Sunday, February 14, 2016
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Ghostlight) The more one knows about Broadway musicals, the more convulsed with laughter one becomes upon experiencing Something Rotten!, a smart stew of shrewd…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:08PMTuesday, February 9, 2016
Original Broadway Cast, 2011 (Ghostlight) With its all-star cast and creative team, and a hilarious movie by Pedro Almodóvar as its source material, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdow…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:16PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2005 (Ghostlight) This show, about a regional spelling bee with prepubescent contestants, marked the Tony Award winning composer/lyricist William Finn’s return to B…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:13PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2015 (PS Classics) Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home may seem like strange fodder for a Broadway musical. A memoir in the form of a graphic novel, it chronicles Bechdel�…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:09PMSunday, January 31, 2016
Los Angeles Cast, 1995 (DRG) Here, Gerard Alessandrini has as much fun with Hollywood excess as with Broadway idiocy. But this recording differs from the Forbidden Broadway albums in one cru…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:28PMOriginal Cast, 1982 (DRG) Gerard Alessandrini’s revues lampooning Broadway hits and personalities have been a reliable source of merriment in cabaret rooms, Off-Broadway theaters, and othe…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:27PMMonday, January 18, 2016
Original Broadway Cast, 1984 (RCA) Few Broadway composers could successfully make a painting into a musical, but Stephen Sondheim turned Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Islan…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:21PMThursday, January 14, 2016
As the 20th anniversary of Rent's Off-Broadway debut approaches, we look back to our 1996 interview with musical director Tim Weil, who talked about putting the finishing touches on …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, January 13, 2016
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Atlantic, 2CDs) From start to finish, this recording marvelously captures the vibrancy of composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking and recor…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 07:42PMThursday, December 31, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2009 (Nonesuch/PS Classics) What started off as a coruscating musical-comedy cavalcade ended dour and dumpy with the 2008 premiere of Road Show, the final (?) inc…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:33PMTuesday, October 13, 2015
George and Ira Gershwin's utterly delightful 1926 musical Oh, Kay! is the current production of Mel Miller's essential Musicals Tonight! company.
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:57PMFriday, October 9, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1974 (Columbia /Sony) Designed to do for the 1940s what Grease did for the 1950s, Over Here! is a supremely silly tale of romance and espionage on a cross-country tra…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:21AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) For Out of This World, a modern-day retelling of the Amphitryon legend, Cole Porter produced a gorgeous score. Unfortunately, it was tied to an u…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:16AMStudio Cast, 1996 (Original Cast Records) A Richard Rodgers Award-winner and a minor Off-Broadway hit, this chamber musical by Robert Lindsey-Nassif (or Robert Nassif Lindsey, depending on h…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:50AMStudio Cast, 1952 (Columbia/Sony) One of musical director/conductor Lehman Engel’s sturdier studio-cast efforts, this rendering of the 1936 hit by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart tries har…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:17AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1981 (Original Cast Records) Although the subject was ripe and the characters were fascinating, Onward Victoria was a one-performance disaster that nonetheless yielde…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:12AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/Sony) Based on the stage farce Twentieth Century, best known as a Hollywood film starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard, this 1930s spoof might hav…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:00AMThursday, October 8, 2015
Original Broadway Cast Members, 1944 (Decca/MCA) Record companies treated Broadway musicals pretty poorly until the concept of the original cast album became firmly entrenched, so this colle…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:14PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1943 (Decca) This incomplete recording of composer Kurt Weill’s One Touch of Venus paints a very deceptive picture of the score. While there are 17 songs in the sco…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:53PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records) From overture to finale, One Night Stand is as dynamic a score as Jule Styne ever wrote. But Herb Gardner proved to be inept as a librett…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:42PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1980 (Warner Bros./no CD) Beginning in the late 1970s, the theater turned a nostalgic and admiring eye on the black musicals of earlier years — the imperishable…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:29PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1963 (RCA) 110 in the Shade is the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical based on N. Richard Nash’s The Rainmaker. As heard on this recording, the songs are replete with…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:48PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1959 (Kapp/MCA) The fairy tale source material is “The Princess and the Pea,” given a satirical fleshing-out. But Once Upon a Mattress was really a Cinderella sho…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:18PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1990 (RCA) One of the strongest works to date by lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, Once on This Island is a juicy adaptation of the Rosa Guy novel M…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:59PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1965 (RCA) This is a fabulous score. Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics are among his wittiest and most poetic, while Burton Lane’s music is as melodic and moving as anythi…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:27PMWednesday, October 7, 2015
Off-Broadway Cast, 1987 (That’s Entertainment/JAY) During the opening number of this musical based on Amphitryon, as the three-man chorus sings “We are the chorus / Please don’t ignore…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:58PMOriginal London Cast, 1960 (Decca/Deram) This musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist was quite a phenomenon in its day, beginning as a modest, fringe-type production in London…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:28AMTuesday, October 6, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1943 (Decca) This thrilling cast album of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! score is the one, the only, the original that’s credited with starting it all. The…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:50PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1988 (DRG) Here is one of the most disappointing cast albums ever made in that it utterly fails to capture the hilarity of this show. Oil City Symphony was a stra…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:22PMOriginal London Cast, 1963 (Decca/Must Close Saturday) A hit in London, a flop d’estime on Broadway, and the basis of a very odd film, Oh! What a Lovely War was a show that slotted vintage…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:00PMStudio Cast, 1955 (Columbia/Sony) With a score by George and Ira Gershwin, and a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, this 1926 lark is a tuneful jaunt through the then-familiar territory…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:47PM 
