Musical Surprise moments whats yours?

Kinda similar was when Martine McCutcheon pre-My Fair Lady sang ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’ on “Children in Need”. It was a revelation as a) I hadn’t heard that song before, b) she was great. I can’t find the actual clip but here she is singing a not quite as good version. A few tired notes and a couple of get-outs but still better than you’d get from Kathy Beale.

Pretty much the whole of 42nd Street. I was familiar with some of the music but had never seen the film or a stage production before the one at Drury Lane. The opening when they are all tapping and the explosion of brightness in We're in the Money made me so happy.

My Su Pollard can sing moment was with "Come To Me (I Am Woman)", from back in the days when song titles with parentheses were "in".

Wicked, particularly

I'd gone knowing nothing about the plot, except that it was related to The Wizard of Oz, and I'd heard a couple of the songs and wasn't sure how much I liked them. But I completely bought into it when I was there, the way it had been woven The Wizard of Oz so you sort of knew what would happen, but then it twisted it.

It was the first show I saw in the West End as well, so I think I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing.

When Higgins House appeared in the Lincoln Centre revival of My Fair Lady.

Just the sheer size and scale of it - it's the closest to my jaw actually hitting the floor I've had in the theatre.

I used to see her a lot around Upper Street and Angel!

After years of living in the North West, and after my marriage to a Scouser broke up, I moved to Bristol. My Dutch accent had pretty much disappeared, and I had this strange Burnley/Scouse-accent.

My landlady said ' I've got tickets for this show, but I don't really fancy going as I've seen it a few times already - do you want to go?'.

I wanted to be fully surprised, I hadn't been to the theatre often at this point, so all I knew was that this show had been running a long time in the West End. I had no idea about the setting or the story.

The lights twinkled and the Royal Liver Building came into view.

'It's the mothership, it's come to take me home!'.

I loved Blood Brothers, but the switch was properly flicked after I saw it a second time.

The motorbike crash in Bat Out of Hell was a good one.

I found the Cadillac moment pretty astounding

Bunny Christie’s set design on the recent Company revival was endlessly surprising, really clever stagecraft.

Finding moments that truly came out of nowhere and surprised me.

Perhaps the biggest was the moment Bert walked up the proscenium in Mary Poppins.

There was also the end of the first act of Wonderful Town where characters suddenly wanted to do the conga and next thing the whole of Greenwich Village, New York got the craze and the cast was dancing out the auditorium.

Then there was Five Guys Named Moe when they got the audience to join in.

The end of the first act of City of Angels with the leading men confronting each other and literally pushing the borders of reality and fiction

Or Groundhog Day when there was a dance routine and a guy in a groundhog costume was trundled on playing a drum kit

Or Simon Cowell turning out to be an alien and the spaceship appearing in I Can't Sing.

Or the remix in Legally Blonde.

I second the above...WHAT

For me it was the set of the original Martin Guerre which was pretty progressive for its time.

I didn't want to bore folk with my numbers - Coliseum and Dominion took me into very healthy double figures At a difficult time in my life it offered escapism and vitality, and I love it for that!