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Are you finished with your holiday shopping, everything neatly wrapped and adorned with bows and cards? Of course not!! Like us, you’re running around trying to get a hundred errands done before the dreaded—sorry, wonderful—day arrives. We’re here to help. Here’s our beloved holiday gift guide: theater-geek edition.
For the Broadway-musical traditionalist
American Musicals. Edited by Laurence Maslon, this gorgeous two-volume box set includes the complete book and lyrics to 16 masterpieces of the Great White Way. It starts with Show Boat (1927) and ends with 1969's 1776, but these tuners go on forever. Buy now.
For the Rodgers & Hammerstein completist
The Rodgers & Hammerstein Blu-ray Collection. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment boxes together The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, The King and I, South Pacific, State Fair and Carousel. You may have some of these titles gathering dust in 15-year-old DVD form; now’s the chance to see and hear them anew. Buy now.
For the Idina Menzel fanatic
Holiday Wishes. Despite its wintry feel, you won’t find “Let It Go” on this collection of holiday tunes by Broadway’s reigning diva. There are recordings of Idina doing plenty of Christmas standards as well as joining Michael Bublé on “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” It’s the perfect party disc when you’re expecting plenty of Wicked and If/Then fans around the punch bowl. Buy now.
For the aspiring designer
Ming Cho Lee: A life in Design. This gorgeous volume by Theatre Communication Group celebrates the legacy of Lee, who “drew upon his training in Chinese watercolor, the aesthetics of his mentors, Jo Mielziner and Boris Aronson, and postwar developments in German design to develop a new approach to stage design.” Buy now.
For the voracious reader of plays
Turns out that TCG (leading publishers of new plays) has a handy gift guide of its own: great plays and playwrights for good prices. Buy now.
For the child you are turning into a theater geek
O Baby Mine: Sing a Song of Shakespeare. Sick of whatever candy-colored sonic garbage your kid has on repeat? We suggest this classy but fun collection of Shakespeare-inspired ditties, partly the brainchild (so to speak) of theater reporter and critic Rob Weinert-Kendt. Buy now.