With so many good shows available, I fail to understand why musical theater leans so heavily on this “canon” that’s filled with shallow characters, bad storytelling, and problematic portrayals of race (usually this translates to “all white people, all the time,” but when it doesn’t you get Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s levels of offensive).

I realize that a lot of this is because the audience will  pay money to watch these terrible old shows over and over again, but that older audience is shrinking and you’re not going to pull in a new generation with these sorts of confections.