Best Musical

For the second year in a row, the best musical was presented by Opera Theatre of St. Louis; its revamped revival of Dominick Argento's Miss Havisham's Fire was a trim, dynamic and entertaining production. But where oh where can St. Louisans go for a good Broadway musical? The Muny is, well, the Muny: enjoyable but, like a baseball game, more about the event than the show itself. The Rep's Everything's Ducky was fun but forgettable; the Black Rep put on a rollicking Godspell, but at the end of the day it was still Godspell. Stages gives us dinner-theater musicals without the dinner. Scott Miller at New Line Theatre writes extensively and intelligently about the genre, so perhaps it's fitting that his musicals sometimes seem better in theory than in execution. Fortunately, some local colleges filled the musical gap: noteworthy were Man of La Mancha at Washington University and Webster University's As You Like It, which, although technically not a musical, used music and songs in a delightfully entertaining and moving way.