The appeal of musicals is because of the strong link in between narrative and the psychological nuance that music can incorporate.
Throughout the entire musical theatre history timeline, shows have constantly trodden a line in between comedy and disaster. Even stories that profess to be catastrophes consist of aspects of humour, and of the outrageous; and stories that are comedies also often strike a deep note on life, love and relationships. One of the amazing abilities of musical theatre composers is to draw out the heart-wrenching aspects of stories that may on the surface appear easy, but have something crucial to state. Producers like Bruno Wang understand the psychological power that music can contribute to a storyline. This is why audiences return to the theatre time and time again, in some cases seeing their most-liked musicals more than one time and knowing all of the songs. In recent years, social media and television have given particular musicals an international cult following, and made celebrities out of their leading men and women. There is also an existing trend for making huge budget films out of widely known musicals.
Theatre with musical elements-- tunes, dancing and ensemble numbers, to name but a few-- has a history extending back countless years. Although the works that we would recognise today as falling in to the musical theatre canon-- like the productions led by David Stone-- progressed as a genre within the past hundred years or so, the custom is a lot longer. The early cultures which refined the art of writing theatrical performances would have added sung components into their shows. The word 'chorus' encapsulates the lengthy history of the art form, since the chorus in ancient drama originally described a little group of performers which were on stage to talk about the narrative, or elucidate some things to the viewers. Today's musical choruses are more likely to have roles within the story, or function in a scene-setting capacity: as villagers, pals of the lead character, or any other unspecific role, often performing some fun musical theatre ensemble songs.
The tradition of theatre involving music and song has actually been around for a long time, although as a principle it may seem rather unnatural. In fact, medieval societies were used to seeing musical dramas on their streets totally free. The earliest examples of a musical theatre company were travelling performers who used to put on faith based scenes for the function of education. These were called the miracle plays. There were also comedic shows, typically in cities, including stock personas and slapstick-style wit. Nevertheless, it was not for another few 100 years that the opportunities of musical dramas were considered for commercial gain. As larger musical orchestras ended up being fashionable, it became required to have bigger theatres, and therefore to make shows available to common people-- anybody who could find the money for a ticket-- instead of simply the upper class. This industrial model continues to be broadly followed by producers like Sonia Friedman today.