musical” officially listed in its name (not just on the logo) was Cyrano: The Musical, in 1994. In 2018 we have SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. I’m eagerly anticipating the opening of Musical: The Musical; Drama: The Drama; and, eventually, Drama: The Broadway Musical.