Carol Hall – Broadway's Best Shows

Broadway’s Best Women Composers & Lyricists

In the world of Broadway, where melodies and lyrics transport audiences to new realms of emotion, the spotlight has long shone on remarkable talents responsible for crafting the songs that define our favorite musicals. While the overwhelming majority of composers and lyricists are men, a roster of brilliant women has long been making waves, breaking barriers, and leaving an indelible mark on the Main Stem. Here, we celebrate Broadway’s Best Women Composers & Lyricists, highlighting the small but mighty group of women who composed for the stage in the 20th century.

Mary Rodgers

Rodgers is perhaps best known for the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress. Later writing credits included 1978’s Working. Her sardonic memoirs were published posthumously in 2022 with the help of her friend, New York Times critic Jesse Green, and they detail, with her signature sense of humor, how she found it nearly impossible to be both a composer and a parent, eventually transitioning into writing children’s books, such as the original Freaky Friday. Mattress will receive a production in January 2023 at City Center Encores!, starring Sutton Foster and Michael Urie, and directed by Lear DeBesonnet (Into the Woods).

Sarah Jessica Parker performs “Shy” from Mattress

Carol Hall

Carol Hall was one of the first composers to introduce country western styles to Broadway audiences, with her score for 1978’s The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The musical was turned into a film starring Dolly Parton, and it turned Hall’s song “Hard Candy Christmas” into a holiday season standard. Her body of work is not entirely “adult” material – Hall contributed music to the landmark 1972 children’s album Free to Be You and Me, along with Mary Rodgers, and wrote songs for the early seasons of Sesame Street.

The original Broadway cast performs “Hard Candy Christmas”

Micki Grant

Micki Grant first rose to prominence as an actor, appearing in the Langston Hughes Broadway shows Tambourines to Glory and Jericho-Jim Crow in the 1960s. In 1972, she was the first woman, and the first African-American, to write both the music and lyrics for a musical, for Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. She became a 3-time Tony nominee that season, as well as receiving an OBIE award. Grant, like Rodgers, later contributed songs to 1978’s Working, and also contributed writing to Your Arms Too Short to Box With God and Eubie.

“If I Could’ve Been”, the act 1 finale of Working, contributed by Grant:

The entirety of the Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope LP is on YouTube:

Lucy Simon

Lucy Simon began her songwriting career with her sister, Carly Simon. After contributing songs to the Off-Broadway revue A…My Name Is Alice, she composed the music for 1991’s The Secret Garden, for which she was nominated for a Tony. Garden was the first musical to have an all-female writing and directing team.

“Lily’s Eyes” from The Secret Garden

Elizabeth Swados

Elizabeth “Liz” Swados won an OBIE award and was nominated for 5 Tonys for her 1978 musical Runaways. Originating at the Public Theater, the unconventional revue told the stories of homeless youth in New York City who had run away from home. Swados also directed and choreographed the production. After the success of Runaways, Swados contributed the music to the Broadway musical Doonesbury, and later became an off-Broadway stalwart. She influenced generations of theater artists as a professor at NYU.

“I Can Have It All” from Doonesbury

The Encores! Off-Center revival of Runaways.

A soon-to-be member of this list is Shaina Taub, a celebrated composer-lyricist set to make her Broadway debut as both writer (and star?) of Suffs. The new musical is due to open at the Music Box Theatre in April 2024 after Purlie Victorious’s limited engagement ends in February.

The world premiere of Suffs at the Public Theater

Broadway’s Best Shows for Fans of the Barbie Movie

By Katie Devin Orenstein

If you had a blast with Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and the rest of the Barbie movie crew, here are some Broadway musicals of yesteryear that might suit your fancy! Some even served as inspiration for director Greta Gerwig’s take on the classic doll brand.

Legally Blonde

What could be more Barbie than a musical all about how you can be smart and independent and wear bright pink at the same time? Legally Blonde, based on the movie of the same name, takes aim at dumb blonde stereotypes, and puts female empowerment and solidarity front-and-center. It’s so much better than getting the guy.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

If you’re looking for a whip-smart, funny show that pushes back against the objectification of women, look no further than The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which ran on Broadway for four years starting in 1978, and was also made into a movie starring Dolly Parton. Its songs are by the late Carol Hall, one of Broadway’s very few female composer-lyricists.

Singin’ in the Rain

Director and co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig cites the vividly Technicolored, dance-heavy Singin’ in the Rain as one of her main inspirations for the tone and visuals of Barbie. The 1954 film was written by Broadway stalwarts Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who turned it into a stage musical in 1985. You can clearly see the influence on the set design, lighting, and even the tailoring of Ryan Gosling and the Kens’ costumes from the classic Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse dream ballet:

Avenue Q

Avenue Q uses puppets and upbeat songs to teach the lessons Sesame Street forgot to include, like how to pay your bills, or how to handle romantic rejection, or what people really use the Internet for. Like Barbie, it uses the aesthetics of childhood to explore how scary adulthood can be sometimes.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

This show is a frothy, comedic romp about two female cabaret performers going after what they want, whether that’s men or money – this is the musical that gave us “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Notably, the show’s book is co-written by Anita Loos, who also wrote the bestselling novel on which the show is based, and who was the very first female screenwriter in Hollywood.

Megan Hilty performs “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”

My Fair Lady

Who are you, if you’re someone else’s creation? George Bernard Shaw first explored this idea in his 1913 play Pygmalion. In 1957, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe turned Pygmalion into the musical My Fair Lady. If you enjoyed watching the human and doll men in Barbie flail and flounce and postulate, you’ll like My Fair Lady’s take on gender relations, when upper-class Henry Higgins bets his friend he can turn poor flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a fine lady by teaching her a refined accent, without any regard for her own agency. A musical about patriarchal men wrecking their own lives by hewing too close to patriarchy…delicious.

Rex Harrison blusters his way through “A Hymn to Him”

Dames At Sea/Grease

Dames At Sea and Grease both take satirical aim at the gender norms of the 1940s and 1950s, respectively, very similar to how Barbie tackles today’s cognitive dissonance about how feminism apparently won, while the patriarchy remains in subtler ways. John Travolta as Danny in Grease gets a shoutout in Barbie, and these two shows share the movie’s blunt, on-the-nose sense of humor.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

As the title suggests, this musical is one big existential crisis. With bright costuming reflecting Pedro Almodovar’s original film, this 2011 musical has an energetic score by Tony winner David Yazbek. If you loved Barbie’s ability to take cracks at depression and ennui without minimizing the issue, this might be your new favorite cast album.

Laura Benanti performs one of musical theater’s best panic attack arias, “Model Behavior”

Evening Primrose

If you loved a movie about dolls, how about a musical about mannequins? In all seriousness, this rare gem, a one act musical by Stephen Sondheim written for television in the 1960s, shares many of the same themes as Greta Gerwig’s vision for Barbie – the desire of an object, or an objectified person, to be real. Gerwig is a known Sondheim fan (see: the Merrily sequence in Ladybird) and there’s a chance she was inspired by this show, about department store mannequins who come alive at night, and the human who discovers them, and tells them about the outside world.

Kelli O’Hara sings “Take Me to the World” from Evening Primrose:

Into the Woods

America Ferrera and Margot Robbie’s conversations in Barbie are so reminiscent of the Baker’s Wife-Cinderella dynamic in Into the Woods, each one jealous of the other’s dilemma. This musical is famous for its childhood stories turned to adulthood seriousness.