Sunday, August 9, 2015
Concept Recording, 1991 (Broadway Angel) Here’s a “concept album” for a musical that probably wasn’t a very good idea to begin with — at least, not as composed by Frank Wildhorn, w…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:30PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1958 (RCA/DRG) First, novelist Richard Bissell wrote 7½ Cents, which was turned into the hit musical The Pajama Game. Then he wrote a novella about his experiences o…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:16PMFilm Soundtrack, 1977 (Polydor) Iconic though this movie may be, the blockbuster soundtrack album of Saturday Night Fever is distressingly dated. Even if individual songs are terrific, how m…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:03PMOriginal London Cast, 1998 (First Night) With music and lyrics by a 24-year-old Stephen Sondheim and a book by Julius J. Epstein, Saturday Night was supposed to be produced on Broadway in th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:32PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1959 (RCA) Edna Ferber’s Saratoga Trunk had already been adapted as a hit film, so the stage musical version, developed for Broadway as Saratoga and rumored to be t…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:25PMOriginal Cast, 1988 (RCA) Conceived and directed by Mbongeni Ngema, Sarafina! is the “little musical that could.” Despite considerable financial hardship in moving the show to production…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:45AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1969 (Capitol/Angel) Unlike some other rock musicals of the period, Salvation had no dance or spectacle elements; the physical production was tacky, and the show …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:38AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1946 (Capitol/Angel) Careening between musical comedy and musical tragedy, St. Louis Woman is a turn-of-the-century tale with an all-black cast and a score by Harold …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:18AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (Capitol/Angel) Which musical has the best opening and closing numbers for its star? A good bet is Noël Coward’s Sail Away. The show-stopping songs, written e…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:07AMWednesday, August 5, 2015
Los Angeles Cast, 1993 (Varèse Sarabande) Ruthless! is a very campy show, first produced Off-Broadway in 1992 and then in Los Angeles the following year, about a talented little girl named …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:15AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/DRG) Elizabeth Swados’s revue about street kids, developed by The Public Theater before opening on Broadway, was considered fresh and edgy when it de…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:07AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1965 (Warner Bros./no CD) One of the oddest musicals ever to hit Broadway, Rugantino first opened in Rome and became an enormous hit. On a visit to Italy, American pr…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:47AMOriginal 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 09:53AMTuesday, August 4, 2015
Original 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 01:08PMMonday, August 3, 2015
Original 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 04:50PMSunday, August 2, 2015
Original 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 11:56AMThursday, July 30, 2015
“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 10:27AMWednesday, July 29, 2015
Original 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 04:28PM 
