Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (Columbia/Sony) This is a brassy, heart-pounding, and ear-pounding show based on the life and songs of the great showman George M. Cohan. The title role is playe…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:54AMMonday, May 4, 2015
Zorba! may be the greatest Kander and Ebb musical you've never seen. A story of life and death in the Greek isles, originally produced and directed by Harold Prince, the show was well regard…
SOURCE: BroadwayStars at 03:29PMSunday, May 3, 2015
Zorba! may be the greatest Kander and Ebb musical you've never seen. A story of life and death in the Greek isles, originally produced and directed by Harold Prince, the show was well regard…
SOURCE: BroadwayStars at 12:34PMSaturday, April 18, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1949 (Columbia/Sony) This is a buoyant performance of a delightful score by Jule Styne (music) and Leo Robin (lyrics), based on the popular 1920s novel and play of th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:20PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (Capitol/Angel) After the film Gigi, nobody was interested in another musical tale of a virgin and a rake in beIle epoque Europe, but Fay and Michael Kanin went …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:09PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1962 (Capitol/Angel) Except for the “House of Marcus Lycus” sequence and the courtesans’ dances, every important piece of music in this playful, skillful Ste…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:43AMNew York and London Casts, 1927 and 1928 (Columbia, etc./Hallmark) Purists who require the Gershwins’ Funny Face untainted by songs written by others have no choice but to brave these prim…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:22AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2000 (BMG) A great pleasure of experiencing this show live was seeing how well Terrence McNally’s script melded with show-tune novice David Yazbek’s music and lyr…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:15AMStudio Cast, 2001 (Nonesuch) Based on a play by Aristophanes, The Frogs was written by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove to be performed by the Yale Repertory Theatre in the university’s…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:55AMOff-Broadway Cast, 2002 (Original Cast Records) Here was a wonderful idea for a musical: Bert Lahr in an adaptation of Volpone, with the action of that Ben Jonson classic moved to gold-rush …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:46AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1999 (RCA) Bob Fosse captured the revolutionary sexual politics of the 1960s and 1970s in a voluptuous mix of dance forms based on jazz, tap, and ballet. The show tha…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:30AMFriday, April 17, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (RCA) This wasn’t the first Hollywood musical to be adapted to the stage, but its success established a trend that has reached well into the 21st century. Whet…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:02PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1990 (RCA) In its New York incarnation, Steve Ross’s “Heavenly Musical Hit” Forever Plaid was, if you’ll pardon the expression, a divine tribute to the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:31PMFilm Soundtrack, 1984 (Columbia/Legacy) Directed by Herbert Ross, with a screenplay by Dean Pitchford, Footloose is about some small-town teenagers who attack a municipal ordinance and do ba…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:17PMTuesday, April 7, 2015
The Musicals Tonight! production of the delicious 1933 musical Pardon My English, with a score by George and Ira Gershwin and a book by Herbert Fields and Morrie Ryskind, opens tonight. Dire…
SOURCE: BroadwayStars at 08:44AMSaturday, April 4, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1971 (Capitol/Angel/Kritzerland) To many, Follies is one of the greatest of all shows, possibly the ultimate musical theater piece. Others find it cultishly “intere…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:03PMColumbia University Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records) It’s like dredging up riches from the Titanic: An unknown Rodgers and Hart score, their Columbia University varsity show from 1920, d…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:49PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1962 (Mercury/no CD) The cast album of this virtually forgotten musical is especially notable for two of its principal cast members: Avon Long, whose lengthy and …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:01PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1996 (Nonesuch) In telling this bleak, based-in-truth story of a Kentucky man trapped in a cave and the media circus that surrounds him and his family during the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:45PMOriginal London Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records) The musical Flowers for Algernon — or, as it was actually titled onstage, Charlie and Algernon — is based on the Daniel Keyes novel abo…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:38PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1958 (Columbia/Sony) Although Flower Drum Song doesn’t have the substance of most of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s other shows, it features one of the team’s most e…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:20PMFriday, March 27, 2015
Original London Cast, 1900-15 (various labels/Opal) The blurb on the CD cover calls this “the world’s first-ever original cast album!” Well, the cast of the 1899 success did enter the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:51PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1965 (RCA) John Kander and Fred Ebb’s first show together tells the story of Flora Meszaros (Liza Minnelli), who is thrilled to get a garment-district job during th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:01PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1951 (Capitol/DRG) With a title such as this, could you possibly expect something ordinary? Flahooley was the brainchild of E. Y. Harburg, who wanted to satirize big …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:48PMOriginal London Cast, 1997 (First Night/Relativity) An American political satire starring a Scotsman and an Australian, The Fix was a succes d’estime in a Sam Mendes-directed production at…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:39PMOriginal London Cast, 1991 (First Night) Super-producer Cameron Mackintosh found this little revue of Louis Jordan songs at the Theatre Royal Stratford in London’s East End and liked it so…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:24PMOriginal Los Angeles Cast, 2002 (PS Classics) Although Michael John LaChiusa’s First Lady Suite premiered Off-Broadway in 1993, the piece wasn’t recorded until it was staged in Los Angel…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:01PMOriginal London Cast, 1996 (First Night) A curious musical with a curious history: It opened in New Jersey to respectable reviews, traveled to London for a sort of protracted New York tryout…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:08PMStudio Cast, 2004 (PS Classics) PS Classics’ recording of this 1930 musical presents a fairly conventional score by Kay Swift and Paul James (a nom de plume for Swift’s husband, James Wa…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:01PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1959 (Columbia! DRG) There may be a beguiling musical to be coaxed out of Pride and Prejudice, but Abe Burrows’ attempt isn’t it. Like several shows of the era, t…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:53AMBBC Radio Concert Cast, 2003 (Capriccio, 2CDs) Capriccio and the BBC left no manuscript unturned in reconstructing Kurt Weill’s biggest Broadway flop, a 1945 operetta about Benvenuto Celli…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:21AM 
