Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1971 (Decca) When you listen to the original cast recording of Two Gentlemen of Verona, you’ll know why this show won the 1972 Tony Award for Best Musical but not f…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:04AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1970 (Columbia/Sony) With music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and a book by Peter Stone, Two by Two is an adaptation of Clifford Odets’ play The Flo…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:41AMTuesday, September 1, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1975 (Vanguard/no CD) No stars; not recommended. The dated humor of this revue makes the cast album more of a time capsule than a listening pleasure. Written as a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:22PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1997 (JAY) Pierre Marivaux’s 1722 farce La surprise de l’amour gets a musical workout and an English title, Triumph of Love, thanks to librettist James Magruder, …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:01PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1951 (Columbia/Sony) With its high nostalgia quotient and dream ballet, this adaptation of Betty Smith’s beloved novel — scripted by Smith herself, with George Ab…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:42PMMonday, August 31, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1963 (Capitol/Angel) In its CD and MP3 formats, this cast album is very different from the original LP edition in that, aside from the overture, no song is in the sam…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:49PMOriginal Cast, 1970 (Ampex/no CD) No stars; not recommended. For years, this seemed the most ubiquitous of all show recordings. It turned up everywhere: at garage sales, school sales, librar…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:30PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1951 (Capitol/DRG) Some types of comedy date very quickly, and this zany musical expedition into the world of vaudeville comics is an example of that. Still, it’s a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:16PMStudio Cast, 1977 (Painted Smiles) The world’s oldest collection of co-eds bops to a lower-drawer score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in this Ben Bagley recording of a 1939 hit that h…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:59PMSunday, August 30, 2015
Studio Recording, 1969 (MCA) Originally conceived for presentation on record, this seminal “rock opera” is thrillingly melodic and dramatic. Small wonder that it was subsequently adapted…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:22PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1997 (RCA) You’ll be hard-pressed to find more beautiful choral singing than that heard on the cast album of Titanic, the musical about the sinking of that famed �…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:01PMNew York Concert Cast, 1998 (New World, 2CDs) Enchanting piffle from 1925, Tip-Toes has a funny Fred Thompson-Guy Bolton book, a dancey Gershwin score, and an insuperable cast in this Carneg…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:43PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1980 (DRG) Allegedly, this was the first-ever digitally recorded cast album. A cavalcade of early-20th-century Americana, Tintypes sounds splendid here as its five-me…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:26PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1966 (Warner Bros./no CD) Based on Richard Llewellyn’s popular book How Green Was My Valley, which inspired the acclaimed 1941 movie of the same title, A Time for S…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:59AMFriday, August 28, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (RCA) This minor but appealing Off-Broadway effort was adapted by playwright David Auburn from a semi-autobiographical, one-person show that had been written…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:12PMStudio Cast, 2001 (PS Classics) Hats off to PS Classics for issuing the premiere recording of this interesting curio, a 1931 Vincent Youmans flop — and hats back on for their having made s…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:01PMOriginal Cast, 2004 (Original Cast Records) In musicalizing the true story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who murdered a boy in 1924 Chicago, composer-lyricist-librettist Stephen Dolgin…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:45PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1952 (Capitol/Angel) The singing on this recording of a misfire by Abe Burrows and Ralph Blane is so gorgeous that you’ll forgive Blane’s score for being less tha…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:32PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1954 (MGM/Decca) This is the Carmen Capalbo production that helped put Off-Broadway on the map. One of the most important musical theater works of the 20th centur…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:21PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1985 (Polygram/JAY) This three-character musical about the rise and ultimate dissolution of a gifted trio of young comedians has one big problem in that it’s ne…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:11PMOriginal Cast, 2000 (DRG) It would be a wonderful thing if more full-length musicals could be as melodic and charming as 3hree, the triumvirate of one-act works that director Harold Prince p…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:00PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2001 (Swing Music) In theory, it was an inspired idea to have Harry Connick, Jr. write the score for this Susan Stroman-David Thompson adaptation of Thérèse Raquin,…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:09PMFilm Soundtrack, 1967 (Decca/MCA) There’s no explanation for this bizarre camp exercise, which was designed to spoof the 1920s. Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore play flappers seeking the…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:49PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1942 (Decca) Shortly after the start of World War II, Irving Berlin created a new version of his World War I revue Yip! Yip! Yaphank. The resulting show, This Is the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:39PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2004 (DRG) A sort of musical fairy tale for adults, The Thing About Men is based on Doris Dorrie’s German film Männer. It shows us what happens when a philande…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:06PMThursday, August 27, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Casablanca) Neil Simon based his book for They’re Playing Our Song on the real-life relationship of the show’s composer and lyricist, Marvin Hamlisch and Ca…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:05PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1949 (Decca) Although it is now forgotten, this mild satire on Texas politics ran out the season, and a near-hit song or two came out of its score by composer Robert …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:59PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1960 (Capitol/Angel) It all starts with a marvelous opéra bouffe-style overture that sets the tone perfectly for this tale of the Tenderloin, New York’s most notor…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:40PMStudio Cast, 1998 (New World, 2CDs) This was one of the Gershwins’ middling, mid-1920s musicals, chock-a-block with mistaken identities, society marriages, and principal comics delivering …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:15PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1984 (Polygram) Onstage, it was an entertaining, beautifully put together, old-fashioned show, but the cast album of The Tap Dance Kid reveals an uninteresting score.…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:04PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1983 (Painted Smiles) One of the most colorful personalities in show business history, Tallulah Bankhead was so imitable that any impressionist worth his or her s…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:41PM 
