Best Musical Revivals

42nd Street Moon

www.42ndstmoon.org

Everyone's heard of songs like "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," but how many of us know who wrote these toe-tapping standards or where they came from? The 42nd Street Moon troupe has the answers. Since its founding in 1993, this all-singing, all-dancing musical theater company has been on a mission to celebrate and preserve the art and spirit of classic and rarely performed American musicals from the 1920s to 1970s. Bringing excellent melodic, comic, and dramatic skills to such old-school gems as Jerome Kern and P.G. Wodehouse's The Cabaret Girl (1922), Cole Porter's Can-Can (1953), and Jule Styne and Leo Robin's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), the company is one of only four in the nation specializing in concert performances of these works. Its fun-loving productions are a great reminder that there's a good deal more to musical theater than Evita, Mamma Mia!, and Cats.