Weekend Poll Top Three: Fans Choose The Phantom of the Opera as Their Favorite Murderous Musical

As A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder gets ready to open on the Great White Way and Murder For Two continues to make a killing off-Broadway, Broadway.com asked readers which Broadway musical that revolves around murder is their favorite. The results are in, and shows about a mysterious, disfigured musical genius, a demon barber and a couple of merry murderesses lead the pack. Check out the results below!

1. The Phantom of the Opera — 45%
Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera is about a disfigured Phantom who lives underneath the Paris Opera House and who is both mesmerized and obsessed with the beautiful ingenue opera singer Christine. Eager to make her the star of the opera, the Phantom gives her private lessons in stealth and leaves threatening notes to the rest of the cast and producers urging them to cast Christine in future productions. However, as his plans to make Christine the star are coming to fruition, she falls in love with another man instead.


2. Sweeney Todd — 16%
Dark as dark can be, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd depicts London at its late-19th-century worst: a miserable, starving, filthy lower class repressed and lorded over by a corrupt elite society. Sweeney Todd returns to London after being sent away by Judge Turpin. He opens a barber shop above Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pie Shop were she sells "the worst pies in London." With the help of Mrs. Lovett, Todd tries to rid of all the people who have ever done him wrong and hopes to be reunited with his daughter, who is now Judge Turpin's ward.


3. Chicago — 9%
John Kander and Fred Ebb's Chicago follows Velma Kelly (a chanteuse and tease who killed her husband and sister after finding them in bed together) and Roxie Hart (who killed her boyfriend when she discovered he wasn't going to make her a star). The murderesses find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago. Enter Billy Flynn, the greasy lawyer whose goal is not only to have his clients acquitted, but to make them legal legends. That's Chicago!