Original Broadway Cast, 1970 (Columbia/Sony) Composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick were still at the peak of their productivity, following their great success with Fiddler on the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:28AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1988 (MCA Classics) Romance Romance is intelligent and well crafted, but the score is not one you’ll necessarily be eager to hear more than once. The show consists …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:53AMOriginal London Cast, 1973 (First Night) The first recording of Richard O’Brien’s kinky cult classic is weak. The cast members include O’Brien himself, Patricia Quinn, Little Nell, Jon…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:24PMStudio Cast, 1944 (Decca) Roberta has one of the best-remembered musical theater scores of the 1930s, and it owes its fame solely to the efforts of Jerome Kern, whose rapturous music managed…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:48PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1976 (Columbia/Original Cast Records) Let’s face it, country music is not where Broadway shines. But this show is a happy exception to the rule. Composer Robert Wal…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:32PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1965 (RCA) Is that a car with a bad muffler, or a lame rhinoceros rousing itself out of the mud? No, it’s Anthony Newley, wallowing in self-pity and vibrato as he b…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:19PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1962 (London/no CD) After a brief instrumental prelude of the title song, the sound of crickets is heard, a soft female voice sings hauntingly in the distance, an…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:09PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (JAY) Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt first began work on a musical adaptation of Lynn Riggs’ 1930 play Roadside in the mid-1950s but didn’t complete it unt…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:08PMOriginal London Cast, 1930 (Columbia/Pearl) One of the quintessential musicals of the 1920s, Rio Rita was also a bit of an oddity, poised as it was on the brink between musical comedy and op…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:50PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1984 (Polygram/JAY) For Broadway diva lovers, it’s the Fight of the Century. In this corner: Chita Rivera as Anna, a feisty, middle-aged widow who’s about to walk…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:57PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) No stars; not recommended. This late-career Richard Rodgers flop, about the marital problems of Henry VIII, revealed the composer to be out of touch with c…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:50PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1996 (Dreamworks, 2CDs) Rent is a heartbreaking work in more than one sense. First, it’s a moving reimagination of La Bohème as a portrait of struggling artists on…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:35PMOriginal Los Angeles Cast, 1999 (Madness Records) Musicals don’t come any sillier than the Kevin Murphy (lyrics-book) and Dan Studney (music-book) adaptation of Reefer Madness. This wacky …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:17PMEthel Merman With Studio Artists, 1936 (Liberty/AEI) {usr=4] Hoping for another Anything Goes, producer Vinton Freedley put Cole Porter and Ethel Merman together again, this time adding Jimm…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:08PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1959 (RCA/Fynsworth Alley) With a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Sidney Sheldon, and David Shaw, music by Albert Hague, and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, Redhead is …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:56AM“Songs from Ragtime,” 1996 (RCA) One of the most precious gems of the American musical theater, Ragtime is replete with beautiful performances on this first recording of the magnificent …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:12AMOriginal Broadway Cast Members, 1986 (Sony) High on the list of flops that deserved better is this four-performance heartbreaker by composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. Th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:53AMOriginal Cast, 1995 (Varèse Sarabande) In this comedic concept musical by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick, we’re supposed to be hearing a radio broadcast emanating illegally from the home o…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:27AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1973 (Columbia/Sony) Despite its healthy Broadway run and its Tony Award for Best Musical, Raisin is almost completely forgotten. Fortunately, the Robert Nemiroff-Cha…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:28PMOff-Broadway Cast, 1993 (RCA) There have been tons of Stephen Sondheim revues, but the big attraction of Putting It Together was unique: Julie Andrews singing Sondheim, live, in a tiny theat…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:11PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1970 (Ampex/RCA) With music by Gary Geld and lyrics by Peter Udell, this show is based on the play Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis, who adapted the musical in collab…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:51PMOriginal Cast, 1982 (Columbia/Sony) An unexpected delight when it opened, this revue of countryish songs doesn’t have much in the way of a story line. The setup of a roadside stop populate…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:38PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1968 (United Artists/MGM/Kritzerland) Based on the film The Apartment, this show was the only Broadway effort of pop songwriters Burt Bacharach (music) and Hal David …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:11PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1969 (RCA) ]usr=1] Two prisoners identified as “105” and “106” escape from jail and wander through various settings, including a park, a banquet, and a ba…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:47AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2001 (Sony) Here is Mel Brooks’ full-blown musical version of his semi-musical 1968 movie about a has-been Broadway producer’s backfired scheme to bilk his show�…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:36AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (JAY) Based on Mark Twain’s novel about a pair of 16th-century London lookalikes who swap identities, this adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper played a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:25AMOriginal Australian Cast, 2000 (Prodigal Son Productions) Australian librettist-lyricist Dean Bryant and composer Matthew Frank took inspiration from the Bible for their musical Prodigal Son…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:09AMOriginal Cast, 1971 (Original Cast Records/Varèse Sarabande) A woman who lives in the Deep South wants to repent for her husband’s deplorable hostilities toward minorities — so she beds…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:00AMOriginal Broadway Cast Members, 1940/1942 (Decca) Porgy and Bess may be the most fabulous failure in musical theater history, although it can only be judged a failure in that its original 19…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:18PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1997 (Varèse Sarabande) Play On! was at least the fourth musical adapted from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to play, albeit briefly, in New York. This version moved …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:09PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1955 (Capitol/DRG) Listening to a second-rank score, a longtime musical theater lover will marvel at how often just-above-par tuners were a dependable source for Hit …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:24PM
