Original 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 03:24PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1972 (Motown/Decca) Stephen Schwartz wrote the score for this hippy-dippy medieval musical. John Rubinstein starred as the son of Charlemagne, roaming the Holy Roman …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:12PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1955 (RCA) Rodgers and Hammerstein may not have been the ideal team to put the chippies and layabouts of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row onstage in a musical; it’s t…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:52PMStudio Cast, 1962 (Columbia/Sony) This 1930s topical revue is legendary for its original cast of talented shop workers from the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. Featuring songs…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:29PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1978 (Original Cast Records/no CD) No stars; not recommended. Time was when you could buy an original cast recording with a reasonable amount of confidence. If a …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:18PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1975 (Gallery/no CD) Composer Harvey Schmidt has consistently written lovely, dramatic, and distinctive music. Philemon is the story of Cockian, a street clown …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:47PMOriginal London Cast, 1986 (Polydor, 2CDs) Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score for this virtually through-sung musical based on the famous novel by Gaston Leroux contains many wonderful melodies; …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:04PMStudio Cast, 1993 (RCA) Unfortunately, Maury Yeston (music and lyrics) and Arthur Kopit (book) began work on their own adaptation of the Gaston Leroux potboiler The Phantom of the Opera conc…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:37AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1954 (RCA) James M. Barrie’s ever-young story of the boy who wouldn’t grow up has been a favorite in print and on the stage and screen for more than a century. Wh…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:56AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) This is a little-known, unusually lackluster score by Leonard Bernstein, not the beloved Peter Pan musical of four years later. Except for studen…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:46AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (Fynsworth Alley) James Hindman’s goofy, marvelous spoof/homage Pete ‘n’ Keely stars George Dvorsky and Sally Mayes as Pete Bartel and Keely Stevens, a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:37AMOriginal London Cast, 1998 (JAY) Before their huge success with TV’s Friends, David Crane and Marta Kauffman wrote this amusing theater piece in collaboration with lyricist Seth Friedman a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:24AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1994 (Angel) One of Stephen Sondheim’s most daring achievements, Passion is also one of his most divisive: Some people respond to the work’s uncompromising nature…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:23PMStudio Cast, 1994 (Elektra-Nonesuch) Pardon My English, the 1933 musical that had the shortest Broadway run of any Gershwin show, makes for a most entertaining recording. The wonderful son…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:16PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1999 (RCA) Composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown earned a Tony Award for his work on Parade, his first Broadway score. Although this dark musical about accused murdere…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:04PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1960 (Kapp/Decca) This topical revue served as a calling card for a young composer-lyricist named Jerry Herman. It remains a pleasant diversion if you’re in the…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:42PMOriginal Broadway Cast Members, 1940 (Decca) Piggybacked onto the Decca CD issue of the Call Me Madam studio album starring Ethel Merman are four selections from Panama Hattie in their first…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:58PMStudio Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) Joey, a small-time entertainer bent on opening his own nightclub, drops his girlfriend, Linda, to bed Vera, a rich dowager who’s bonkers for him and who b…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:16PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1954 (Columbia/Sony) For a primer on the state of musical comedy in the mid-1950s, look no further than here. The Pajama Game was based on notably “unmusical” sou…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:46PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1951 (RCA) A show with a magnificent score but an inferior book, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon tells of an 1853 California gold rush, the l…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:57AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) Only Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim could find musical possibilities in the opening up of Japan to the West in 1853. Only Sondheim could make such a br…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:05AMOriginal London Cast, 1946 (Decca/Encore Box Office) Noël Coward’s overstuffed postwar operetta plunked a visiting diva among some missionaries on the island of Samolo. The show failed to…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:50AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast Members, 1994 (Varèse Sarabande) “Promising” is the obvious word for Lucky Stiff, the first produced musical by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ah…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:25AMStudio Cast, 2000 (DRG) For this musical, which was seen at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1997, librettist Sherman Yellen wrapped a yarn of romance among expat American journalists in 1927 Pa…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:10AMNew York Concert Cast, 1996 (DRG) This is a biting and funny satire of Louisiana’s byzantine politics in general, and of Huey Long in particular. Although Louisiana Purchase opened on Broa…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:55AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1949 (Decca) Lost in the Stars, by playwright Maxwell Anderson and composer Kurt Weill, deals with racial discrimination and segregation — unlikely territory for a …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:16PMOriginal Broadway and Touring Cast, 1973-74 (MGM/Decca) Sort of a “revisal” of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, though that word had not yet been coined when this show was staged, Lorelei had a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:52PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1948 (Decca) Based on an idea by Jerome Robbins, Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’! was a broad musical comedy about a touring ballet company. It starred the incredibly gifte…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:28PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1956 (Painted Smiles) The vibrant overture on this recording tells us that we’re about to hear one of the tangiest revues of the 1950s. Ben Bagley produced the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:26PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1982 (Geffen) Who would have thought that Roger Corman and Charles B. Griffith’s campy 1960 horror flick about a bloodthirsty plant out for world conquest would…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:53PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1973 (Columbia/Sony) A Little Night Music is emblematic of composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s work in that it sounds very different from his other scores and yet …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 08:19PM
