Anyone who has been to a Broadway musical, or even local production for that matter, has probably noticed something along the lines of “International Smash Hit!” on the playbill or the poster. What few people stop to think about is what that really means, about just how far American and British musicals spread across the world. Exported productions, often called replicas, make their way to the stages of Tokyo, Singapore, Berlin and, most often, Paris. While sets, costumes, and special effects are painstakingly recreated to match the originals, translators perform incredible feats of linguistic acrobatics to make songs work in the local languague. Get tickets for a Parisian musical

Sisters doing it in Paris One of the most successful American musicals of the last 20 years, Sister Act, received this treatment for its fabulous French debut. Based on the 1992 comedy film starring Whoopi Goldberg, Sister Act, The Musical opened on London’s West End in 2009 and on Broadway in 2011, where it won multiple Tony awards (including Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical). Just one year later, fully rendered into French, it took Paris by storm with a sell-out run at the Théâtre Mogador – one of the city’s grandest theatres. The production welcomed over 300,000 spectators with just 200 performances. Watch and see that show’s songs lose nothing of their joy and sass in the French version by Nicolas Nebos.

Parisian Cats The gold standard of an exported musical might just be one of Broadway’s biggest, Cats. Thanks to replica productions in more than 20 countries and an original broadway run that seemed to last an eternity (1982-2000), millions of people around the globe have experienced the show that helped make Andrew Lloyd Webber’s a household name. The song that stays stuck in your head though, no matter the language in which you originally heard it, has to be Memory. It’s amazing to compare the two famous French versions of it: the older, Nos Souvenirs" (“Our Memories”), sung by celebrated chanteuse Mireille Mathieu, and the more recent Ma Vie" (“My Life”), sung by actress Prisca Demarez.