I used to go to the Internation Thespian Festival every year in high school. In Nebraska. In my best Lewis Black voice: Because when I think of an International festival for theatrical high schoolers, I think Nebraska.
Anyway, most of the shows were submissions from private schools that got lots of money to put their shows together. They had great sets and costumes, but most of them couldn't act for crap. There were exceptions to this, though. I saw a good production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Of Mice and Men, and Blood Brothers.
I don't expect anyone reading is familiar with Blood Brothers, but the high school version I saw was pretty amazing if only for the fact that I could've sworn the guy playing the Narrator was channeling George Harrison. In a lot of ways, I think that I would've loved to have a cast album from that cast, because it was in many ways superior to the London cast with Petula Clark (oh yes, that one, she sang Downtown at all your skating parties). Of course, by that time the musical had been in the West End for a long time, so that cast recording is supposed to be a revitalising version of it.
It's about superstition and class and twins separated at birth and is in a lot of ways very British, in that I don't think a lot of the subject matter would be considered the same way in America.
Anyway, check it out if you're interested in musicals that don't fit the traditional "musical comedy" thing. In a lot of ways, I think it even manages to break away from the 80's, unlike Miss Saigon and Cats, which both have music that's pretty much rooted to the era. There's a little more jazz sax than you'd hear now, but that's about the only thing that says "80's!"