10 Musicals Parents Should See with their Teenagers
Claire Adams, Isabella Pruter, and Amanda Naughton as the three Alisons in ‘Fun Home’ Photos by Daren Scott
Your teenager would probably rather be banned from TikTok than go to another Disney show with you, but that doesn’t mean the theater is off-limits until they reach an age where you’re “cool” again.
Teens have reached that age where they need to know their parents respect them and understand that they can handle more serious stuff than when they were in grade school. Show you recognize their newfound “almost adulthood” by taking them to productions that are exciting and entertaining, but also deal with meaty topics and heavy emotions.
The following ten shows can all be memorable experiences that might even spark robust discussions between parents and offspring.
Be prepared. These shows deal with topics such as teen suicide, mental illness, teen pregnancy, and bullying and have language you might not normally use around your teen. Be brave!
Spring Awakening
With song titles like “The Bitch of Living” and “Totally Fucked,” you may wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into. But this is the ultimate musical about what happens when communication breaks down between teenagers and adults. It opens with a song that has a mother miscommunicating about sex to her daughter with eventual tragic results. The musical treats sexual abuse, teen pregnancy, suicide, gay relationships, masturbation, academic woes, and sex. It has the power to transform relationships as it shows what happens when adults, even well-meaning ones, get it wrong.
Dear Evan Hansen
Since 2016 when it hit Broadway, “Dear Evan Hansen” has been a favorite with teenagers, perhaps because of its realistic portrayals of flawed human beings and families that are on the verge of being broken. Centering around the suicide of a teenager and the lies another one tells, this very current musical has hit a vibe with young people around the world.
Fun Home
My now-grown son tells me this was the best musical I ever took him to. One of the first major musicals by and about lesbians, this is ultimately a family story and how a family was deeply affected by the father’s suicide. Based on a true story, the main character is shown as a young child, a college freshman, and a middle-aged woman trying to understand her life. It also treats a woman discovering her sexuality from the young girl’s “Ring of Keys” to the freshman’s “I’m Changing My Major to Joan.”
Next to Normal
Few musicals deal with mental illness as frankly and honestly as “Next to Normal.” While much of the focus is on the mother and her struggle with extreme mental illness, it is also about how that touches and changes both her husband and her daughter. Her daughter finds herself shying away from relationships and unable to escape the unintended influence of her mother.
Into the Woods
Yes, the first half of this plays as Disney fairy tales. In fact, Disney DID make this entire musical into a movie, sanitizing and changing a few fates from the Stephen Sondheim original. However, there is far more to this musical than a collection of fairy tales. It is a warning to parents that children see and listen to what their parents say and do, even when they don’t obey. It touches on the power of dreams and wishes and what we do to make them come true.
Mean Girls
Based on the Tina Fey movie, this musical has started touring making it possible it will be coming to your region once things reopen. When a new girl arrives at a clique-filled high school, she has to decide whether she is going to be “plastic” or “real.” It might make you glad you’re not still in high school and perhaps a little more empathetic to what your teenager is facing.
Hamilton
Who doesn’t want to see Hamilton? One of the biggest hits to sweep Broadway, it made non-theater people into theater lovers. There are lots of reasons people love this musical and you and your teen are likely to find your own. But amid the action and the fun, there is a lot of serious stuff going on.
Legally Blonde
There is so much empowerment in this musical that every girl and boy should see it. Yes, it’s fun and all the songs are catchy and energetic, but the real story comes in finding the strength to be yourself and to reject the stereotypes others would enforce on you.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Sure, the “kids” in this musical are in grade school, but there is a reason they’re played by adults. This is definitely for high school and above, as shown when the first eliminated speller sings “My Unfortunate Erection.” Each speller has their own set of challenges, from loneliness to nerdiness to too much pressure to absent parents. It’s a musical that literally changed my life as I was planning to go to an out-of-state year-long journalism fellowship until I saw this and realized that such things could wait until my son was older—that I’d never have that year in his life back. He needed me more than I needed the fellowship.
Memphis
Perhaps one of the lesser-known musicals on this list, it is one that has a lot to say in these days where we are challenging cultural appropriation and calling out white privilege. It is loosely based on one of the first white DJs to start playing Black music in the 1950s. It’s a great way to open conversations about what we are still getting wrong.
That’s 10, but here’s a bonus if you want to go back to a show that opened in 1998 but remains current as a new generation is coming to terms with their sexuality and finding new levels of acceptance. Hedwig and the Angry Inch features a genderqueer East German singer who had a botched sex-change operation. It’s a glam-rock musical and you just might find yourself trying to explain who David Bowie was.
~~
Bridgette Redman is an arts journalist who has been covering and reviewing theatre since the late 1990s. A fellow for the 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute for Theater and Musical Theater at USC Annenberg, Bridgette also has a performing arts column that runs biweekly for the Lansing State Journal. She now writes about the arts for numerous publications around the country including Encore Monthly, Entertainer!, the Santa Monica Argonaut, Los Angeles Downtown News, Encore Michigan, and more.