Movies: Shrek | Shrek 2 | Shrek the Third | Shrek Forever After | Puss in Boots | Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Other media: Shrek 4D | Shrek the Halls | Scared Shrekless | The Adventures of Puss in Boots | Shrek the Musical
- Adorkable: Shrek comes off as adorably awkward in "When Words Fail", when he's trying to think of the right way to confess his love to Fiona, continually making mistakes, digging himself deeper, and generally rambling during an attempted romantic monologue. As the title implies, this ends up Played for Drama as he initially worries that his awkwardness will prevent him from being able to get his point across.
- Awesome Music:
- "Who I'd Be", a poignant ballad in which Shrek pours out his desire to be more than just an ogre and his resignation with his assigned role. It's the "Defying Gravity" of Shrek.
- "I Know It's Today" is a pretty song throughout, but it truly becomes a showstopper towards the end, as Fiona grows exasperated with her imprisonment. It closes with a magnificent section which has Fiona repeating the chorus as a Survival Mantra, singing tri-part harmony with her past selves.
- The Dragon's song, "Forever", a jazzy number portraying her as a Tsundere bitter about her lot in life but exuberant once she comes to the mistaken conclusion that Donkey is her long-awaited true love. The high-powered melody captures Dragon's overbearingness and is catchy enough to get stuck in the audience's head.
- The Second Act opener is Fiona excitedly greeting the day...finishing with a stunning tap number featuring the Pied Piper and the mice.
- Base-Breaking Character: All four of the main characters are this due to comparisons to their beloved film counterparts.
- Shrek himself. While Brian D'Arcy James puts on a fantastic performance and the prosthetic work used to bring Shrek to life is excellent, many people feel that being a singing character in a musical completely ruins the point of his film counterpart, who disliked singing and didn't open up to others easily.
- Donkey. While some people find him as hilarious as ever, others find him to be a flanderized and more irritating version of his film counterpart, lacking the charm that Eddie Murphy brought to the character.
- Fiona. Some people praise Sutton Foster's performance to be one of the best among the cast, and find that it, along with the character's additional depth and backstory, makes her a better character than her film counterpart. Others are turned off by the musical's more campy aesthetic and behavior and find that it makes her too much like the Disney princesses she was meant to parody, and prefer the movie's more natural "girl-next-door" design and mannerisms as well as her more prominent Action Girl traits.
- Lord Farquaad. While many people praise Christopher Siever's Large Ham performance and the hilarious Stylistic Suck used to make him appear short (with some claiming he's more entertaining than the movie version), others dislike how Farquaad's backstory counters the main message of the Shrek franchise, given that the musical establishes him as part dwarf and yet the "heroic" characters don't stop making fun of his height, which is quite hypocritical.
- Broken Base: Fans are divided on how good the musical and its characters are as an adaptation of the source material; some consider it more charming and superior, while others are gleeful to tear it to pieces.
- Crack Pairing: Quite a few. And within the actual show no less!
- In earlier performances, the White Rabbit and the (female) Ugly Duckling were frequently seen together; in the finale, he'd propose to her.
- Even Pinocchio and the Shoemaker's Elf - and the Sugar Plum Fairy and Tweedle Dum later - were sometimes given Last Minute Hookups.
- Later, in one of the promotional materials, it was revealed that Gingy has a crush on the Elf.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Pinocchio. The mere fact that he was originally played by John Tartaglia may or may not have a lot to do with it.
- The Fairy Tale creatures, especially Gingy (and by extension, the Sugar Plum Fairy) and The Big Bad Wolf, are also quite popular amongst fans.
- Franchise Original Sin: While some people point to the first movie breaking its own "appearances don't matter" message by having the characters mock Lord Farquaad's height, it was a minor thing that could easily be glossed over. Shrek: The Musical made it less minor by making him half-dwarf. Mocking his height, which is a result of him being the son of a dwarf, runs directly counter to the "let your freak flag fly" moral in a way that's significantly more difficult to ignore.
- Hard-to-Adapt Work: Some argue this is why the show failed. The first Shrek movie was designed to be the Spiritual Antithesis of the Disney Renaissance movies, being a self-aware parody that deliberately lampoons, mocks, and plays with many traditional Disney tropes, especially original musical numbers, which the movie goes out of its way to thwart (such as Shrek yelling at Donkey to stop singing, the bird blowing up when Fiona tries to sing to it, and Fiona beating up a bunch of thieves who attempt to do a musical number) in favor of using pop culture songs. To put it briefly, attempting to translate Shrek, a deliberately anti-musical film, into a traditional Broadway musical in the same vein as the Disney broadway shows was always doomed to fail to some extent, as doing so partly misses the point of the original film and why it was successful.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: It wasn't until a friend pointed it out that John Tartaglia, who has been a puppeteer most of his life, realized and appreciated the irony of playing Pinocchio, a literal puppet character.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The dialogue leading up to "Donkey Pot Pie" is actually kind of disturbing, especially with lines like this...
- While "Forever" is less creepy, the very beginning as Dragon appears is an exception. The ominous thrumming burns into the listeners' heads, setting an unsettling tone practically before they can even discern the sound.
- Retroactive Recognition: Gingy's original actress, Haven Paschall (nee Burton) gained wider recognition in 2013 as the voice of Serena in the English dub of Pokémon: The Series.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- The initial reaction to the song "Donkey Pot Pie" being replaced with "Forever." This has died down since then.
- Some fans feel the musical misses the cynical charm of the original movie, turning it into a musical, changing certain plot points, and flanderizing the characters into jolly green jokes.
- Rainbow Lens: It's easy to see "Freak Flag" as a Pride anthem, especially with lines like "It's not a choice you made, it's just the way you hatched!", Pinocchio's closing message of "I'm wood, I'm good, get used to it!" and the overall theme of embracing who you are and being proud of it.
- Unintentional Uncanny Valley: In some productions (including the original Broadway cast), many of the characters look a bit off compared to their animated counterparts. For example, Shrek's blend of human facial features (such as smaller eyes) and ogre prosthetics can make him look less endearing than the film version. Human!Fiona also looks more made-up and less natural than her already slightly uncanny film incarnation, with a less flattering hairstyle.
- Unintentional Period Piece: A minor example, but it's mentioned late in the production that Grumpy kicked out Farquaad because he was 28 and living in his father's basement. Since the 2010s, many have effectively had no choice but to continue living with their parents well into adulthood on account of economic problems and deficits.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: The Dragon puppet in the National Tour—huge, movie accurate and really cool looking.
