Lessons learned from the first half of the season at St. Louis' Fox Theatre (2024)

We’re almost halfway through the 2024/25 season at the Fox, which has been a combination of new fare like “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical” and “Back to the Future” and familiar favorites like “Hamilton,” a revised “Peter Pan” and the upcoming “Chicago.”

Next year, the season brings even more new-to-St. Louis shows like “Kimberly Akimbo” “& Juliet,” “Shucked” and “Some Like It Hot,” which are all making their regional debuts.

It’s a slightly edgier season than last year’s, which was full of big names and repeat offerings like “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” “MJ: The Musical” about Michael Jackson, “Moulin Rouge: The Musical” and “Funny Girl.”

So what have we learned from the edgier season at the Fox?

“Hamilton” still packs them in, despite the Gen Z backlash.

For those not lurking on TikTok, the younger generation finds “Hamilton” and its author, Lin-Manuel Miranda cringe (slang for embarrassing).

Why? Well, “Hamilton” itself has long been subject to the critique that it glosses over America’s cardinal sin, slavery. The show — about the American Revolutionary War and its Founding Fathers, including Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — doesn’t mention how most of these men owned slaves.

The casting of Black and Latino people to play the Founding Fathers — considered revolutionary in 2015 when the show debuted — makes it appear as if America was founded in some sort of diverse utopia that wasn’t built on the oppression of those same people.

But the show packed the Fox, though it wasn’t part of the series subscription package. And the Disney+ movie and the touring production’s frequent stops here mean that the audience was primarily made up of repeat viewers.

All King George had to do was step on stage and there was a minute-long ovation. Ushers, who encouraged people to share the limited number of programs, had to remind theatergoers this wasn’t a sing-along.

The show remains beloved, in part for its familiarity, and also for the very reason that Gen Z (and others) dislike it. It gives people the America they wish they had: a pure meritocracy that rewards the people who work the hardest even if they are, like Hamilton, penniless, orphaned, immigrant bastards.

The songs don’t matter if the story is familiar.

Next up in the season was “Back to the Future,” based on the 1985 movie of the same name starring Michael J. Fox. It’s about a teenager, Marty McFly, who accidentally goes back in time to the 1950s and prevents his parents’ going on a date. His mother gets a crush on him instead, threatening his very existence.

The original movie was not a musical, and the new songs, jammed into a book that largely followed the film, were bland and utterly forgettable. But the real downfall was the acting, which was over-the top — clownish without humor, uncomfortably highlighting all of the most bizarre plot points (potential incest, a peeping Tom father, playing wingman to your dad).

The audience, many of whom were wearing the iconic denim shirt and red puffer vest Marty McFly wears in the film, loved it.

What mattered was that the Delorean was on stage. Yes, Doc hangs from the clock tower. Yes, the Delorean flies through the air at the end. Yes, there’s a lightening strike on stage. Plus, fans even got to snap a picture with a Delorean time machine outside of the theater.

A beloved franchise will allow people to overlook a myriad of sins.

The story doesn’t matter if the songs are hits.

To put it bluntly, “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical” doesn’t make much sense.

The Fox’s next offering was the jukebox musical about Neil Diamond, the hitmaker with more than 130 million records sold (as the show will remind you multiple times) and the author of that sing-along earworm “Sweet Caroline.”

The plot device is that Diamond is in therapy, and his therapist is trying to get him to open up. She pulls out a book about his music. Will talking about his songs help him have a breakthrough?

The answer is, who cares. Until the end of the show, the audience isn’t even sure why Diamond is in therapy, and when he recounts his life story it has the depth of a Wikipedia entry.

But Nick Fradiani — the 2015 winner of “American Idol,” who plays the young Diamond — can sing, and the show is chock-a-block full of songs, so it had everything it needed, a thin plot, a wide-ranging song catalog, and Neil Diamond fans in the audience.

You can revise a classic.

“Peter Pan,” was up next, a revision of the midcentury musical based on the 1904 stage play by J.M. Barrie.

The musical needed revising because it had a derogatory depiction of Native Americans, who sing the nonsense song “Ugg-a-Wugg.” Native American playwright and MacArthur Genius Grant–winner Larissa FastHorse tackled the revision and trimmed down the show for modern audiences.

The result is a new “Peter Pan” that stays true to the old one in good ways and bad. The Native Americans get an upgraded story, the songs are improved (“Ugg-a-Wugg” is gone), the women do some swashbuckling, and Captain Hook remains funny, fabulous and the best character.

But the show still lacked zippiness, sometimes feeling long (especially at the beginning) and a little old-fashioned. (Is “clap if you believe in fairies” still resonating today?) But overall, it retained much of its charm, especially when Hook and Smee were on stage.

“Chicago” was built to last.

“Chicago,” the show about femme fatales during the Jazz Age has a storied history on Broadway including three different runs.

Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who covered crime in the Windy City in the 1920s, wrote the original stage play, which debuted in 1926. Anti-heroine Roxie Hart was based on the real-life story of Belulah Annan who was accused of killing her lover.

The play led to a Cecil B. Demille film, and later Bob Fosse, John Kander and Fred Ebb turned it into a musical.

The original 1975 production did OK, but the 1996 revival is the longest-running American show on Broadway. It’s now in its 28th year with 11,000 performances under its belt.

Expect an audience familiar with the show (there’s a 2003 film), and with hits like “All that Jazz” and “Cell Block Tango,” the show’s ushers may be wise to repeat their admonishments that this is not a sing-along.