The theatre was known for cultivating raw, undiscovered talent and many renowned playwrights such as Aaron Sorkin, Warren Leight and Alan Ball had works staged at the West Bank Cafe early in their careers.

He won the New York James Fleetwood Outer Critics Circle Award for his music and lyrics for Molière's Scapin (starring Stanley Tucci).

Magee once again collaborated with Lewis Black on The Czar Of Rock And Roll, a musical based on the real-life story of singer Dean Reed.

Two years later, Magee began working with RENT composer Jonathan Larson, Bobby Golden and Paul Scott Goodman on a new musical called Sacred Cows, an irreverent retelling of the Creation Myth.

The Boston Globe called the show "scatological, sexually puerile and deliberately offensive, even in the Beavis and Butt-head age," but raved it was "the most entertaining and provocative production of the American Repertory Theatre schedule.

"[5] His full length musical The Green Heart (co-written with playwright Charles Busch) was produced by The Manhattan Theatre Club in 1997, and is published by Samuel French.

Magee collaborated again with Bobby Golden, writing songs for Nickelodeon's animated series The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, as well as Out of the Box on the Disney Channel.

The concert, appropriately named Sweet Appreciation (after a Magee song based on Walt Whitman's poem "Thanks in Old Age") was recorded and later released on CD.

[9] In the fall of 2008, Alison Fraser and Mary Testa performed a tribute show called Together Again at the West Bank Cafe's Laurie Beechman Theatre.