So, Crazy for You was the big winner for best musical of 1992. It’s a western based on Gershwin’s music, and it’s….kinda everything you’d expect. It starred Jodi Benson, the voice of the Little Mermaid, and I couldn’t fault the Tonys for giving the award to this one. Then again, it’s so thoroughly unsurprising that it’s an uninspired choice in a way.
There were three other shows: Five Guys Named Moe was a so-so jukebox musical based on Louis Jordan, I have little to say about this one other than it had a great amount of energy. The other two are more interesting–the first Jelly’s Last Jam was a fantastic bio-show about Jelly Roll Morton, the father of Jazz. This probably should have been the winner of 1992–the music is inventive, the story engaging, and the show manages to make Jazz sound fresh and modern–compared to Five Guys Named Moe and Crazy for You, it sounds like it’s from another millennium. The Falsettos is notable because it’s a modern story, and it focuses on the AIDS crisis. As much as I want to praise this show, at the same time the music isn’t quite all the way there, and it doesn’t completely age well.
Crazy for You ended being the peak show of the early nineties nostalgia craze–for the next few years we get some interesting choices before Disney takes over Broadway. Stay tuned.
pewterbreath 
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