The Pajama Game is a Broadway musical based on the novel 7-1/2 Cents by Richard Bissell. It features a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross.

The original Broadway production ran from May 13, 1954 to November 24, 1956. It was revived between December 9, 1973 to February 3, 1974. A current production by The Roundabout Theatre Company has been running since February 23, 2006, starring Harry Connick, Jr. (Sid), with Kelli O'Hara (Babe) and Michael McKean (Hines). The original production won a Tony for best musical, and the most recent revival won a Tony Award for best revival.

Annie is a musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie. The music is by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and the book (spoken dialog) by Thomas Meehan. Famous songs from the musical include "Tomorrow" and "It's A Hard Knock Life".

Aida is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. It was first performed at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on December 24, 1871.

Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write the opera for performance in January 1871, paying him 150,000 francs, but the premiere was delayed because of the Franco-Prussian War. Contrary to popular belief, the opera was not written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, nor that of the Khedivial Opera House in the same year. (Verdi had been asked to compose an ode for the occasion, but refused on the grounds that he did not write "occasional pieces".) The opera was met with great acclaim when it finally opened and continues to be a staple of the standard operatic repertoire. There are many recordings of it, and it is one of the most popular operas. Opera America claims it to be the sixteenth most performed opera in North America.

Guys and Dolls is a successful 1950 musical. On Broadway, it enjoyed a long initial run (1200 performances), as well as three revivals (totalling another 1397 performances). On November 3, 1955 the film version debuted starring Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Jean Simmons, and Vivian Blaine (who along with Stubby Kaye starred in the original Broadway production as well as the movie).

Frank Loesser both composed the music and wrote the lyrics. The book was adapted by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows from "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown", a short story by Damon Runyon. It also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably "Pick the Winner." It has been asserted that many of the characters were based on real people in Runyon's hometown, Pueblo, Colorado.[citation needed]

(Disney has recently bought the rights to Guys and Dolls and the company plans a remake of the film starring Hugh Jackman.)

The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas. The official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York on December 31, 1879. The London premiere was on April 3, 1880, at the Opera Comique, where it ran for 363 performances, having already been playing successfully for over three months in New York.

Footloose is a 1984 movie that tells the story of Ren McCormack (played by Kevin Bacon), a teenager who was raised in Chicago and moves to a small town where the town government has banned dancing and rock music. Ren and his classmates want to have a senior prom, with music and dancing, and so must figure out a way to get around the law and Reverend Shaw Moore (played by John Lithgow) who makes it his mission in life to keep the town dance and rock-free. The movie was loosely based on events that took place in the tiny, rural farming community of Elmore City, Oklahoma. Much of the film was filmed in Lehi, Utah, with the Lehi Roller Mills featured prominently.

Dean Pitchford wrote the screenplay for Footloose, Herbert Ross directed, and Paramount Pictures co-produced and distributed the film. Footloose also starred Lori Singer as Reverend Moore's independent daughter Ariel and Dianne Wiest as the Reverend's devoted yet sympathetic wife. Footloose is one of the earliest film appearances of Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker for which she was nominated for Best Young Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Musical, Comedy, Adventure or Drama at the Sixth Annual Youth in Film Awards, and Chris Penn as Willard Hewitt, Ren's friend, who doesn't know how to dance until Ren teaches him.

Two songs from the movie, "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins and "Let's Hear It For The Boy" by Deniece Williams, both hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and received 1985 Academy Award nominations for Best Music (Original Song). The song "Footloose" also received a 1985 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Original Song – Motion Picture.

There is a soundtrack of the music from the film released and is available in compact disc format. The soundtrack includes two rock singles, the title song by Kenny Loggins and "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler, two R&B singles, "Let's Hear It For the Boy" by Deniece Williams and "Dancing In the Sheets" by Shalamar and the love theme "Almost Paradise" by Mike Reno from Loverboy and Ann Wilson from Heart. The film was later released in VHS, Laserdisc and DVD (in widescreen only) formats and the soundtrack went on to sell over 9 million copies in the USA.

A musical version of Footloose that features many of the same songs from the movie is currently playing at the Novello Theatre in London's West End. The musical is generally faithful to the film version, with some slight differences in the story and characters.

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional folktale (type 425C -- search for a lost husband -- in the Aarne-Thompson classification). The first published version of the fairy tale was a meandering rendition by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740. The best-known written version was an abridgement of M. Villeneuve's work published in 1756 by Mme Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, in Magasin des enfants, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves; an English translation appeared in 1757.

Similar tales include the Hellenistic romance Cupid and Psyche (1st century BCE), and Madame d'Aulnoy's Le Mouton (The Ram).

Damn Yankees is a musical comedy, a modern retelling of the Faust legend set in Washington, D.C., with book by Douglass Wallop and George Abbott and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. It was based on Wallop's novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.

The plot concerns a long suffering middle-aged fan of the Washington Senators baseball club, Joe Hardy, who sells his soul to the Devil to enable the Senators to win the American League pennant.

It opened on Broadway in 1955 starring Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston, and won Tony awards for "Best Musical" and for "Best Composer and Lyricist". The musical also featured a young Jean Stapleton before her career-defining role of Edith Bunker in All in the Family.

A made-for-TV movie version was filmed in 1967. Phil Silvers played the role of "Mr. Applegate", the earthly form of Satan.

The stage version was revived in 1994 featuring Bebe Neuwirth in the role of seductive temptress Lola.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde1 is a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson first published in 1886. It is about a London lawyer who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll2, and the misanthropic man Edward Hyde. The work is known for its vivid portrayal of the psychopathology of a split personality; in mainstream culture the very phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" has come to signify wild or polar behaviour.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was an immediate success and one of Stevenson's best selling works. Stage adaptations began in Boston and London within a year of its publication and it has gone on to inspire scores of major film and stage performances.

Wonderful Town is a musical with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein. It is based on the play My Sister Eileen, which is itself based on the collection of short stories by Ruth McKenney of the same name. It follows the story of Ruth and Eileen, who come to New York City from Colombus, Ohio in search of love and fortune. Having premiered in 1953, Wonderful Town has seen only one major Broadway revival in 2003, starring Donna Murphy (and later in the run, Brooke Shields) as Ruth.