Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1992 (RCA) No two Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens scores sound remotely alike. Here, the flavor is bright, clever, and wonderfully varied. In adapting the popular film M…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:00PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1956 (Columbia/Sony) My Fair Lady is still regarded by many as the supreme achievement of the American musical theater, and the original performances of Rex Harrison …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:19PMTuesday, September 29, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1957 (Capitol) This is one of the greatest of all cast albums. Meredith Willson, in his first Broadway effort, wrote the colorful, varied music and lyrics. The score …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:30PMRadio Broadcast, 1952 (AEI) If Music in the Air sounds like the title of a hokey operetta, that’s intentional; the 1932 show, with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstei…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:19PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2004 (JAY) This is Eric Rockwell and Joanne Bogart’s attempt to parody hit musicals by taking one melodramatic story (a landlord trying to secure rent money fro…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:06PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records/no CD) No stars; not recommended. After only 14 performances, Musical Chairs vanished from sight, but the show yielded a cast album. The e…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:59PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2002 (Sony) In the old days, composers hoped that theatergoers would go out humming what they’d just heard. With shows like Movin’ Out, however, the idea is that …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:36PMMonday, September 21, 2015
In theatrical comedy, drama, and even tragedy, an entire play can revolve around or turn upon the smallest of plot points.
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:05PMFriday, September 18, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1956 (Columbia/Sony, 2CDs) When Frank Loesser’s adaptation of Sidney Howard’s They Knew What They Wanted opened on Broadway, the composer-lyricist quickly correct…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:08PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1956 (Decca/MCA) From the moment the overture fires up, strings sawing away and trumpets blaring, you know that this is a mid-’50s schlock musical comedy. Produced …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:29PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1962 (Columbia/Sony) Irving Berlin’s final show should have been a natural. It’s a look at a JFK-like First Family, with mild social satire and plenty of flag-wav…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:19PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1954 (RCA/Stage Door) Is it a musical, or a straight play with incidental songs? Mrs. Patterson was a hybrid oddity of the 1954-55 Broadway season. Having seen Eartha…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:06PMStudio Cast, 2002 (DRG) A planned 2001 production of Jerry Herman’s Miss Spectacular in Las Vegas never materialized, but this concept recording is a doozy, featuring the kind of cast that…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:05PMOriginal London Cast, 1989 (Geffen, 2CDs) No stars; not recommended. As was the case with The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, its equally cheap predecessors, Miss Saigon was brough…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:31PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1949 (Columbia/Sony) Irving Berlin’s highly anticipated follow-up to Annie Get Your Gun was one of those can’t-miss packages that missed. It had thick postwar nos…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:54AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1970 (Project 3) “Good MORN-ing, ladies!!” Shelley Winters’ entrance line in this musical biography of the Marx Brothers and their indomitable mother is brayed …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:48AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (RCA) Jerry Herman’s first Broadway score is surely one of his best, an atmosphere-soaked tour through contemporary Israel in service of a tired soap opera plo…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:30AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1944 (Decca) Cole Porter, Herbert Fields, and Dorothy Fields enjoyed a long run with this silly piece of wartime escapism, but the major force behind the show was pro…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:22AMThursday, September 17, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1982 (RCA) A big flop in its original Broadway production, this show boasts one of Stephen Sondheim’s best scores. George Furth’s book, based on a George S. Kaufm…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:09PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1970 (Atlantic/150 Music) Based on Stephen M. Joseph’s book of the same title, The Me Nobody Knows is a collection of writings by inner-city students turned into a …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:05PMFilm Soundtrack, 1944 (MGM/Rhino-Turner) Based on a series of stories by Sally Benson that originally appeared in The New Yorker, Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis is one of the g…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:46PMWednesday, September 16, 2015
London Cast, 1985 (EMI) This production took a very charming, very old musical, gussied up the book, the score, and the arrangements, and presented it to the public as a lovely nostalgia fes…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:46PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1953 (RCA) It’s hard to believe, but Rodgers and Hammerstein did have a few flops in addition to their many hits. Me and Juliet was one such failure, and the team�…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:54PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1985 (Harbinger) When Bye Bye Birdie exploded on Broadway in 1960, it was an announcement that a brand-new generation had arrived in just about every department. …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:44PMOff-Broadway Cast, 2001 (Original Cast Records) The legendary 1967 out-of-town closing performance of this show is notorious for its title character, played by one Marissa Mell, being shot b…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:09PMOriginal London Cast, 1996 (Dreamworks) By the time this latest epic from composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricist Alain Boublil arrived on the scene, the serious pop-opera genre was f…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:43PMTuesday, September 15, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1981 (RCA) Stephen Sondheim compilation shows have always seemed silly to me. Doesn’t the appeal of his work lie largely in its specificity? The original cast a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:56AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2000 (RCA) Michael John LaChiusa turns out songs quickly — so quickly, he boasts, that he can sometimes knock off several in a day. There’s nothing necessarily wr…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:43AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (JAY) Roger Rees did first-rate work as Alfie, a Dublin bus driver who revels in amateur theatricals and yearns for a male coworker, but this show was a di…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:29AMSunday, September 13, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (RCA) “‘Tis wonder that enwraps me thus, yet ’tis not madness. What a groovy lady!” And there you have the central joke of this hit Off-Broadway musical,…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:18PMStudio Cast, 1966 (MGM/no CD) Long out of print, this recording was one of the first musical theater “concept albums.” Few people seem to be aware that You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:56PM 
